Faithful to the last to that which had been the great work of his life, he wrote these words with dying hand:  “All I can add in my solitude is, may heaven’s rich blessings come down on every one who would help to heal this open sore of the world!” Why was it that in the ten years after Livingstone’s death, Africa made greater advancement than in the previous ten centuries?  All the world knows that it was through the vicarious suffering of one of Scotland’s noblest heroes.  And why is it that Curtis says that there are three American orations that will live in history—­Patrick Henry’s at Williamsburg, Abraham Lincoln’s at Gettysburg and Wendell Philips’ at Faneuil Hall?  A thousand martyrs to liberty lent eloquence to Henry’s lips; the hills of Gettysburg, all billowy with our noble dead, exhaled the memories that anointed Lincoln’s lips; while Lovejoy’s spirit, newly martyred at Alton, poured over Wendell Phillips’ nature the full tides of speech divine.  Vicarious suffering explains each of these immortal scenes.

Long, too, the scroll of humble heroes whose vicarious services have exalted our common life.  Recognizing this principle, Cicero built a monument to his slave, a Greek, who daily read aloud to his master, took notes of his conversation, wrote out his speeches and so lent the orator increased influence and power.  Scott also makes one of his characters bestow a gift upon an aged servant.  For, said the warrior, no master can ever fully recompense the nurse who cares for his children, or the maid who supplies their wants.  To-day each giant of the industrial realm is compassed about with a small army of men who stand waiting to carry out his slightest behests, relieve him of details, halve his burdens, while at the same time doubling his joys and rewards.  Lifted up in the sight of the entire community the great man stands on a lofty pedestal builded out of helpers and aids.  And though here and now the honors and successes all go to the one giant, and his assistants are seemingly obscure and unrecognized, hereafter and there honors will be evenly distributed, and then how will the great man’s position shrink and shrivel!

Here also are the parents who loved books and hungered for beauty, yet in youth were denied education and went all their life through concealing a secret hunger and ambition, but who determined that their children should never want for education.  That the boy, therefore, might go to college, these parents rose up early to vex the soil and sat up late to wear their fingers thin, denying the eye beauty, denying the taste and imagination their food, denying the appetite its pleasures.  And while they suffer and wane the boy in college grows wise and strong and waxing great, comes home to find the parents overwrought with service and ready to fall on death, having offered a vicarious sacrifice of love.