than of retrogression.  The Old and New Testaments remain, like other sacred writings of other lands, of value as records of the past and for such good lessons as they inculcate.  Like the ancient writers of the Bible our thoughts should rest upon this life and our duties here.  “To perform the duties of this world well, troubling not about another, is the prime wisdom,” says Confucius, great sage and teacher.  The next world and its duties we shall consider when we are placed in it.

I am as a speck of dust in the sun, and not even so much, in this solemn, mysterious, unknowable universe.  I shrink back.  One truth I see.  Franklin was right.  “The highest worship of God is service to Man.”  All this, however, does not prevent everlasting hope of immortality.  It would be no greater miracle to be born to a future life than to have been born to live in this present life.  The one has been created, why not the other?  Therefore there is reason to hope for immortality.  Let us hope.[75]

[Footnote 75:  “A.C. is really a tremendous personality—­dramatic, wilful, generous, whimsical, at times almost cruel in pressing his own conviction upon others, and then again tender, affectionate, emotional, always imaginative, unusual and wide-visioned in his views.  He is well worth Boswellizing, but I am urging him to be ’his own Boswell.’...  He is inconsistent in many ways, but with a passion for lofty views; the brotherhood of man, peace among nations, religious purity—­I mean the purification of religion from gross superstition—­the substitution for a Westminster-Catechism God, of a Righteous, a Just God.” (Letters of Richard Watson Gilder, p. 375.)]

CHAPTER XXVI

BLAINE AND HARRISON

While one is known by the company he keeps, it is equally true that one is known by the stories he tells.  Mr. Blaine was one of the best story-tellers I ever met.  His was a bright sunny nature with a witty, pointed story for every occasion.

Mr. Blaine’s address at Yorktown (I had accompanied him there) was greatly admired.  It directed special attention to the cordial friendship which had grown up between the two branches of the English-speaking race, and ended with the hope that the prevailing peace and good-will between the two nations would exist for many centuries to come.  When he read this to me, I remember that the word “many” jarred, and I said: 

“Mr. Secretary, might I suggest the change of one word?  I don’t like ‘many’; why not ‘all’ the centuries to come?”

“Good, that is perfect!”

And so it was given in the address:  “for all the centuries to come.”

We had a beautiful night returning from Yorktown, and, sitting in the stern of the ship in the moonlight, the military band playing forward, we spoke of the effect of music.  Mr. Blaine said that his favorite just then was the “Sweet By and By,” which he had heard played last by the same band at President Garfield’s funeral, and he thought upon that occasion he was more deeply moved by sweet sounds than he had ever been in his life.  He requested that it should be the last piece played that night.  Both he and Gladstone were fond of simple music.  They could enjoy Beethoven and the classic masters, but Wagner was as yet a sealed book to them.