When he died in January, 1876, beautiful tributes were paid to his
memory by all sorts and conditions of men—from the Governor and
Legislature down to the feeble-minded children whom he had brought into
the human fold. A great memorial meeting was held in his honor, where
Laura Bridgman, with her pale, sorrow-stricken face, was “the silent
orator of the occasion.”
Her health was seriously affected by my father’s death, as was also that
of sister Julia.
Footnote 11:
Sister Laura and I.
From the poem of Oliver Wendell Holmes, I quote a few verses:
How long the wreck-strewn journey seems
To reach the far-off past
That woke his youth from peaceful dreams
With Freedom’s trumpet-blast!
Along her classic hillsides rung
The Paynims’ battle-cry,
And like a red-cross knight he sprung
For her to live or die.
No trustier service claimed the wreath
For Sparta’s bravest son;
No truer soldier sleeps beneath
The mould of Marathon.
Edward Everett Hale said, in part:
You ask for his epitaph. It is a very simple epitaph. He found
idiots chattering, taunted, and ridiculed by each village fool,
and he left them cheerful and happy. He found the insane shut up
in their wretched cells, miserable, starving, cold, and dying,
and he left them happy, hopeful, and brave. He found the blind
sitting in darkness and he left them glad in the sunshine of the
love of God.
The simplest tribute of all came from the poor children to whose minds
he had brought light.
“They say Doctor Howe will take care of the blind in heaven. Won’t he
take care of us, too?”
On receiving my mother’s Memoir of her husband, Florence Nightingale
wrote as follows:
LONDON, _June 7, ’77_.
DEAR MRS. HOWE,—It is like a breath from Heaven to one’s
overworked and well-nigh overwhelmed mind, your Memoir of one of
the best and greatest men of our age, and your remembrance.
You have shown his many-sided life as known to few. You have
shown in him a rarer and more fruitful man than even we, who had
known and loved him for so long, knew.
What has been a revealing to us of him will be even more so for
the crowd of your readers who knew him but by the dramatic Greek
life: and by his work among the blind, deaf mutes and idiots. No
one will know him quite till after you have been read. That is
the privilege of your community with him—with his unconsciously
heroic life. A great duty has been fulfilled in making known his
sympathy for every kind of misfortune,—his love of helping
humanity, so to speak, ancient and modern,—his generous and
persevering devotion to right,—his noble horror of helpless
pity,—his indomitable faith in progress; thanks to you.
And how little he thought of reputation! That was the noblest
thing of all.
The pressure of ever-increasing illness and business—how little
I thought to survive him—makes it difficult for me to write one
unnecessary line. Our common friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge,
Dr. Fowler, and how many others, are all gone before us.
In their names and in his name I bid with all my heart,
Fare you very well,