Colonel Ingersoll upon one occasion was one of a little party of
sympathizing friends who had gathered in a drizzling rain to assist
the sorrowing friends of a young boy--a bright and stainless flower,
cut off in the bloom of its beauty and virgin purity by the ruthless
north winds from the Plutonian shades--in the last sad office of
committing the poor clay to the bosom of its mother earth. Inspired
by that true sympathy of the great heart of a great man, Colonel
Ingersoll stepped to the side of the grave and spoke as follows:
"My friends, I know how vain it is to gild grief with words, and yet I
wish to take from every grave its fear. Here in this world, where life
and death are equal king, all should be brave enough to meet what all
the dead have met. The future has been filled with fear, stained and
polluted by the heartless past. From the wondrous tree of life the buds
and blossoms fall with ripened fruit, and in the common bed of earth the
patriarchs and babes sleep side by side. Why should we fear that which
will come to all that is? We cannot tell; we do not know which is the
greater blessing--life or death. We cannot say that death is not a good;
we do not know whether the grave is the end of this life or the door of
another, or whether the night here is not somewhere else a dawn. Neither
can we tell which is the more fortunate, the child dying in its mother's
arms, before its lips have learned to form a word, or he who journeys
all the length of life's uneven road, taking the last slow steps
painfully with staff and crutch. Every cradle asks us 'whence,' and
every coffin 'whither?' The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can
answer these questions as intelligently and satisfactorily as the robed
priest of the most authentic creed. The tearful ignorance of the one is
just as good as the learned and unmeaning words of the other. No man,
standing where the horizon of life has touched a grave, has any right to
prophesy a future filled with pain and tears. It may be that death gives
all there is of worth to live. If those we press and strain against our
hearts could never die, perhaps that love would wither from the earth.
May be this common fate treads from out the paths between our hearts the
weeds of selfishness and hate, and I had rather live and love where
death is king, than have eternal life where love is not. Another life is
naught, unless we know and love again the ones who love us here. They
who stand with breaking hearts around this little grave need have no
fear. The larger and the nobler faith in all that is and is to be, tells
us that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest. We know that
through the common wants of life, the needs and duties of each hour,
their grief will lessen day by day, until at last these graves will be
to them a place of rest and peace, almost of joy. There is for them this
consolation, the dead do not suffer. If they live again, their lives
will surely be as good as ours. We have no fear; we are all the children
of the same mother, and the same fate awaits us all. We, too, have our
religion, and it is this: 'Help for the living; hope for the dead.'"
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