"In this world of shadows, few things strengthen the soul like
seeing the calm and cheerful exit of a truly good man; and this has
been my privilege by the bedside of Isaac T. Hopper.
"He was a man of remarkable endowments, both of head and heart. His
clear discrimination, his unconquerable will, his total
unconsciousness of fear, his extraordinary tact in circumventing
plans he wished to frustrate, would have made him illustrious as
the general of an army; and these qualities might have become
faults, if they had not been balanced by an unusual degree of
conscientiousness and benevolence. He battled courageously, not
from ambition, but from an inborn love of truth. He circumvented as
adroitly as the most practised politician; but it was always to
defeat the plans of those who oppressed God's poor; never to
advance his own self-interest.
"Few men have been more strongly attached to any religious society
than he was to the Society of Friends, which he joined in the days
of its purity, impelled by his own religious convictions. But when
the time came that he must either be faithless to duty in the cause
of his enslaved brethren, or part company with the Society to which
he was bound by the strong and sacred ties of early religious
feeling, this sacrifice he also calmly laid on the altar of
humanity.
"During nine years that I lived in his household, my respect and
affection for him continually increased. Never have I seen a man
who so completely fulfilled the Scripture injunction, to forgive an
erring brother 'not only seven times, but seventy times seven.' I
have witnessed relapse after relapse into vice, under circumstances
which seemed like the most heartless ingratitude to him; but he
joyfully hailed the first symptom of repentance, and was always
ready to grant a new probation.
"Farewell, thou brave and kind old Friend! The prayers of ransomed
ones ascended to Heaven for thee, and a glorious company have
welcomed thee to the Eternal City."
On a plain block of granite at Greenwood Cemetery, is inscribed: