EULOGIES PRONOUNCED AT THE GRAVE BY SIR
ECTOR ON SIR LAUNCELOT, AND BY ROBERT
G. INGERSOLL ON E.C. INGERSOLL.
However unemotional man may be, his deepest sentiments are stirred when he
stands face to face with death. The sense of loss; the uncertainty; the
vastness of the mystery, which can be solved only by conjecture or the
intuitions of faith--all these solemn elements call out the most interior
thought and feeling.
Among the recorded utterances of grief we have selected two for our
readers. Each is a funeral oration over the body of a brother. In
literature we go back to old Sir Thomas Malory for the "doleful
complaints" of Sir Ector de Moris over the dead Sir Launcelot, his
brother. It will be remembered that after the death of Queen Guinevere, as
recorded in the "Morte d'Arthur," Sir Launcelot "ever after eat but little
meat, nor drank, but continually mourned until he was dead." They bore him
to Joyous Gard, where he had desired to be buried, and thither came Sir
Ector, who for seven years had been vainly seeking his brother.
The second utterance is the eulogy which was pronounced by the late Robert
G. Ingersoll at the funeral of his brother, E.C. Ingersoll. Under similar
conditions of grief no deeper note has been so eloquently sounded. Colonel
Ingersoll touched the meanings of life, and, infidel though he was,
ventured a noble hope in death.