He kept his promise too too well. This was the last letter I ever had
from him.
He dreaded that California journey. San Diego is a long, long way
from Woodchuck Lodge when one is nearing eighty-four. Dr. Barrus
and two of her nieces made the trip with him, Henry Ford, out of
his friendship, meeting the expenses of the winter sojourn. But
California had no cure for the winter that had at last fallen upon
the old naturalist. Sickness, and longing for home, and other ills
befell him. He was in a hospital for many days. But visitors came to
see him as usual; he went among the schools speaking; nor was his
pen idle--not yet; one of the last things, if not the very last he
wrote for publication, being a vigorous protest against free verse,
called "The Reds of Literature." But all the while he was thinking of
home, and planning for his birthday party at the Lodge back on the
ancestral farm.
We celebrated it. He was there. But he did not know. On the third
day of April, his eighty-fourth birthday, followed by a few of his
friends, mourned by all the nation, he was laid to rest in the hill
pasture, beside the boulder on which he had played as a child, and
where only a few months before he had taken me to see the glory of
hill and sky that had been his lifelong theme, and that were to be
his sleep forever.
He died on the train that was bringing him back from California, his
last desire not quite fulfilled. He was a wholly human man; and an
utterly simple man; and so true to himself, that his last words,
uttered on the speeding train, expressed and completed his whole life
with singular beauty: "How far are we from home," he asked,--and the
light failed; and the train sped on as if there were need of hurry
now!
"Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea,
I rave no more 'gainst Time or Fate
For lo! my own shall come to me."