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HELIOTVPt rRINTINQ CO. BOSTON. 
 
a jHemorial 
 
 OF 
 
 O. W. WIGHT, A.M., M.D. 
 
 SANITARIAN, LAWYER, AND AUTHOR 
 
 BY 
 
 J. S. WIGHT, M. D. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 Printeti at t^t EtijersiUe Pregg 
 
 1890 
 
Copyright, 1890, 
 By J. S. WIGHT. 
 
 All rights reserved, 
 
 Q 
 
 ^^(^.ftii^^ 
 
To the members of the Prismatic Club of Detroit 
 this Memorial is inscribed, in appreciation of their 
 regard and friendship for one who labored for the 
 good of others, who lived a manly and heroic life, 
 who went away without fear. 
 
Es hildet ein Talent sicli in der Stille, Dock ein Cha- 
 racter in dem Strom der Welt. — Goethe. 
 
 Talent develops itself in solitude j character, in the 
 stream of life. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 This biograpliical memorial of my de- 
 ceased brother, I have written for his 
 friends. I have tried to paint what he 
 was in his ambition, his work, and his 
 success, during the changes of a varied 
 life. My few and inadequate words have 
 been inspired by a wish to perpetuate his 
 memory among those who knew him. And 
 if those who did not know him, happen to 
 read of him, as his life appeared to me, 
 let me say to them, — it is our wish that 
 3^ou, too, may be numbered among his 
 friends. 
 
 J. S. WIGHT. 
 30 schermekhorn street. 
 Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 I. 
 
 On tlie 19tli of February, in the year of 
 our Lord 1824, was born a boy wbose an- 
 cestors came from two branches of the Aryan 
 race. One occupies a land where men of 
 indomitable will and dauntless courage re- 
 sist the encroachments of the sea and hold 
 back the invasions of man. They have en- 
 countered the aggressive and stubborn forces 
 of nature and turned them into slaves. 
 They have maintained their existence as a 
 nation for more than a thousand years. The 
 other lived on an island against whose shore 
 beats forever the restless sea, imparting the 
 spirit of its mobility to the beholder. Upon 
 this sea-girt land was planted the standard 
 of Imperial Rome, as westward the march of 
 
2 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 Empire took its way. And this beautiful 
 island lias stood sentinel at the gateway of 
 civilization for centuries. The people of 
 whom we write have lived and wrought by 
 the sea in the past, and have descended from 
 the ancient mariner, of whom the Roman 
 poet sang : — 
 
 " In oak or triple brass his breast was mailed, 
 Who first committed to the ruthless deep 
 His fragile bark, nor inly shrank and quailed, 
 To hear the headlong south-wind fiercely sweep, 
 With northern blasts to wrestle and to rave ; 
 Nor feared to face the tristful Hyades, 
 And the wild tyrant of the western wave, 
 That lifts or calms at will the restless sea." 
 
 Both the ancestors of this boy committed 
 their fragile barks to the ruthless deep ; 
 they had heard the headlong south-wind 
 wrestle with the northern blasts ; they had 
 hearts of oak and breasts in dauntless cour- 
 age mailed ; they loved and sought the free- 
 dom of the restless sea ; nor feared the 
 peril and the dangers that it brought and 
 gave. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 3 
 
 Such were the ancestors of one whose 
 life it is our duty to sketch. Such brave 
 men were they, who have lived, and loved, 
 and wrought, and passed away. And he 
 too has departed, after a busy, heroic, man- 
 ly, and eventful life, over which falls the 
 shadow of a great sorrow : — 
 
 " One fatal remembrance, one sorrow that throws 
 Its bleak shade alike o'er our joys and our woes, 
 To which life nothing darker or brighter can bring. 
 For which joy hath no balm and affliction no sting." 
 
 His mother's paternal ancestors came 
 from Amsterdam, Holland. There were two 
 brothers, by the name of Van Buren, who 
 came to this country, and settled on the 
 Hudson, one at Albany, the other at Kin- 
 derhook. The latter was the ancestor of 
 Martin Van Buren, who was President of 
 the United States. The former was the 
 ancestor of Caroline Van Buren, the mother 
 of Orlando Williams Wight, who was the 
 eldest of eight children. His father was a 
 descendant of Thomas Wight, who came to 
 this country, in 1635, from the Isle of Wight, 
 
4 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 to escape the religious persecutions of the 
 times. When the Komans invaded Britain, 
 they landed on a small island off the coast 
 of England. And for some reason they 
 called this island by the name of Vectis. 
 It may be that the Romans derived this 
 name from the more ancient one of Ictis. 
 This sea-girt land is the modern Isle of 
 Wight, whose name is probably related to 
 the Danish Wightgar. 
 
 O. W. Wight was born at Centreville, 
 Alleghany County, New York, among the 
 hills, in the native forest. The dew, the 
 rain, and the snow fell there, as they have 
 fallen for centuries. They seemed to have 
 grown weary of the savage, since they came 
 down with a new joy for civilized man. 
 The birds sang to the echo of the axe, which 
 leveled the beech and maple, so that corn 
 and wheat could grow. The winds made 
 music with the splinters of the logs laid up 
 in the walls of the cabin. The sun shone 
 into the clearing at mid-day, and played 
 with the shadows of the trees in the morning 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 5 
 
 and the evening. And oft there was stillness 
 
 there like that of the primeval sea, which 
 
 once lay above this fair land. Here, where 
 
 man and nature could meet, and mingle 
 
 the mysterious life of one and the sentient 
 
 soul of the other, he first saw the light, — 
 
 the first consciousness of being came to a 
 
 new-born soul, that was overshadowed by 
 
 the mysteries of the forests, the clouds, and 
 
 the stars. 
 
 "'Tis not in man, 
 To look unmoved upon that heaving waste, 
 Which, from horizon to horizon spread. 
 Meets the o'erarching heavens on every side. 
 Blending their hues in distant faintness there, 
 
 " 'T is wonderful ! — and yet, my boy, just such 
 Is life. Life is a sea as fathomless. 
 As wide, as terrible, and yet, sometimes. 
 As calm and beautiful. The light of heaven 
 Smiles on it ; and 't is decked with every hue 
 Of glory and of joy. Anon dark clouds 
 Arise ; contending winds of fate go forth ; — 
 And hope sits weeping o'er a general wreck. 
 
 " And thou must sail upon this sea, a long. 
 Eventful voyage. The wise may suffer wreck. 
 The foolish must." 
 
6 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT, 
 
 What one has he may give to many, and 
 from many comes what he has, in body, 
 mind, and soul. Our piety, our religion, 
 our poetry, our oratory, our weakness, our 
 strength, come from our ancestors. A thou- 
 sand streams of life are blended into one, 
 which diverges more and more as time goes 
 on. Surely we enter into the labors of 
 others, and we give of the fruits of our toil 
 to those who come after us. While you can- 
 not gather figs from thistles, some fig trees 
 bear better fruit than others. One child is 
 facile at learning, because his ancestors were 
 learned before him. He seems to inherit 
 his knowledge, just as if he could unfold 
 the convolutions of his brain, and read the 
 imprint of a long line of culture. Yet the 
 laws of heredity will not explain everything 
 in man. Somehow, there is a new creation, 
 — a new miracle, — taking place at every 
 new birth. Shape it as we will, to receive, 
 to transmit, to become, to be born, are co- 
 related to the Creative Power. The amazing 
 faculties of Socrates came down with the 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 7 
 
 Promethean fires ; the transcendent genius 
 of Michael Angelo was a heavenly gift ; the 
 matchless mind of the Bard of Avon was a 
 divine insight. Converge all the influences 
 of heredity into one stream, and it is insig- 
 nificant when compared with the creative 
 shaping of the destiny of man. 
 
II. 
 
 The small boy when he first goes to 
 school is environed with mysteries. He 
 leaves the home where his mother dwells. 
 The distance to the schoolhouse is impres- 
 sive. He goes forth on an unknown and 
 untried journey. A mysterious future lies 
 beyond his vision. The clouds that shape 
 themselves and go ; the winds that sigh 
 among the leaves ; the tints of spring that 
 please the sense of seeing ; the singing of 
 the forest birds ; and the pleasant light of 
 the sun, are all interwoven into memories 
 which cannot fade. It is a beautiful path- 
 way to the temple of knowledge. How dif- 
 ferent this journey to those who make it ! 
 One is born for and lives in the material : 
 to such there are no stepping-stones to 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 9 
 
 higher things. Another hungers and thirsts 
 for the water and bread of the spirit : the 
 eyes see the beauty that shines through 
 perishable forms, and the ears hear the 
 music that swells from the spheres. One 
 would escape from the temple of knowledge, 
 as from a prison. The other would listen, 
 and gaze, and learn forever. The perpe- 
 tuity of our freedom, our liberty, our happi- 
 ness, and our prosperity is consolidated and 
 made more certain through the rudiments of 
 knowledge obtained in the schoolhouse by 
 the wayside. The dignity and the solemnity 
 of this temple are none the less because it 
 is built of primeval logs. 
 
 The schoolboy subsequently wrote of one 
 who became the great logical knight-errant 
 of the tenth century : " Thou dost not yet 
 know the cost of wisdom ; other years shall 
 teach thee that it must be paid for in the 
 fusion of the brain, over the burning of the 
 heart. And what if a vase of ashes shall 
 
 at length take the place of thy heart, and 
 
 1* 
 
10 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 thy brain congeal to stone ! With thee, also, 
 fate opens an account ; take what thou wilt, 
 but payment thou shalt not escape, even to 
 the uttermost farthing. Choose thy princi- 
 ples of action, but know that thou must 
 abide the results." 
 
 From picture-books and story-books the 
 boy soon went beyond the learning of his 
 teachers: he was one of those who enter 
 into the learning of others, — they who have 
 traveled the journey before us. Then he 
 studied geometry, surveying, and the calcu- 
 lus without a master. After that he turned 
 his attention to Latin and Greek, and, with 
 no one to aid him, he acquired a profound 
 and critical knowledge of the classical au- 
 thors. The Iliad and the Odyssey kept 
 him up far into the night. They made an 
 impression that often made itself known in 
 the productions of his pen in after years. 
 This influence on the minds of men is ex- 
 pressed by Lang : — 
 
 " Homer, thy song men liken to the sea, 
 With every note of music in its tone. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 11 
 
 With tides that wash the dim dominion 
 Of Hades, and light waves that laugh in glee 
 Around the isles enchanted : nay, to me 
 
 Thy verse seems as the River of source unknown 
 
 That glasses Egypt's temples overthrown, 
 In his sky-nurtured stream, eternally. 
 No wiser we than men of heretofore 
 
 To find thy mystic fountains guarded fast ; 
 Enough — thy flood makes green our human shore 
 
 As Nilus, Egypt, rolling down his vast. 
 His fertile waters, murmuring evermore 
 
 Of gods dethroned and empires of the Past." 
 
 Why should life all labor be? — When 
 other boys were at play, he was with his 
 books. In the hours that were precious for 
 sleep he was wont to read, to study, to learn. 
 He did the measure of a day's work some- 
 times in half a day, and the reward was 
 that he could use the remainder of the day 
 in translating the jEueid. He would work 
 a few hours, and then engage in the solu- 
 tion of some difficult mathematical problem. 
 The days came and departed, — as " knowl- 
 edge grew from more to more." His am- 
 bition kindled into enthusiasm, as the stu- 
 
12 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 dent made praiseworthy and substantial 
 progress. There was a wish to know and 
 be known, and be remembered in the here- 
 after. There was a desire to impart the 
 treasures of knowledge to others, an am- 
 bition to become a teacher. 
 
 One of the most mournful spectacles in 
 the world is that of a man trying to teach 
 others something which he himself does not 
 know. And next to this stands the picture 
 of genius laboring to impart divine truths 
 that are above the comprehension of his 
 pupils. Rare and wonderful gift to put life 
 and soul into words, and let fall the instruc- 
 tive and informing sounds upon listening 
 and attentive ears ! It is a divine gift, 
 greater than all other gifts, to teach others 
 the truth, whether in the temple of worship 
 or in the temple of learning : and no man 
 can teach the truth who does not know what 
 the truth is, — no, not one. Who has not 
 fused his knowledge in his brain, who has 
 not enthroned his wisdom in his heart, is, in 
 speech, a voice and nothing more. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 13 
 
 lie wrote : " I am weary and depressed 
 to-night. What a wasting drudgery is this 
 teaching business ! Some of my pupils are 
 bright and active, and are grateful to him 
 who instructs them ; others are stupid and 
 cruel, and delight in giving pain. To main- 
 tain something like order among thirty or 
 forty boys and girls, wild and strong, urg- 
 ing each other to mischief, some of whom 
 scarcely know what it means to obey, is a 
 sore task, requiring firmness, skill, and cour- 
 age. I have to-day been thinking of the 
 past, and feel weary of life. Where will it 
 all end ? Are the powers that govern the 
 world beneficent or malignant ? What a 
 strange mixture of good and evil in life ! I 
 am fated to grow weary, teaching these half 
 barbarians the merest rudiments of know- 
 ledge, while others are born in purple and 
 are destined to be rulers of men. I do not 
 know what it all means, and when the mys- 
 tery of things present drives me to things 
 past, then tristcs souvenirs mock me with 
 the phantoms of blessed hours gone by. 
 
14 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 If somebody could but understand me, it 
 would be a relief to utter the thoughts of 
 my soul ; but here all are material, and I 
 am alone." 
 
III. 
 
 A WISE man once said, If you ask me 
 what time is, I don't know ; but if you don't 
 ask me, I know what it is. Day after day, 
 year after year, age after age, time passes 
 away. It seems like some great system re- 
 volving noiselessly around a mighty centre, 
 whose substance we call eternity. The past 
 converges into the present, and the pres- 
 ent expands into the future. We measure 
 time by the rotation and the revolution of 
 the earth, — amazing journey that we make 
 around the sun ! We count time by the 
 events that crowd into the present, where a 
 thousand causes converge into one historic 
 effect after another. Each one of us stands 
 and moves in the present, for eternity is be- 
 hind us and before us. 
 
 In the year 1840, the studious boy, the 
 
16 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 young schoolmaster, with his father's family, 
 migrated from the woods and hills of Al- 
 leghany to the slopes and ghore of Lake 
 Erie, where a farm was purchased. To 
 others it was a place where shelter, food, and 
 raiment could be had ; to him it was some- 
 thing more : the mobility and the expanse of 
 the inland sea awakened in the soul the idea 
 of the Infinite. Step by step one climbs to 
 a higher level, and then the imagination 
 speeds beyond the horizon : at last, the limi- 
 tations are reached ; and when the mind re- 
 turns to the order of things around us, it has 
 a new thought, — an inspiration of the har- 
 mony going through all things created. 
 
 " Lovely is the autumn on the borders of 
 the great lakes in North America ! The air 
 is so clear, the heaven is so high, the south- 
 ward moving sun sheds over land and water 
 such a rich mellow light ! Day by day 
 grow more golden the fading leaves that 
 should be emblematic of a soul ripening to- 
 ward the grave in wisdom. Earth seems so 
 calm, so gravely joyous, waiting with a sober 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 17 
 
 melancholy smile to be shrouded with a robe 
 of snow, that shall be folded over her bosom 
 by the cold hand of winter." 
 
 Look at it as we will, the things that sur- 
 round us work in the soul for good or for 
 evil. There is one music in the trees ; there 
 is one song in the waters ; there is one voice 
 in the winds : and the voice, the song, the 
 music change ceaselessly, and awaken new 
 thoughts, new sentiments, new aspirations, 
 which also change, and remind us that 
 change itself seems to be eternal, — all 
 things change " from form to form ; they 
 melt like mists, the solid lands, like clouds 
 they shape themselves and go." A new 
 meaning is impressed on life ; the sun shines 
 with another light; the heaven has deeper 
 mysteries; the soul has a deeper insight. 
 The expanse grows higher, deeper, wider : a 
 vista opens to another expanse that lies be- 
 yond sense. On the scroll of the universe 
 God has indeed written a revelation of him- 
 self, and has given us eyes to read it, and 
 reason to comprehend it : blessed is he who 
 has eyes to see and reason to understand. 
 
18 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 " Wisdom and spirit of the universe ! 
 Thou soul that art the eternity of thought, 
 That givest to forms and images a breath 
 And everlasting motion, not in vain. 
 By day or star-light thus from my first dawn 
 Of childhood, didst thou intertwine for me 
 The passions that build up our human soul ; 
 Not with the mean and vulgar words of man, 
 But with high objects, with enduring things — 
 With life and nature, purifying thus 
 The elements of feeling and of thought, 
 And sanctifying, by such discipline. 
 Both pain and fear, until we recognize 
 A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. 
 Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me 
 With limited kindness. In November days 
 When vapors rolling down the valley made 
 A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods, 
 At noon and 'midst the calm of summer nights. 
 When, by the margin of the trembling lake, 
 Beneath gloomy hills homeward I went, 
 In solitude, such intercourse was mine ; 
 Mine was it in the fields both day and night, 
 And by the waters, all the summer long." 
 
 " In those first days of solitude, I was 
 comparatively happy. My aching heart was 
 stirred gently by the loving voice of Nature, 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 19 
 
 and I gave myself up to the delusion tliat 
 could make me forget the past. Charming 
 was that bower by the lake-side. It was 
 a bower constructed by the hand of Na- 
 ture herself. Thickly interlocked were the 
 branches of the maple, the beech, and the 
 hemlock. The evergreen was there, like an 
 emblem of immortality, in the early autum- 
 nal decay. The golden leaves were slowly 
 and solemnly falling around me, writing, 
 as it were, with the pen of Time, in the air 
 and upon the ground, 'passing away.' A 
 brook tumbled from rock to rock down the 
 steep, high bank, and mingled its waters 
 with those of the great lake ; thus headlong 
 runs the stream of individual life into the 
 shoreless, unfathomable sea of eternity. In 
 the midst of the bower, here and there, still 
 bloomed a solitary flower, proclaiming that, 
 in the autumn of old age, few are the joys 
 that survive the spring-time of youth. When, 
 at the close of day, the dark red sun hung 
 like a great ball of celestial fire, just ready 
 to sink into the lake, whose further margin 
 
20 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 was beyond the vision's reach, I seemed for 
 a moment to pass into another condition of 
 being, — the earth receded beneath me ; the 
 heavens opened above me ; with closed eyes 
 I could see far-off winding shores of seas ; 
 I could feel the multitudinous, soft watery 
 arms of the deep-hearted ocean embrace in 
 loving sympathy the land, and could hear 
 the murmur of countless voices in a thou- 
 sand nameless cities of man." 
 
 Why need we linger to tell about school 
 days, which were so few and short ? He did, 
 indeed, attend brief terms : at Pike Acad- 
 emy, Wyoming ; and at Westfield Academy, 
 Chautauqua. But for the most part, he was 
 his own teacher, his own preceptor, and his 
 own master ; he was self-taught, and became 
 a self-made man. In the end, ceaseless toil 
 and study brought the reward for which he 
 longed. Nameless and forgotten hours of 
 the night have vanished, while the silent 
 stars kept watch over his fiery spirit. The 
 intervening years pass swiftly by, like the 
 shadow of a cloud. Intense and persistent 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 21 
 
 study, earnest and sincere toil, views and 
 visions of things animate and inanimate, 
 seem to crush years into moments. And 
 from their passionate and receding cycle 
 the outlook widens. As he has often said 
 and written, the Temples of Worship and 
 Knowledge have been built in the East. 
 Towards its fabled lands trend the ways 
 which lead to these temples, standing in the 
 sacred dust of centuries. 
 
 O. W. Wight is now twenty-one years of 
 age. He assumes control of himself. He 
 will make his way in the world. He is not 
 at home any longer on the slopes and shore 
 of Lake Erie. He said good-by to his kin- 
 dred ; turned his face toward the mystic 
 lands of the East, and left his boyhood's 
 home, as it were, a pleasant dream in the 
 past. " What magic there is in the word 
 ' home ' ! It unlocks the heart that refuses 
 to yield to any other key. The place where 
 one was born is above all others a conse- 
 crated spot for him upon earth. When 
 sickness comes, our thoughts wander to the 
 
22 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 scenes of our childhood, and we remember 
 the hand that rocked us in the hour of help- 
 lessness. When old age overtakes us we 
 wish to return to our birthplace to die ; and 
 and do we not call heaven a home ! ' 
 
IV. 
 
 The last words were spoken, and the wan- 
 derer was fast leaving the familiar shore. 
 He sat apart thinking of the days of youth 
 gone by, of the oft -repeated story of ma- 
 ternal grief, and of the unknown future yet 
 to be. While he thought, the sombre day 
 wore on ; the dusky shore fast faded from 
 his view ; like Homer's heroes, he was on 
 the deep. Through all that long and weary 
 night, in sleepless solitude, he went east- 
 ward under the burden of hopes to be ful- 
 filled. At last " the gray dawn came, and 
 ' lying low ' in the distance was the town of 
 Buffalo, like the shore of Italy when first 
 seen by the wandering ^neas. The beauti- 
 ful inland city was soon reached. Buffalo 
 is a little New York, standing on a pocket 
 edition of the sea." 
 
24 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 Two days in Buffalo : There was seen 
 the scramble for the golden apple, as in 
 the Grecian fable. Figuratively, gold was 
 strewn in the dust of the street, where men 
 rushed after it, crowding, wounding, and 
 often destroying each other. And it seemed 
 a kind of madness, whose delirium was con- 
 tagious, and impelled the beholder to flee 
 away into solitude. But the world will 
 not let one off on such easy terms : it is a 
 grim reality; with it we must wrestle; it 
 may be a satisfaction to see through it with 
 the questioning intellect ; but that will not 
 suffice. Sublime thoughts will not weave 
 nature's fibres into clothing ; subtle expla- 
 nations of Grecian myths will not feed the 
 hungry. Mother Earth is more than a poet : 
 she will have you toil ; she gives the bread 
 of life here ; she incloses the useless idler 
 decently out of sight in her cold bosom. 
 
 " The time will come when you will see 
 something more than a scramble after golden 
 apples in the busy life of cities. Your heart 
 is too cold, — wait awhile, and everywhere 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 25 
 
 you will see a toiling brother. Suffering 
 you have already known, — you are not the 
 only sufferer ; you will be unjust in your 
 judgments until you interpret life with heart 
 as well as brain. The dear God above you 
 sees all, and feels for all. Think you that 
 He looks upon the struggle and toil of his 
 children here below as a delirious scramble 
 for gold in the dust of the highway ? But 
 onward : we will follow you ; and doubtless 
 you will soon learn more of this solemn 
 world, every pulse of which shall have its 
 echo in eternity." 
 
 In the presence of the Falls of Niagara : 
 The thought of finite power merged into the 
 idea of power that is infinite ; a belief in the 
 All- Powerful led to a belief in the Supreme 
 intelligence and goodness ; and the attempt 
 to construe the God of the universe to 
 thought induced a doubt ; but Doubt 
 brought the beholder face to face with 
 Evidence, found in the rocks, in the so- 
 lar system, in the stars, in the eternal 
 order of the universe, — and to doubt was to 
 
 2 
 
26 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 reason, and to reason was to admit its con- 
 clusions ; and these led by imperceptible de- 
 grees to assent as to the truth of what was 
 at first denied. Through Nature, the first 
 and ever-present revelation, we may reach 
 the Creator, the Kuler, the Forgiver, the 
 Comforter, for whom the needy heart of man 
 yearns. Before the mighty waterfall, as 
 suggestive of sublime thought as the sky- 
 piercing, snow-crowned Alps, the soul bowed 
 in humility in the presence of Him whose 
 will upholds all worlds. And then the 
 Fates impel onward again : " There is no 
 father's house for you here ; the little money 
 in your purse is vanishing; you are home- 
 less and a stranger ; the universal needs of 
 humanity will soon be felt, and upon your- 
 self alone is sure to fall the responsibility of 
 your own life." 
 
 Who can tell what a man feels, better 
 than he can himseK ? Who can know what 
 a man thinks, as well as he can who thinks ? 
 The real in feeling and thought is sometimes 
 more interesting and precious than the deeds 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 27 
 
 of men and heroes. Let a man tell us truly 
 what he thinks, and we will listen. Let him 
 relate sincerely to us how he feels, and we 
 are moved. The story and the romance of 
 Biography are truer, more real and interest- 
 ing, when they come from the heart and 
 brain of the one who lives them. If there 
 is one thing that stands high in our admira- 
 tion, it is the priceless jewel of sincerity, — 
 for it will restore confidence among men. 
 And if there is one thing above all others 
 desirable, it is the fearless gem of truth, — 
 for the truth will make us free. If the 
 best feelings and thoughts of the great, the 
 wise, and the good were gathered up, and re- 
 corded by the pen of genius, and portrayed 
 in printer's ink, it would be matter for the 
 reconstruction of universal history. 
 
 Mr. Wight again teaches school, — and 
 reads Paradise Lost and Pilgrim's Progress, 
 leaving us the following impressions : " I 
 have just finished reading Milton's Paradise 
 Lost. Height is the word that comes to me 
 first. . . . The poem itself is . . . theology 
 
28 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 in lofty verse. I do not find in it the nat- 
 ural, unsought sublimity of Homer, nor the 
 graceful splendor of Virgil; yet it has in 
 an unusual degree the true epic verve. . . . 
 The idea of created intelligences revolting in 
 heaven against the Almighty, and waging 
 with Him a fierce civil war, in order to get 
 possession of the throne of the universe, is 
 sublimely ridiculous. If, with some of the 
 Orientals, we could believe in the coexist- 
 ence of good and evil, a systematic warfare 
 between their representatives would be a 
 conception worthy of a great poet. But 
 when . . . evil originated with a created, 
 finite, dependent being, then to place that 
 weak being in antagonism with his own Om- 
 nipotent Creator is to forsake the regions of 
 the sublime, and descend from the epic to 
 the melodramatic. Take the idea of a weak 
 and ignorant creature revolting, because 
 weak and ignorant, against eternal power 
 and wisdom, and follow up that creature with 
 divine goodness and infinite pity, then you 
 will have an idea worthy of a great Chris- 
 
[MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 29 
 
 tian poet. The epics of Paganism, and the 
 epics of the Transition have been written, 
 but the epics of Christianity have yet to be 
 made. 
 
 " Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress has in- 
 flamed me to such a degree that it spoils my 
 sleep at nights. Bunyan is a rural Milton, 
 a real Cromwell among poets. . . . There is 
 a beat of Bunyan's strong heart in every 
 word he writes. Oh, what power there is 
 in language that is ensouled with the entire 
 conviction of him who writes it ! " 
 
V. 
 
 0. W. Wight was principal of Geneva 
 Academy for a time. He made for himseK 
 the reputation of being a successful teacher. 
 While there he was a thorough and compre- 
 hensive student of history. He admired the 
 literature, the culture, and the poetry of an- 
 cient Greece. He was a diligent student 
 of the literature and laws of the Romans. 
 About this time he wrote a small work of 
 fiction, that seems to have entirely vanished. 
 Most authors are glad to have their first lit- 
 erary efforts forgotten: he was not an ex- 
 ception. 
 
 From Geneva he went by way of Albany 
 to New York. Poor in worldly goods, moved 
 by ambition, having high aims, with little 
 experience, agitated by anxiety, not under, 
 standing the feelings that stirred his breast, 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 31 
 
 exploring the new wonders that incessantly 
 arose, but drawn toward the East, — the 
 laud of religion, song, and philosophy, — he 
 first gazed on the great city he had so long 
 desired to see, an interminable chaos of 
 ships and buildings spread out under a hazy 
 atmosphere, that seemed to his heated imag 
 ination, to be the thick breath of some shape 
 less monster, which the troubled ocean had 
 thrown upon the shore. What was he to do 
 there ? Should he be swallowed up and lost, 
 like a thousand others, to satisfy the hunger 
 of that veritable monster ? 
 
 Years ago his ancestors sailed up the 
 peaceful waters of the Hudson to find a 
 home where nature and fortune smiled in 
 unison. They had journeyed westward ; a 
 descendant was facing the east. He was 
 landing on an island which lies where the 
 contending waters of the Atlantic and the 
 Hudson have met and wrestled for unnum- 
 bered centuries. Here has arisen a great 
 city into whose currents of life converge the 
 good and the bad, the wise and the foolish, 
 
32 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 the learned and the ignorant, the Christian 
 and the Pagan, the rich and the poor, those 
 who love and those who hate, those who help 
 and those who cast down, those who rejoice 
 and those who are unhappy, — here, like the 
 waters of the river and the sea, contend the 
 forces of good and evil. Into this confusion 
 of egoistic and altruistic life the new comer 
 disappears. 
 
 " A certain Samuel Johnson and one Wil- 
 liam Shakespeare were adventurers. A few 
 years ago a presumptuous young man, called 
 Daniel Webster, appeared in the refined 
 city of Boston, from the backwoods of New 
 Hampshire, thinking to make his way in 
 the world. He too was an adventurer. 
 How many other adventurers the good-for- 
 nothing world holds in remembrance ! To 
 be tenderly and silently pitied is that man 
 who applies the word as a term of reproach 
 to struggling and aspiring genius." 
 
 Awhile arise reminiscences of fragments 
 of conversations held long years ago, from 
 time to time, — conversations touching upon 
 facts in a strangely varied life ; facts that 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 33 
 
 have been recorded in the book of Destiny ; 
 these facts are not altogether in their logical 
 order, but the impressions they made are 
 facts, graven in the memory that holds them 
 dear and sacred, as faithful pictures of their 
 grim realities. But they may be none the 
 less interesting, because they have been fused 
 and transformed in the brain of another : 
 their impressions bring pain and grief, re- 
 grets and admiration, satisfaction and praise. 
 Cruel fortune, thou hast no divine pity, no 
 infinite love ! Thy sinewy hand can break 
 down or build up ; thy cold breath can freeze 
 the fairest flowers ; thy smile can bring sun- 
 shine and plenty into desert places ; thy hard 
 foot can crush the highest and brightest 
 hopes ; thy dark form can overshadow the 
 most laudable ambition ; thy gifts and favors 
 can raise up those who fall. These impres- 
 sions were of one who set out with an imper- 
 fect standard for measuring the world ; who 
 did not then know how great the world was ; 
 who suffered much and toiled more ; and 
 who as the years vanished began to realize 
 
 2* 
 
34 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 that he was setting about a mighty work ; 
 that the great self-seeking world is apt to 
 be indifferent ; that it is more ready to take 
 than to give ; that it robs one of his purse, 
 his good name, and his thoughts, without 
 pity; that the lovable and the faithful are 
 not easy to find ; that strangers meet us on 
 every hand ; that honest bread is hard to 
 get ; that the stones under our feet are cold 
 and hard ; that the stars look down with the 
 same sweet smile on all sorts and conditions 
 of men ; that struggle and heroic toil for 
 food and raiment are what the good God 
 asks of us ; that we shall be clothed and fed, 
 nor need be the prodigal son ; and that 
 great warm hearts are beating, full of God's 
 eternal love, everywhere in that endless 
 crowd of human beings who wander up and 
 down forever. 
 
 In the metropolis of the Western world, 
 where so many human interests converge, 
 Mr. Wight set out as one of the kuight- 
 errants of literature. He wrote tersely, 
 rapidly, eloquently, and effectively for the 
 " Democratic Review," the " Whig Review," 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 35 
 
 and the current magazines. One of tlie 
 secrets of Ms success was that he was in- 
 tensely in earnest. Did you see a son of toil 
 at work, and stop and watch him, with an 
 absorbing interest and a strange fascination ? 
 Did you not at some time sit and listen to a 
 man of plain speech talking to those before 
 him, and become so spellbound that you 
 could not get away ? Was it not true that 
 the son of toil was terribly in earnest, that 
 the plain speaker meant every word he ut- 
 tered ? The heart of one throbbed and beat 
 in his work ; the heart of the other pulsated 
 in his impassioned speech. He too was in 
 terrible earnest, not only because he needed 
 food and raiment, but also because he was 
 truly ambitious for fame. 
 
 " There rolls the deep where grew the tree, 
 O Earth, what changes thou hast seen ! 
 There where the long street roars hath been 
 The stillness of the central sea. 
 
 " The hills are shadows, and they flow 
 
 From form to form, and nothing stands ; 
 They melt like mists, the solid lands, 
 Like clouds they shape themselves and go." 
 
VI. 
 
 " Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
 But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
 That mind and soul, according well, 
 May make one music as before, 
 But vaster." 
 
 The ancestor who fled from the persecu- 
 tions of reb'gion was religious. He longed 
 for religious liberty, and went westward, 
 from his sea-girt island, to find it. He had 
 dwelt by the sea, which, as it were, beats 
 forever against the breast of the beholder, 
 and gives to his heart its own untamable 
 energy. From the land of religion, song, 
 and philosophy Freedom had taken the 
 white wings of the mariner, and soared 
 across the stormy and perilous ocean. It 
 was there that he could worship the Maker 
 of heaven and earth, in such manner as to 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 37 
 
 bring the best accord to his own mind and 
 soul. The little bark that had his all to 
 have and hold and bear in safety o'er the 
 sea was tossed by the wild tyrant of the 
 western wave, and brought religion to a 
 shore where freedom dwells. 
 
 His descendant was also religious, and 
 had been a deep student of nature. In na- 
 ture he saw a revelation of the Creator. 
 All nature was reverential, and mutely ap- 
 pealed to man for his adoration of Him who 
 all things did contrive. The God of nature 
 also contrived the mind and soul of man, 
 and put them in the temple of this body. 
 And man is also a revelation, transcendent, 
 mysterious, and wonderful. • And through 
 holy men, in past time, God has revealed 
 much of His will and purpose. But beyond 
 and above all that we can see and under- 
 stand there is a mystery we cannot fathom. 
 That which is and moves where sensation 
 and sense cannot go, we cannot construe to 
 thought. Reason sheds a clear light for a 
 little way, and then we have to walk by faith. 
 
38 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 And faith itself comes from a light that 
 shines within. It is above and beyond all 
 sense and all reason, — it is the highest cre- 
 ated faculty. 
 
 " When Lazarus left his charnel-cave, 
 And home to Mary's house return'd, 
 Was this demanded, — if he yearn'd 
 To hear her weeping by his grave ? 
 
 " ' Where wert thou, brother, those four days ? ' 
 There lives no record of reply, 
 Which telling what it is to die 
 Had surely added praise to praise." 
 
 To him who rightly doubts, who wisely 
 wants to know, who takes his life on trust, 
 and who will accept the truth, from whatso- 
 ever source it comes, and whatever garb it 
 wears, more light will surely shine, — even 
 if it be the inborn light of faith, and know- 
 ledge will grow from more to more, and more 
 of reverence in him dwell, — and his mind 
 and soul will make one music as before. 
 One does not dread to live, nor fear to die : 
 and yet one has a nameless sense that he 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 39 
 
 knows not how the sands of life may run, or 
 how the tides may ebb and flow. He may 
 set his compass right, and steer his bark to- 
 ward the light that shines the clearest. He 
 may have fair courage, and brave the perils 
 on the wave, — if he were all alone. But 
 to take others along upon the deep, dark sea 
 of life, and set the sails for them when the 
 light winds blow, and reef them close when 
 the tempest roars, is a mighty task, so full 
 of weight and care that it bends low the 
 strongest spirit : — 
 
 " Are God and Nature then at strife ? 
 That Nature lends such evil dreams ? 
 So careful of the type she seems, 
 So careless of the single life." 
 
 The conditions, the influences, the rela- 
 tions, and the effects of the eternal law, as 
 it affects the life here and the life hereafter, 
 were subjected to critical and profound 
 study. He who teaches the law must know 
 what the law is, and must know that there 
 is a Lawgiver. He must know that the 
 eternal law runs through the sequence of 
 
40 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 spiritual things, that it is the regulator of 
 the eternal order of the divine government. 
 He must realize that the facts under the law 
 are unchangeable as the law itself. And 
 then were seen the following facts, with all 
 their solemn significance : The Lawgiver 
 arranged the law, so that it would have con- 
 sequences. The consequences of the law 
 are eternal, as the law, — which cannot be 
 broken. But the law can break the one who 
 goes against it, that is, the transgressor. In- 
 juries to the soul are consequences that flow 
 from a life contrary to the law. Yet the 
 law eternal, like the law of gravitation, 
 keeps on in its unchangeable course. For if 
 the law is broken or changed, it from that 
 moment ceases to be a law. And so that 
 which has been done cannot be undone : as 
 a fact, it will stand an eternal monument to 
 good or evil. But yet there is justice — 
 even - handed and eternal justice — that in 
 eternity will make right all earthly wrongs ; 
 so that no man will owe anything, — for he 
 will have paid the uttermost farthing. And 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 41 
 
 justice has a divine paternity ; for as we 
 know how to give good gifts, how much 
 more does the infinite Father of justice know 
 how to give good gifts to them that ask 
 Him ? And this justice contains the soul 
 of infinite pity, — the pity that is the mani- 
 festation of eternal Love : such love as 
 would make a man lay down his life for an- 
 other. And yet there was a hope born of 
 this love, and a trust enthused in the heart, 
 that, in the eternity to come, evil, having a 
 likeness of the ills and taints of the flesh 
 and blood, would be put under the foot of 
 the Conqueror : — 
 
 " That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
 That not one life shall be destroy'd, 
 Or east as rubbish to the void, 
 When God hath made the pile complete." 
 
VII. 
 
 O. W. Wight taught religion for about 
 three years in Newark, New Jersey, under 
 the ausjjices of the liberal Christians. In 
 addition to the labors of this office he made 
 contributions to current literature, and lec- 
 tured in various places. In the preceding 
 chapter the general drift and tendency of his 
 religious views, opinions, and beliefs for the 
 time have been set forth. That his mind 
 and heart were not at rest on the vital ques- 
 tions of human destiny will appear more 
 fully in the sequel. He had the reputation 
 of being a logical, forcible, and eloquent 
 speaker. The lectures he delivered before 
 various societies, mostly in New England, 
 made him widely and favorably known, and 
 kindled anew his ambition. From this time 
 on he gave his attention more to general lit- 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 43 
 
 erature. He translated M. Victor Cousin's 
 work on the " History of Philosophy, " which 
 was published by D. Appleton and Co. The 
 translation was approved by Cousin, and was 
 well received by the public. A goodly num- 
 ber of his countrymen rested from their pur- 
 suit of material gain, and for a brief time 
 contemplated a graphic picture of the few in 
 the past who had made an attempt to become 
 wise. 
 
 The fjuXoa-ocjio^ : One sees Socrates, with 
 naked feet, in summer and winter, asking 
 the god who is wise, and then going from 
 one reputed wise man to another, putting 
 all sorts of questions to find out who was 
 really wise, and when he met with those only 
 who thought they had wisdom, coming to 
 believe that he alone was wise, since he had 
 discovered that he himself truly knew no- 
 thing to speak of, for he was a veritable phi- 
 losopher : this wonderful man, whom a tragic 
 death helped to make immortal, was so in- 
 quisitive and troublesome to his countrymen 
 that they did not know what to do with 
 
44 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 him, and when they put him to death, they 
 mourned his departure as an irreparable ca- 
 lamity. One listens to the enchanting voice 
 of Plato, as he walks in the garden and the 
 academic groves, where he discourses on the 
 nature of things, and explains the theory of 
 knowledge, clothing in " winged words " the 
 spirit and beauty of The Earth and the 
 music of the spheres, and, in a happy mo- 
 ment, calls him the o-vi^otttiko?, who seeks to 
 know the eternal and immutable principles of 
 the universe. And then Democritus comes 
 into view : he was rich by inheritance, and 
 became poor; at one time he was considered 
 a lunatic, and Hippocrates was sent for to 
 cure him. At another he is said to have 
 " put out " his eyes, in order that he might 
 contemplate the cosmical theory of the uni- 
 verse being made up of ultimate atoms — 
 which were uncreated, uncaused, and eternal, 
 — and which are in motion everlastingly, — 
 and out of which all things, both of matter 
 and of spirit, are shaped, — and from which 
 all perishable motions of the visible earth 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 45 
 
 and the spheres are correlative, — and to 
 which fall every vestige of utility and every 
 form of beauty : all else is subject to decay, 
 for they alone are imperishable. 
 
 And then there follow in the intervening 
 centuries investigations : in the science of 
 the stars ; in the revolving system of the 
 sun ; in the record written on the rock ; in 
 the shifting ice-caps of the telluric poles ; in 
 the emerging and submerging of the lands ; 
 in the winds that sweep the continents and 
 seas ; in the order and sequence of things 
 inanimate ; in the stories of the nations as 
 they rise and fall; in the laws of thought 
 that work the human mind ; in the arts that 
 make for pleasure and relieve from toil ; in 
 the motions of the self-conscious soul of 
 man ; in everything on which is marked the 
 stamp of change ; in the principles that are 
 immutable and eternal ; so many names of 
 the great and good appear that they must 
 be read upon their monuments. The sun- 
 optikos must learn and know about these 
 many things, and co- relate them into one 
 
46 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 group, one system, one universe, where no- 
 thing stands alone, where all things stand 
 and move together. High aims : To see and 
 know the system of the universe stand and 
 move together with all its parts " according 
 well ; " to refuse to take the parts away 
 from the principles and laws that permeate 
 and rule all things ; to correct the errors 
 made by special science in its search for 
 truth ; — to be the only concrete science, the 
 Science of the sciences, the science which 
 works out the problem from the elements of 
 all knowledge. 
 
 ' ' Enter the path ! There spring the healing streams 
 Quenching all thirst ! there bloom th' immortal 
 
 flowers 
 Carpeting all the way with joy ! there throng 
 Swiftest and sweetest hours ! " 
 
VIII. 
 
 In 1853, O. W. Wight wrote a " Romance 
 of Abelard and Heloise." This work was 
 also published by D. Appleton and Co. It 
 contains many impassioned and eloquent pas- 
 sages, which exhibit the style and methods 
 of the author's earlier writings. In this 
 place, we offer some of these passages : — 
 
 " Real romance is in real history. Life, 
 as it is lived, is more wonderful and touching 
 than life as it is shaped by the fancy. His- 
 tory gives us the substance of existence ; 
 fiction gives nothing but its shadow. The 
 highest conception of genius is meagre, when 
 compared with the drama that humanity is 
 enacting in time and space. 
 
 " Most of us have lived a romance more 
 beautiful and touching than has ever yet 
 been described by the pen of man. Experi- 
 
48 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 ence is the light whereby one is able to read 
 all romantic history. We know when the 
 historian writes fiction instead of truth, for 
 within us is a test. Truth to life we always 
 demand. The romancer must faithfully give 
 us the experience of his own heart, or faith- 
 fully report the experience of others. No- 
 thing less than the history of real life will 
 satisfy us. Truth is stranger than fiction, 
 and truth we must have." 
 
 "Abelard and Heloise were human, and 
 have for us a human interest. In the Mid- 
 dle Age, heaven - facing speakers and actors 
 walked the earth, that looked quite similar 
 to those who are moving to and fro to - day. 
 Man then felt, as he now feels, that it is 
 not good to be alone. Then the precious 
 heart of woman deeply yearned, as it al- 
 ways yearns, for sympathy, with which she 
 is blessed, without which she is wretched. 
 Down upon thy brother and thy sister 
 looked, calmly and sweetly, the same stars, 
 that each night keep watch over thee. The 
 wind that kissed the cold cheek of the Alps 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 49 
 
 then, kisses it still. The same hymn of na- 
 ture that now goes up from the hills of New 
 England, and the deep -bosomed forests of 
 the West, to greet the morning, then went 
 up from wold, plain, and mountain, touching 
 the heart of the early worshiper, and melo- 
 diously uttering for him the praise that his 
 soul would give to Deity. Then, too, each 
 son of Adam, and each daughter of Eve, 
 needed food and raiment, for which they 
 toiled, slaved, enslaved, trafficked, cheated, 
 stole, talked, wrote, preached, fought, or 
 robbed. The breath of passion swept the 
 chords of life, and the answering^ones of joy 
 or woe were heard. Reformers disturbed 
 conservatives in Church and State, and states 
 men preserved kingdoms, as politicians now 
 save the union. Then, too, men wept and 
 prayed, laughed and sung. There were then 
 marriages and giving in marriage, wars ^nd 
 rumors of wars, loves and hates, the cries 
 of childhood and the complainings of age. 
 The enchanting spirit of beauty flooded 
 heaven and earth ; and the solemn mystery 
 
60 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 of thiDgs filled tlie soul with awe. Tlie 
 old sphinx was still sitting by the wayside, 
 and the children of earth strove to solve the 
 tough and ever recurring problem of des- 
 tiny. Stars were silent above, graves were 
 silent beneath ; and the soul was compelled 
 to answer as she could to the imperative 
 questionings of sense. The Middle Age was 
 an age of humanity, and has an interest for 
 us, for human things touch the heart." 
 
 " Abelard comes up from the forests and 
 the villages of Brittany, and gazes upon 
 Paris for the first time with wonder and de- 
 light. His blood flowed faster, and his am- 
 bition is inflamed anew. How many sons 
 of genius shall follow him — to fame and 
 misery ! Dear, deceptive, gay, graceful city ! 
 Thou shalt increase in wisdom and beauty, 
 in strength and sin ; thou shalt invite the 
 lovers of pleasure from the ends of the 
 earth to enjoy thy charms ; thou shalt drink 
 the wine of poesy and wit, and eat the food 
 of learning, and take the lead in the world's 
 civilization ; thy night revels shall be revo- 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 51 
 
 lutions, and thy fair bosom more than once 
 shall be drenched with the blood of heroes 
 contending for thy smile ; thou wilt banish 
 thine own children and nourish those that 
 come unto thee from afar ; thou shalt be the 
 loved and the envied among the capitals of 
 the nations ; but the rose of innocence thou 
 wilt not wear upon thy ravishing breast ; 
 thy queenly face shall fade, thou shalt at 
 length sleep with thy elder sisters, with Nin- 
 eveh, Athens, and Kome ; the hand of retri- 
 bution shall touch thee, and through long 
 years of mourning thou shalt decay; the 
 eyes of strangers shall gaze upon thy ruins, 
 and foreign feet shall tread carelessly upon 
 thy dust ! " 
 
 " Philosophy as well as war has its heroes. 
 It is difficult to tell whose fame is greater, 
 that of Alexander or that of Plato. War 
 is only the bloody encounter of ideas. The 
 great hero is the representative of a great 
 principle. It was not Caesar that conquered 
 at Pharsalia ; in the person of Csesar human 
 liberty conquered Roman liberty. Ideas 
 
62 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 were at war in Abelard and William of 
 Champeaux. The battle which they were 
 fighting at Paris may have been franght with 
 greater consequences to the world than that 
 of Arbela or that of Waterloo. . , . That 
 philosophic quarrel at Paris in the first years 
 of the twelfth century was really one of the 
 most important events of the Middle Age. 
 It was the cradle of Scholasticism, and the 
 first decided declaration of the independence 
 of human thought in modern as distinguished 
 from ancient history. After centuries of 
 darkness, there arose once more a champion 
 of inextinguishable reason." 
 
 " A religion is the main source of every 
 civilization. Moral force governs the world, 
 directs the course of history. Religion lies at 
 the foundation of the great movements of 
 society. Christianity, Mohammedanism, and 
 Brahminism are means of civilization. Asi- 
 atic civilization is as good as Brahminism 
 can make it. If society ever advances there, 
 the East must have a new religion. The 
 Turks and Arabs can never advance until 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 53 
 
 they lose their reverence for the Prophet and 
 accept a better faith. The civilization of 
 Europe and the United States is the best in 
 the world, because it is the growth of the 
 holiest religion. In those kingdoms and 
 states where society has advanced most, we 
 are sure to find the best form of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 " The state of society may always be de- 
 termined by ascertaining the condition of 
 woman. When she is the companion of 
 man, and her relation to him that of equal- 
 ity, then we may be sure that a high point 
 of rational and moral development has been 
 attained. Tardiness of civilization has al- 
 ways been chided by the complaints of wo- 
 man. She represents the higher sentiments, 
 disinterested love, the benevolent affections, 
 religion, and delicate sensibility, the divinest 
 part of humanity, that part of our nature, 
 advance towards the realization of which 
 in practical life constitutes true progress. 
 When men are brutes women will be slaves. 
 The lords of creation mav declare that the 
 
54 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 daughters of Eve are inferior to themselves, 
 but such a declaration only shows their own 
 weakness and defects. He who places a 
 light estimate upon things of highest worth 
 proclaims his own ignorance and want of 
 judgment. Man through the frailty of wo- 
 man j)ublishes his low estimate of all that is 
 holiest in the relations of life. Strike out 
 from existence all that is suggested by the 
 words mother, daughter, sister, wife, and no 
 man would care to live. One half of hu- 
 manity is man ; another, yet equal half, is 
 woman. He who speaks lightly of woman, 
 curses the hand that supported him in the 
 hour of helplessness, pronounces a maledic- 
 tion upon the fair young being that with 
 mingled reverence and trust calls him father, 
 utters blasphemy against the Being who has 
 filled with disinterested affection the bosom 
 of her whose heart beats with blood kindred 
 to his own, and returns hatred for love to 
 her who has bestowed upon him a greater 
 gift than all wealth can buy. He who knows 
 woman in all these relations, however, rarely 
 speaks evil of her." 
 
MEMORIAL OF O. W. WIGHT. 55 
 
 " Heloise, thy spirit has found the sympa- 
 thy for which it longed, but delirium flows 
 swift in thy blood, and paints upon thy 
 youthful cheek the crimson of sin. The 
 tongue whose eloquence charms thee is half 
 false ; in the gaze that thy lover bends on 
 thee lurks insincerity ; there is a wave of 
 scorn in the smile that gives thee such deep 
 joy ; there is a tone of hoUowness in the 
 heart that beats against thy reclining head ; 
 thou art cursed with passion and not blessed 
 with love. These days of intoxicating pleas- 
 ure are swiftly passing ; the Eden in which 
 thou art standing shall soon be metamor- 
 phosed ; its bright colors shall fade, its music 
 shall cease, the warmth of its atmosphere 
 shall turn to chilliness, its rich fruits shall 
 vanish, and around thee on every side shall 
 be desolation as far as the eye can reach. 
 We pity thee, but cannot greatly blame ; 
 the earth is cursed beneath thee, but heaven, 
 with its mercy, is above thee still ! " 
 
 " We pity thee, Abelard ; yet it seems to 
 be the hand of eternal justice that is laid 
 
56 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 ujDon thee. Words of solemn import were 
 unheeded by thee, — words written by the 
 finger of the Infinite, — Pride goeth before 
 destruction, and a haughty spirit before a 
 fall. This is but the beginning of calam- 
 ities ; torture of soul, far more insupportable 
 than torture of the body, awaits thee. No 
 hero, no martyr art thou, suffering for obe- 
 dience to the just and the true ; but a viola- 
 tor of the high law of brotherhood, bearing 
 the penalty of misdeeds. We must remind 
 thee that the universe is constructed on a 
 basis of rectitude, and resign thee to thy 
 fate. Many will charge us with severity 
 towards Abelard ; but we cannot in con- 
 science address him otherwise. We believe 
 in driving money-changers out of the temple 
 of God, in crying ' Woe ' into the ears of 
 scribes and Pharisees, in laying the rod on 
 the backs of fools. Mercy should always 
 temper justice ; but we open wide the flood- 
 gates of evil when we dethrone justice, and 
 shield the criminal from the penalty of his 
 crime. Our times are cursed with a kind of 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 57 
 
 nerveless sentimentality, tliat whines over 
 the scoundrel, and has no pity on society that 
 he scourges beyond measure. Would to 
 Heaven that the punishment which overtook 
 Abelard might be sternly visited, by legis- 
 lative enactment, on every lawless breaker 
 of the household gods ! " 
 
 "These love-letters, purified by Catholic 
 incense, will remind you of the ancient 
 Spanish toils, under which Zurbaran seems 
 to gather all the shades and all the melan- 
 cholies of earth, in order to console them 
 from on high by a luxurious hope, and by 
 the splendor of beatitude. God is not there, 
 although we see only Him ; man only is 
 there, though we see him not. Over those 
 pages, so nobly refused for the expression of 
 human suffering, roll invisible years. All 
 the branches of that myrtle, when you touch 
 them, sigh and groan. Stop before the 
 gladiator, after he has been overcome in the 
 arena : examine his face, — not a muscle is 
 contracted ; you listen at his mouth for a 
 
 complaint, an imprecation, a word which will 
 3* 
 
58 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 be the epopee of all his griefs, — the word 
 does not come ; you hold your breath ; the 
 patient is about to die ; he is dead ; and you 
 have heard nothing. And nevertheless you 
 find that all has not been told. A truth, un- 
 til then unperceived, has just been revealed 
 to you : The calmness of the man appears to 
 be more terrible than the tempest, and it is 
 not without fright that you contemplate that 
 impassive exterior, when you see within him 
 his heart in agony, his hopes wounded to 
 death until the last, and his mind in tears, — 
 all filled with a dear image, and the rending 
 agonies of an eternal adieu." 
 
 " May one kind grave unite each hapless name, 
 And graft my love immortal on thy fame ! 
 Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o'er. 
 When this rebellious heart shall beat no more ; 
 If ever chance two wandering lovers brings 
 To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs, 
 O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads ; 
 And drink the falling tears each other sheds ; 
 Then sadly say, with mutual pity moved, 
 Oh, may we never love as these have loved ! 
 From the full choir when loud hosannahs rise, 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 59 
 
 And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice, 
 Amid that scene if some relenting eye 
 Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie, 
 Devotion's self shall steal a thought from heaven. 
 One human tear shall drop, and be forgiven. 
 And sure if fate some future bard shall join 
 In sad similitude of griefs to mine, 
 Condemned whole years in absence to deplore, 
 And image charms he must behold no more ; 
 Such, if there be, who loves so long, so well ; 
 Let him our sad, our tender story tell ; 
 The well-sung woes will soothe my pensive ghost ; 
 He best can paint them who shall feel the most." 
 
IX. 
 
 The steamship which heaves upon and 
 ploughs the mobile waters of the sea, carry- 
 ing in safety the pride, the hope, the love of 
 a thousand hearts, with its beams and planks 
 of oak and steel, conceived by the mind and 
 genius of man, and shaped by his dexterous 
 and skillful hand, compact and strong, and 
 faithful in every part, a thing of beauty and 
 of power, that braves the perils of the deep, 
 and battles with the rolling waves, — the 
 steamship, as time goes on and as it wan- 
 ders back and forth, strains, and wears, and 
 tears, and breaks, and finally goes to pieces 
 on the strand, or falls beneath the silent deep ; 
 and when his time has come, so falls man. 
 
 In the spring of 1853, O. W. Wight went 
 from Boston to Liverpool in eleven days, on 
 the steamer Niagara. With little delay he 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 61 
 
 made a pilgrimage to places consecrated by 
 favorite poets : the rose - busli planted by 
 Mrs. Hemans ; Rydal Mount, where Words- 
 worth lived, wrote, and died ; the scenes 
 among which Coleridge lived and struggled ; 
 the untimely grave of Hartley Coleridge ; 
 the beautiful streams so often waded by 
 Christopher ^N^orth ; the Falls of Lodore, 
 that made music for Southey, were all vis- 
 ited with varied emotions of a poetic imagi- 
 nation. '' Lakes and fields and mountains, 
 forming exquisitely beautiful and pictu- 
 resque landscapes, seemed ... to have been 
 planted there at the dawn of creation, on 
 purpose for the great poets that were to 
 come in these latest times." Then he "trav- 
 eled all over Scotland and looked much up- 
 on one of the fairest lands of earth : " The 
 scenes and places described by Sir Walter 
 Scott, and the soil consecrated by the feet 
 of Robert Burns, made new and strange 
 impressions upon the heart and soul of one 
 who had long desired to visit them. On the 
 shores of Loch Lomond, Loch Katrine, Loch 
 
62 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 Leven, and Loch Arne, there was a new sun- 
 shine; there was another music in the wind; 
 a gentler motion seized upon the leaves ; the 
 birds sang sweeter songs ; and all the way- 
 was carpeted with joy : and one knows not 
 what change had been wrought in the be- 
 holder, as memorj^, from these enchanting 
 lakes, ran across the intervening sea to the 
 autumnal skies that o'er - arched the shores 
 and waters of Lake Erie. 
 
 Mr. Wight had previously collected and 
 edited the miscellaneous philosophical paj)ers 
 of Sir William Hamilton : this work was 
 used as a text - book in some of our schools. 
 When he arrived in Edinburgh, Sir Wil- 
 liam sent him a cordial invitation to spend 
 a week with him at Largo, whither he had 
 gone for his vacation. He found the house- 
 hold of the renowned philosopher one of the 
 most beautiful, refined, and cultured, that 
 ever existed, and there met several of the 
 professors of Edinburgh University. Soon 
 after he went to London, where, at the spe- 
 cial request of M. Cousin, he translated his 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W, WIGHT. 63 
 
 admirable work on " The True, the Beauti- 
 ful, and the Good, " and dedicated it to Sir 
 William Hamilton, in terms eliciting his 
 eulogy. " Hamilton had reviewed Cousin's 
 system with great severity in the ' Edinburgh 
 Quarterly,' which provoked the wrath of the 
 mercurial Frenchman." But after the dedi 
 cation of Cousin's volume, " there followed 
 a correspondence which ended in a treaty 
 of peace between these two eminent philoso- 
 phers." 
 
 Before leaving Edinburgh he received an 
 invitation to dine with De Quincey, who 
 lived at Lasswade about eight miles away. 
 On his way over country roads and fra- 
 grant meadows, near their home, he met De 
 Quincey's two daughters, who conducted 
 him to a neat little brick cottage, stand- 
 ing by a swift flowing brook, making soft 
 water-fall music, as it gently broke over the 
 rocks. They led him into a small, plainly- 
 furnished drawing-room, informing him that 
 their father would soon appear. For a long 
 time the conversation turned upon the lake 
 
64 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 district of England and the famous poets, — 
 " when there glided noiselessly into the room 
 a little, weird - looking old man, saffron- 
 colored, with unkemj^t hair, dirty collar, long 
 snuff-brown coat, feet sliding about in large 
 India-rubber galoshes, and extended to me a 
 wee, fleshless hand, more like a bird -claw 
 than ' the prehensile organ of man's suprem- 
 acy.' The daughters seated him in one 
 corner of a large armchair, where he sank 
 almost out of sight." At the close of a 
 simple and excellent dinner, De Quincey, 
 excusing himself, " took from his vest pocket 
 a pill of opium as large as a small hickory- 
 nut and swallowed it. Soon his large head 
 began to waver on his small neck, and he 
 laid it down on his thin arms folded over 
 one corner of the table." In the mean time 
 they returned to their beloved lake poets, 
 and when the guest was about to take his 
 leave, De Quincey entered the drawing-room 
 again, and soon dozed in the large armchair, 
 while they went on with their romantic 
 talk. " Soon, however, the withered divinity 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 65 
 
 showed signs of awakening, " when he read, 
 imitating the author's voice, Wordsworth's 
 " Ode on Immortality, " and, " as he closed the 
 book, a strange light seemed to glow through 
 his eyes and illuminate his face. He began 
 to talk with a voice that seemed to flow out 
 of the unknown, low, mellifluous, ceaseless, 
 filling one with awe. We listened almost 
 breathless, and soon found ourselves at his 
 feet, looking into his transfigured face, like 
 entranced children. On, on, he discoursed, 
 as I have never heard mortal discourse, 
 before or since. If one could imagine all 
 the wisdom, sentiment, and learning to be 
 crushed from De Quincey's many volumes 
 of printed books and to be poured out in a 
 continuous stream, he might form some con- 
 ception of that long discourse, how long we 
 know not. It was a prolonged and inten- 
 sified suspiria de prqfmidis. When the 
 monologue ceased, the poor, exhausted old 
 man of genius had a tallow dip lighted to 
 show me through the trees to the road-side 
 gate. I took my leave of the little house- 
 
66 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 hold who had entertained me with a true 
 banquet of the gods, and walked to Edin- 
 burgh, in the beautiful Scotch gloaming, 
 beholding on the way the great sun rising, 
 full -orbed from the distant sea, and medi- 
 tated on many things." 
 
 He went next to York and Manchester, 
 and through Wales to Dublin, and thence 
 to Killarney, whose lakes are as beautiful as 
 the lochs of Scotland. He writes: "Dur- 
 ing a morning walk from the village of Kil- 
 larney, through the pass of Dunloe, to the 
 upper lake, a distance of eighteen miles, I 
 counted over four hundred beggars, most of 
 them children, some of whom followed me 
 for hours. They were in tatters, and begged 
 from necessity, and not professionally. It 
 was impossible to relieve the distress of so 
 many. Their naked limbs, sunken eyes, and 
 lean faces proclaimed the woes of Ireland 
 more eloquently than whole volumes of sen- 
 sational literature. Indeed, the people of 
 the Emerald Isle have suffered more oppres- 
 sion and wrong than any other people under 
 the sun except the Jews." 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT, 67 
 
 He hastened to London, and during a 
 three months' stay, had the good fortune to 
 meet a number o£ eminent men : Mr. Gil- 
 bart, a bank-manager, and a financial writer, 
 a member of many learned societies of Lon- 
 don, took him to the annual dinner of the 
 Koyal Geographical Society. " There were 
 seventeen at dinner, with Prince Albert in 
 the chair. The dinner was faultless, and 
 the propriety of the occasion was maintained 
 with a dignity bordering on solemnity." 
 Bulwer was " a polished and accomplished 
 dandy, whose novels are sifted over with the 
 diamond dust of sensuousness more seduc- 
 tive to susceptible minds than the shameless 
 realism of Zola. And Thackeray was a man 
 who seemed very stately and reserved, hav- 
 ing a towering genius, and a mighty sorrow 
 in his heart. Thomas Carlyle, at whose 
 house were Mill, Froude, and Herbert 
 Spencer, when he began his customary 
 monologue on the superiority of silence to 
 speech, and when he was boldly interrupted 
 by the Yankee philosopher : — 
 
68 MEMORIAL OF 0. IF. WIGHT. 
 
 " Carlyle talking refutes his own doc- 
 trines of silence. To us his speech is as 
 great as the deeds of a hero. We have two 
 eyes, two ears, two feet, two hands, and one 
 tongue, — doubtless, that we may see, hear, 
 walk, and do twice as much as we say ; yet 
 the organ of speech has its legitimate office 
 and must not be cheated out of its single 
 share. I grant that we have silly talking in 
 mournful abundance ; and have we not also 
 silly doing, moving, hearing, seeing, and the 
 silence of fools ? As the man is, so will his 
 product be, whether of speech or anything 
 else ; his actions will show, and his words 
 report, the quality of the soul. The poet 
 that sings of Agamemnon's deeds must 
 share the hero's fame. Which was greater, 
 the philosophizing Plato, or the governing 
 Pericles ? Was the doing of Hildebrand 
 superior to the singing of Dante ? Was 
 Cromwell, in action, stronger and wiser 
 than Shakespeare in talk? The Word cre- 
 ated the world. 
 
 " Are not the dreams of Goethe equal to 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 69 
 
 the campaigns of Gustavus Adolplius ? Was 
 not the brain of Scaliger as strong as the 
 hand of Augustus II., the Saxon prince, who 
 twisted the iron banister into a rope ? From 
 the highest talk and action to the lowest, 
 there is an infinite gradation, through the 
 good, the instructive, the useful, the prudent, 
 the amusing, the exemplary, the innocent, 
 the weak, the foolish, the stupid, the profane, 
 the conceited, the bigoted, etc." 
 
 At the close of the year, from London, 
 " where everything under the sun is to be 
 had by him who can pay for it and who 
 knows how to find it," Mr. Wight went 
 to Paris, taking with him a letter of intro- 
 duction to Madame Mohl, from his good 
 friend Angus Fletcher. " The letter was a 
 key to unlock good Parisian society." Ma- 
 dame Mohl, whose husband was one of the 
 immortal forty of the French Academy, was 
 the successor to Madame Recamier, and hers 
 may be regarded as the last saloon of an 
 earlier regime. She took him to the annual 
 meeting of the French Academy, where the 
 
70 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 "immortal forty" were seen in all their 
 glory. 
 
 He has given brief reminiscences of Vic- 
 tor Cousin, M. Lamartine, De Lamennais, 
 and Leon Gambetta. Every Saturday after- 
 noon he visited M. Cousin, who had rooms 
 at the Sorbonne. He wrote : " When I 
 went to take my leave of M. Cousin, on my 
 return to America, in the spring, he made 
 to me a very amusing little speech, — amus- 
 ing to me, sincere enough on his part. He 
 kissed me on both cheeks, after the French 
 fashion, and said among other things, ' Do 
 not fall into the great tide of Materialism 
 in America ; persevere in the study of spirit- 
 ualistic i^hilosophy ; in short, follow the 
 great examples of your distinguished coun- 
 trymen, George Washington and Professor 
 Tappau.' " 
 
 " I was talking one evening with M. La- 
 martine and his wife, when a page from 
 ' Le Temps ' newspaper called for promised 
 copy. He had not written a word of it. 
 Requesting me to continue my conversation 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 71 
 
 with Madame, he seated himself at his 
 writing desk, and within thirty minutes 
 handed the page a bundle of manuscript 
 which made over two columns of sprightly 
 reading in the newspaper of the next morn- 
 ing." " The first time I visited Pere-la- 
 Chaise was as one of the fourteen follow- 
 ers of De Lamennais to his grave. After 
 a life of controversy he had reached his 
 final rest. He was one of the most gifted 
 men in France, but did not succeed, as 
 no man has ever succeeded, in making the 
 world believe that his own mind was the 
 yardstick of the universe, to measure all 
 things, the Church as well as the State. In 
 his last days he had been despondent and, I 
 was informed, somewhat reckless. He was 
 under the ban of the Church, and some one, 
 I have forgotten who, pronounced a funeral 
 oration at his sepulture. In a long conver- 
 sation, late one morning, over a cup of cof- 
 fee, Gambetta denounced the Emperor in 
 the most energetic terms, applying to him 
 epithets of the most opprobrious kind. He 
 
72 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 cursed the people of France for submitting 
 to such an usurper. I closed the conversa- 
 tion by saying to him, ' Young man, in due 
 time, Louis Napoleon will either hang you, 
 or you will dethrone him.' " 
 
 Long afterwards he wrote : " Important 
 business called me unexpectedly home in 
 the early spring. I took passage on the ill- 
 fated steamship ' City of Glasgow,' but a 
 slight accident detained me, and the agents 
 of the line changed my ticket to the ' City of 
 Manchester,' which sailed a few days later. 
 The passage was of eighteen days' duration, 
 against a fierce battalion of equinoctial gales. 
 The 'Glasgow' was never heard of after sail- 
 ing from Liverpool. Sometimes one's life 
 hangs by a slender thread of circumstances, 
 admonishing us to treat with gravity our 
 smallest actions. Whether it would have 
 been better for me to have perished with 
 the ship in the great deep. He only knows 
 by whom the hairs of our heads are num- 
 bered." 
 
X. 
 
 At the close of the preceding chapter we 
 find four things that are suggestive : The 
 important business which induced Mr. Wight 
 to hasten home ; the narrow escape from 
 being engulphed in the sea ; the fact that we 
 shoukl treat with gravity our smallest ac- 
 tions ; and the infinite care of Him who only 
 knows what is good for us. 
 
 In the last statement there is a deep, 
 pathetic meaning : it was written more than 
 thirty years after the occasion which in- 
 spired it, — when destiny had brought all 
 it could, when memory ran back through 
 all the busy intervening years, when the 
 heart had suffered under the burden of a 
 great sorrow, when a wearied life was com- 
 ing to an end, when the patient soul had 
 been silent for long years, and when the 
 
 4 
 
74 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 spirit, looking into the eternity beyond, was 
 forced to breathe a wish, or perhaps utter a 
 regret. Almost in the shadow of the myrtle 
 that was laid up on his casket by loving 
 hands, he seemed to say : If the cup from 
 w hich I drank could have been filled with 
 the lethal waters of the deep sea, and if I 
 could have fallen to my final rest on that 
 day of storm and tempest when the ill-fated 
 steamer was crushed into oblivion by the 
 pitiless waves, I would gladly give up all I 
 have done and suffered. But this was not 
 so : the wish was not quite expressed ; the 
 regret was not fully spoken ; for all that 
 had been was left with Him by whom the 
 hairs of our heads are numbered. 
 
 As we look upon the endless manifesta- 
 tions going on around us, and as we reason 
 in regard to the ceaseless and eternal order 
 of the universe, w^e see a process of evolu- 
 tion which is the expression of an unalter- 
 able Providence. And this means that all 
 things are related to God's government, and 
 are under his watchful and protecting care. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 15 
 
 If He illumines the soul, let the light shine 
 for others ; if He inspires the mind with 
 great thoughts, tell them to the children of 
 men ; if He fills the heart with immortal 
 love, let it break, so that others may learn 
 to be content with their lot. The bow of 
 promise set on yonder cloud vanishes ; the 
 leaf and the flower dissolve into their ele- 
 ments ; the nations fall into the silence of 
 history ; and the godlike form of man min- 
 gles with the dust out of which it was cre- 
 ated : and these are but steps in the great 
 mystery of which we too make a part, — a 
 part of that wonderful evolution submissive 
 to the hand of an immutable Providence. 
 
 One who has not braved the storm-trou- 
 bled ocean, who has not " heard the head- 
 long South-wind fiercely sweep," and wrestle 
 with the northern blast ; who has not seen 
 " the wild tyrant of the western wave " lift 
 the treacherous sea on high, does not know, 
 cannot know, how great is the triumph of 
 man's genius, that has wrought the fabric of 
 the steamship which has conquered the rest- 
 
76 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 less spirit of the deep, and can bear the 
 priceless burden of the hearts we love in 
 safety from shore to shore. Man's genius 
 has constructed a form, in every part, so 
 compact, so adapted, and so adequate, that 
 one may say : — 
 
 " Here 's ^fabric that implies eternity." 
 The important business : He had been 
 engaged to a young lady for several years. 
 " The marriage had been put off from time 
 to time on account of her health." Her 
 mother had represented to him that her 
 daughter was afflicted with hysteria. Her 
 brothers and sisters and father were all 
 dead. She was the only living child. At 
 this time the mother also died, leaving her 
 daughter alone, — her lover being on the 
 other side of the ocean. On receipt of the 
 news of her bereavement he hastened home 
 to her. Had he been on the ill-fated " Glas- 
 gow," slie would have waited in vain for his 
 return. An accident, trivial enough, left 
 him to cross the stormy Atlantic, — to sail 
 a long, weary voyage against the battalions 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 77 
 
 of fierce gales on another sea, that " meets 
 the o'erarching heaven on every side." 
 
 He reached America about the first of 
 April, 1854. His affianced was alone, wait- 
 ing for him. She had a severe illness soon 
 after his arrival, and he watched at her bed- 
 side for forty-eight hours. He met the fam- 
 ily physician, and anxiously inquired in re- 
 gard to the nature of her malady. He was 
 always assured that she was a sufferer from 
 hysteria, and that in time everything would 
 be all right. The privileges of a confiden- 
 tial relation, on the part of the physician, 
 were not implied; on this point there was 
 no plea. And so with full trust, with high 
 hopes, and believing in his destiny, on the 
 Saturday preceding the fifteenth of May, 
 1854, he was married : his wife was twenty- 
 three, and he was thirty years of age. She 
 had inherited a moderate fortune. He had 
 an income from the sale of his books. The 
 future was bright and filled with the vis- 
 ions of success, haj)piness, and noble aims. 
 In the past, his ambition had been realized. 
 
78 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 — but more was to come. He was gifted, 
 and a favorite of fortune, — so it seemed. 
 
 " We are the voices of the wandering wind, 
 Which moan for rest and rest can never find ; 
 Lo ! as the wind is so is mortal life, 
 A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife. 
 
 " Wherefore and whence we are ye cannot know, 
 Nor where life springs nor whither life doth go ; 
 We are as ye are, ghosts from the inane. 
 What pleasure have we of our changeful pain ? 
 
 ** What pleasure hast thou of thy changeless bliss ? 
 Nay, if love lasted, there were joy in this ; 
 But life's way is the wind's way, all these things 
 Are but brief voices breathed on shifting strings." 
 
 Almost immediately after marriage lie and 
 his wife embarked for Europe. In due time 
 the steamer reached Liverpool, and they 
 went directly to the famous " Lake Dis- 
 trict" of England. About a month after 
 marriage, his wife was, one day, at Berwick, 
 stricken down at his feet with a fit of epi- 
 lepsy. "Attack followed attack, until she 
 had seventeen in the course of the night." 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 79 
 
 He stood alone by her bedside, amazed, be- 
 wildered, becruslied, during that long, dread- 
 ful, and lonely night, turning gray ere the 
 sun rose o'er England's poetic landscapes. 
 Her fearful disease had been concealed from 
 him by her parent and her physician. If 
 her parents had been living, it would have 
 been his duty to take her home to them, 
 and never have seen her again in this world. 
 But she was an orphan and alone. She had 
 not been to blame. That dreadful night, on 
 bended knees before God, he adopted her 
 as his child. And never a word of reproach 
 to her on account of the concealrnent es- 
 caped his lips, during all the lonely and 
 trying years that have since come and gone. 
 And from that hour, he was an affection- 
 ate parent to her, " father and mother in 
 one," as she, in her lucid moments, has 
 a thousand times, with gushing tears, ex- 
 pressed it; and during many of the lonely 
 intervening years, he was sole nurse to her, 
 — patiently, tenderly, uncomplainingly per- 
 forming offices for her that no money could 
 
80 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 procure. He wandered over Europe nearly 
 four years taking his ward and patient with 
 him to many eminent physicians, hoping 
 that perchance her disease might be cured. 
 It had existed from her infancy, and was 
 incurable, as every physician knew, and un- 
 fitted her for the duties of life : neither by 
 man's law, nor by the divine law, could she 
 be either wife or mother. For the hapless 
 and the helpless, in whom reason never sat 
 rightly on her throne, what more could mor- 
 tal do ? 
 
 Such is the briefly told story of the early 
 days of a wedded life, stranger than fiction, 
 realistic in the extreme, and intensely tragic. 
 And there is another story that may be 
 briefly told : after his death it was found 
 inclosed with an article from his pen on 
 marriage and divorce. It runs as follows : 
 A highly respectable young man was en- 
 gaged to be married to a young lady of high 
 social standing, and the nuptials were to 
 take place on a certain day. Everything 
 went happily, and he was looking forward 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 81 
 
 to a happy life, when the expectant bride- 
 groom, two days before the appointed time, 
 made the startling and shocking discovery 
 that his affianced was subject to periodical 
 fits, which the best scientific skill had failed 
 to cure. When in a fit she would utter 
 fearful cries, and become extremely violent, 
 requiring strong men to hold her ; she 
 would fall down insensible, and the parox- 
 ysm was followed by great physical exhaus- 
 tion, leaving her weak and fretful for days 
 afterward ; she was truly an object of pity, 
 causing her family many anxious hours, — 
 but there was a hope that time and skillful 
 treatment would make her fits less frequent 
 and less violent. She had the " falling 
 sickness : " it was epilepsy, — a disease so 
 fearful, as Dr. Watson says, that " the 
 beasts of the field flee in terror at the char- 
 acteristic cry of one seized with it." And 
 over the door, by which oile enters to the 
 full embrace of this dreadful malady, is 
 written : " Let those who enter here leave 
 all hope behind." 
 
 4* 
 
82 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 On the day iiientioned, while paying her 
 a visit, her great malady seized her, and laid 
 her writhing at his feet. He was horrified 
 at the fearful spectacle. He questioned the 
 family, and then the dreadful story was told, 
 — " and the discovery shook his reason." 
 The next day he wandered from home, with 
 a disordered mind. He went from place to 
 place, no one knows where. His mind and 
 soul could not make one music as before. 
 On the night of that day — dies ira, dies 
 ilia — a deck-hand of a ferry-boat noticed 
 and watched a young man excitedly pacing 
 up and down the deck, and when he tried 
 to throw himself overboard seized him and 
 saved his life. " He begged piteously to be 
 released, saying that life was no longer of 
 any value to him, and offered those who held 
 him twenty -five dollars to let him commit 
 suicide." He was given in charge of the 
 police, who found on his person twenty-five 
 dollars, a pint of brandy, and a loaded re- 
 volver, which he requested the officer to keep 
 to save him from temptation. He was dis- 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 83 
 
 charged from custody the next morning, and 
 was seen in the afternoon, near the Hudson 
 River, by one who knew him. This was the 
 last trace of him. On that night, which 
 took him into its shadowy arms, without 
 feeling and without pity, he dropped into 
 eternal silence. 
 
XL 
 
 As we have already chronicled, Mr. 
 Wight had returned to the famous Lake 
 District of England, where he remained a 
 short time. Thence he traveled rapidly over 
 England again, making a brief stay in Lon- 
 don. He crossed the Channel to Calais. He 
 went through Belgium, visiting Ghent, Lou- 
 vain, Brussels, Aachen, Cologne and its un- 
 finished cathedral, sailing up the Rhine to 
 Bonn, Coblenz, and Mayence, passing the 
 summer residence of the Prussian kings, em- 
 bowered above the vine -terraced banks of 
 the river. Going on by railroad to Heidel- 
 berg, Baden, and Basel, and through the 
 Jura Mountains to Lausanne, he reverently 
 visited the particular spot where Gibbon 
 wrote his mighty history. Over beautiful 
 Lake Leman he went to Geneva, and made 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 85 
 
 " a pilgrimage to Ferney, where Voltaire 
 lived so many years, stirring up all Europe 
 with a literature abounding in amazing 
 wealth of sarcastic denunciation of what he 
 regarded as oppression, wrong, inhumanity, 
 error, and superstition.' 
 
 At Geneva he studied John Calvin's book 
 called the " Institutes, " and became inter- 
 ested in his work, as a law-giver, as a ruler of 
 men, as one having the genius and the power 
 to subject and govern the turbulent and ras- 
 cally Genevese, and reduce them to order 
 and decency of living, compelling them to 
 obey the eternal law of God. He had been 
 terribly prejudiced against John Calvin 
 by the oft-told story of Servetus, who had 
 preached " damnable heresy, " and pro- 
 claimed theosophic theories that threatened 
 to subvert moral order and the foundations 
 of Church and State. But " nothing oc- 
 curred to Calvin to do but to follow the 
 many examples of his hard age, to put the 
 dangerous theosophist on top of a wood-pile 
 and burn him up." 
 
86 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 At the close of a glorious summer and a 
 gilded autumn, he left the wonderland of 
 the Alps, and went down the Rhone, through 
 leafless vineyards, to Lyons, Avignon, and 
 Marseilles, an old city founded by the Greeks 
 not long after the fabled nursing of Romulus 
 and Remus by the female wolf on the site 
 of future Rome. A long journey by dili- 
 gence took him to Nice, where he spent the 
 rest of the winter, where he met ex-Presi- 
 dent Van Buren, and whence, in the spring, 
 while the orange trees were in blossom, he 
 went to Turin. There he had the good for- 
 tune to meet Count Cavour, and hear him 
 make a speech in the Senate. He was one 
 of the greatest statesmen of our time, and 
 " it was fortunate for Italy that he lived long 
 enough to lay the solid foundation of her 
 unity." 
 
 In his book, " A Winding Journey around 
 the World , " he tells the following story : 
 " From Turin I went to Alexandria, and 
 thence northward to the terminus of the 
 railroad at a little village on the western 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 87 
 
 shore of Lake Maggiore. It was raining 
 fearfully on my arrival, and a bitter wind 
 was blowing from the great, white, snow- 
 clad Alps. At the only inn of the village I 
 inquired the price of a room. One always 
 makes such an inquiry in Italy, if he is 
 at all prudent. The proprietor said it was 
 twenty francs a day not including meals. I 
 told him I would not pay the extortionate 
 price. He shrugged his shoulders and re- 
 sponded that there was no other hotel in the 
 place, and that the train did not return till 
 the next day, at the same time directing at- 
 tention to the driving rain outside. I took 
 my gripsack in my hand and walked down 
 to the shore of the lake, where I bargained 
 with three fishermen, who had a strong boat, 
 to row me to the other side. I took the 
 helm and the three stalwart fellows rowed 
 bravely through the waves three miles to a 
 town on the opposite shore. They hurried 
 away on landing, and I was taken in charge 
 by two Austrian soldiers, who conducted me, 
 dripping wet, before the commandant of 
 
88 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 the border military post. My passport was 
 promptly demanded, which had been re- 
 cently vised at Turin by the American 
 charge d'affaires and the Austrian ambas- 
 sador. The officer was not satisfied with 
 the passport alone, but subjected me to a 
 searching crossexamination, questioning me 
 in German, English, French, and Italian. 
 It happened that I could answer him in 
 whatever speech he used. His questions 
 were answered promptly and courteously. 
 At length I explained to him how I came to 
 cross the frontier between Italy and Austrian 
 territory at such an inauspicious time. In a 
 sort of apologetic way he said that political 
 propagandists resorted to any means of en- 
 tering the country, and that he was obliged 
 to obey orders by exercising a sharp scrutiny. 
 I responded, a little significantly, that I was 
 not an enemy of Austria, especially while in 
 Austria, and requested him to send a soldier 
 with me to show me to the best hotel. Tak- 
 ing my leave, I invited him to call on me at 
 the hotel and drink a bottle of wine with me. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 89 
 
 He sent up Lis card in the evening, and we 
 had a long, pleasant conversation over a 
 bottle of sparkling d'Asti, during which he 
 told me a good deal more about the relations 
 of Austria and Italy than his government 
 would liave approved." 
 
 The next day the Italian sun shone out 
 brightly, and he went on to Como, Milan, 
 Verona, Vincenza, Padua, and Venice. These 
 cities "recall the tumultuous history of 
 twenty centuries, and still contain the mon- 
 uments and art treasures of many vanished 
 generations." How we begin to realize that 
 there are other workers on this planet be- 
 sides ourselves I And then we understand 
 that we have inherited the past. And so 
 we see that we may contribute something 
 to the future. He writes : " One picture 
 among many that I saw in Venice struck 
 my imagination very vividly, and has been 
 a mental possession for me ever since ; that 
 was a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, by 
 Titian, in the private gallery of the Man- 
 frini palace. Even now, after more than 
 
90 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 thirty years, I can shut my eyes and con- 
 template it in all its exquisite details. Af- 
 terwards, at Kome, I added to my private 
 gallery Domenichino's " Communion of St. 
 Jerome," and the " Taking down from the 
 Cross," of Daniele da Yolterra. Again, at 
 Dresden, I added Raphael's " Madonna di 
 San Sisto." This little collection of great 
 pictures hang imperishably in my brain, and 
 I would not exchange it for any gallery in 
 the world. In the night, when I cannot 
 sleep, I only have to close my eyes firmly 
 in order to see my precious pictures, which 
 I expect to carry with me into the next 
 world. This may be a species of madness ; 
 if it is, I prefer it to sanity." 
 
 In the days of a rapid journey to and fro, 
 through northern Italy, amid the vales and 
 hills, where came the invaders to overthrow 
 old Rome, he learned many things strange 
 and new, and " began to realize how little 
 travelers who are not students of history, 
 whose eyes have not been unsealed by the 
 great poets and painters to the mysterious 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 91 
 
 beauties of nature, — how little they can 
 learn and know of the beauties and wonders 
 of these eastern lands. The soul of the 
 world reveals something of itself to the seer, 
 only a shadowy little of which he can con- 
 vey to others by means of color, form, or 
 winged words." 
 
 He went to spend the summer at the Baths 
 of Lucca, in the Apennines, where was the 
 summer residence of the Tuscan count. 
 There, under a good master, he made a 
 critical study of the Italian language, which 
 he could already speak and read. Again 
 he writes : " ' All went merry as a marriage 
 bell,' till the cholera came in August. I 
 saw terrified Italians lie down on the grass 
 by the roadside and die with it in half an 
 hour. Friends, whom one saw well at even- 
 ing, were dead with it in the morning. Two 
 or three thousand summer visitors fled, no 
 one seemed to know whither. In Florence, 
 fifty miles away, over fifteen per cent, of the 
 population perished with the pestilence. I 
 went with the brave, good parish priest, day 
 
92 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 after day, to visit his dying people. By- 
 and-by, I too had the disease. My friend, 
 the priest, came to see me and offer the con- 
 solations of religion. ' Do you think, good 
 father,' I said to him, * if I were to die 
 now, God would damn me ? ' He looked at 
 me pathetically, and responded, ' I don't 
 know ; I know I would not ; and God is 
 better than I am.' " 
 
 "Then spake the prince : 'Is this the end which 
 comes 
 To all who live ? ' 
 
 ' This is the end that comes 
 To all,' quoth Channa ; * he upon the pyre — 
 
 Ate, drank, laughed, loved, and lived, and liked life 
 
 well. 
 Then came — who knows ? — some gust of jungle- 
 wind, 
 A stumble on the path, a taint in the tank, 
 A snake's nip, half a span of angry steel, 
 A chill, a fish-bone, or a falling tile. 
 And life was over and the man is dead.' " 
 
 After having learned to appreciate sculp- 
 ture in Florence, and having been taught 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 93 
 
 the wonderful lesson of how much man can 
 tell his fellow-man by exquisite forms cut in 
 marble, he went to Rome, the Eternal City^ 
 which is the centre of the world, and looked 
 upon it wdth feelings impossible to describe. 
 He remained there many mouths, devoting 
 every day to the study of its ruins, antiqui- 
 ties, museums, churches, and treasures of 
 art. The vastness of Rome at first discour- 
 aged him, but working like the elements, 
 making no haste, tahing no rest, he added 
 little by little to his conquest of knowledge. 
 Says he : " Rome did for me in architecture 
 what Florence had done for me in sculpture. 
 With the help of Canina's superb drawings 
 I reconstructed in imagination all the im- 
 portant buildings of ancient Rome, out of 
 their ruins. The dull details of the guide- 
 books, bewildering and stupefying when 
 studied alone, afforded clews that led up to 
 fruitful results when followed with the aid of 
 a book of real genius. Dead ruins seemed 
 to stir with life when viewed in the light 
 shed on them by Goethe, and miscellaneous 
 
94 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 miles of broken marble figures in the Vat- 
 ican seemed to have a resurrection when 
 breathed upon by the spirit of Winckel- 
 mann. . . . There were at Rome many- 
 eminent artists, who were very polite to 
 travelers, among whom I formed several 
 very pleasant acquaintances. Their society 
 was especially useful to a student who was 
 not contented with mere guidebook infor- 
 mation." 
 
 From Rome he journeyed to Naples. 
 Thence he made an excursion to Sicily on 
 post-horses across the island and around 
 the base of Mount Etna. He kept on to 
 Catania, Messina, and Riggio, " the south- 
 ernmost city of Italy, from whose orange 
 groves the view at morning and evening, 
 along the eastern shore of Sicily, with 
 smoking Mount Etna in the distance, was 
 as enchanting as one's dreams of Paradise." 
 Again going northward with post-horses 
 through Rome, Sienna, Florence, Bologna, 
 Modena, Parma, Mantua, Verona, Venice, 
 to Lago di Garda, he " took a boat and 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 95 
 
 sailed sixty miles into the bosom of the 
 Alps." 
 
 He writes : " At Mais, on the way, I en- 
 gaged of an innkeeper a suitable vehicle 
 and went over the Stelvio Pass to the Baths 
 of Bormio, in Italy. It is the highest road 
 in Europe, thirty-five miles long, built by 
 the Austrian government for military pur- 
 poses, at a cost of thirty-five millions of 
 florins. The vast Oertler glacier, the 
 grandest in all the Alps, was seen from all 
 points of view, while ascending the mighty 
 mountain, in places steep as a house-roof, 
 by a series of zigzags made with engineer- 
 ing skill. If you can imagine Niagara 
 Falls to be twenty times higher, several 
 times wider, many times vaster in every 
 way, and to be suddenly frozen solid, you 
 form some conception of the Oertler glacier. 
 Human speech cannot describe the grandeur 
 of the view from the top of the pass. On 
 the Italian side, slender, rocky, mountain 
 spines, ice-clad in all their depressed inter- 
 spaces, looked like a city of cathedrals in 
 
96 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 the sky, extending on either hand as far as 
 the eye could reach. With a good glass, 
 one could see the marble dome of Milan 
 Cathedral and the waters of the Mediter- 
 ranean flashing in the southern sun. In 
 strange contrast, the forests of the Tyro- 
 lese side presented an interminable sea of 
 softest green, broken here and there by 
 cleared spaces with their villages, like irreg- 
 ular patches of gold set in emerald. 
 
 " My driver proved to be a drunkard. 
 He nursed a black bottle all the way up 
 the mountain, and when we reached the 
 summit he was not in a condition to guide 
 his horses along a precipice more than fif- 
 teen hundred feet plumb down. Neither 
 would he give up the reins to me. The 
 only alternative was to pitch him out into 
 the snow and drive myself. 1 drove down 
 on the Italian side till I reached the first 
 Austrian military station, three miles below. 
 . . . The enraged driver came up on foot 
 while I was drinking a bottle of wine with 
 the commandant of the station. At my 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 9T 
 
 request he was locked up in the guard- 
 house, on bread and water, and the polite 
 Austrian officer detailed a soldier to drive 
 me down to Bormio. The next morning, 
 on my return, the fellow was let out, quite 
 sober and very penitent. He drove me 
 back to Mais, without further mishap." 
 
 Botzen, Innsbruck, and Salzburg were vis- 
 ited, and then Ischl, in upper Austria, the 
 summer resort of the imperial court. From 
 this place delightful excursions were made 
 among the Styrian Alps. " In one of these 
 excursions, " says he, " I fell upon the Aus- 
 trian emperor and his suite of Jagers. We 
 took a midday meal in a mountain inn at 
 a common table. It was the custom of the 
 dull host to collect a florin from each guest 
 during the meal. The good-natured emperor 
 handed a florin over his shoulder, remark- 
 ing : ' I suppose I must pay like the rest.' 
 The handsome empress, an excellent horse- 
 woman, looked very gay with her attendants, 
 as the shadows began to stretch themselves 
 
98 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 along tlie picturesque roads in the after part 
 of the day." 
 
 At the close of summer he went back to 
 Salzburg, and thence to Lake Konigsee, 
 over loftj mountains through Rosenheim to 
 Munich, where he remained a few weeks to 
 study Bavarian art. " It amused me, " says 
 he, " very much to see in a fresco, on the 
 wall of a recently built church, the devil 
 painted with the head of Goethe. The great 
 German poet will live long after frescoes 
 and church have crumbled into dust. It is 
 not worth our while to lose temper over 
 such impotent attempts to defame immortal 
 genius." 
 
 The traveler went on through Augsburg, 
 Donauwerth, Ratisbon, down* the "blue" 
 Danube to Vienna, and thence to Buda- 
 Pesth, where he saw the Emperor Franz 
 Joseph and his brother, the unfortunate 
 Maximilian, "disembark from the royal 
 yacht and drive up the long hill to the castle 
 of Buda. The two, sitting side by side, 
 drove in an open barouche, without guards 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 99 
 
 or attendants. The multitude was so dense 
 that they frequently crowded persons in front 
 between the wheels of the barouche, when 
 the attentively observing monarch would 
 touch the coachman with a light bamboo 
 cane, as a signal to stop, till the unfortunates 
 could extricate themselves. There was not 
 at that time another sovereign in all Europe 
 who could have thus trusted himself to his 
 own people. And that, too, was not very 
 long after the great Hungarian revolution. 
 The young men were brave, and the high- 
 strung Hungarians would not disgrace them- 
 selves by touching a hair of the undefended 
 emperor's head, although at heart they might 
 have hated him." 
 
 He retraced his steps to Vienna, and 
 thence went on to Dresden, Berlin, Potsdam, 
 and back to Dresden for the winter. At the 
 outset he procured a proper master and en- 
 tered upon a systematic study of the German 
 language. " The society of Dresden was 
 charming, and its rich picture gallery was 
 constantly attractive. The theatre, taken all 
 
100 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 in all, was tlien the best in Germany. The 
 best plays of Shakespeare, in Schlegel and 
 Finck's excellent translation, with such 
 actors as Davidson and Devrienne, were put 
 upon the stage thoroughly and well. The 
 interpretation of Shakespeare by Gervinus, 
 the best critic of the great dramatist in 
 any language, was carefully studied. Every 
 presentation of a play threw new light upon 
 it from the highest intellectual standpoint. 
 The best dramas of Schiller and Goethe were 
 put upon the stage, to the satisfaction of very 
 exacting audiences." 
 
 In the spring he left Dresden, and went, 
 by way of Leipsic, Hanover, and Dusseldorf, 
 to London, to superintend the publication of 
 a book he had written during his travels in 
 Europe. It was published by Mr. Bentley, 
 " anonymously in two volumes," and " was 
 reasonably successful." The only copy of 
 this work existing in America is in the pos- 
 session of the author of these memoirs. It 
 is a philosophical fiction of no ordinary 
 merit, and would not quite suit the taste of 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 101 
 
 the reader accustomed to be pleased witli tlie 
 exciting literature of the present. It has 
 been revised by its author, and a probable 
 intention to republish it may be carried out 
 some day. 
 
 From London he went to France, made 
 the tour of Normandy, then hastened to 
 Paris, where he remained till late in the 
 autumn. " One of the memorable sights in 
 Paris was a grand review of the veteran 
 French army, on its return from the Crimean 
 war. Of one regiment, only three soldiers 
 survived, who marched in their places, with 
 wide intervals, indicating by the vacant 
 spaces the everlastingly absent. I was near 
 the emperor, and saw the tears roll down his 
 cheeks at the pathetic sight." 
 
 " After the leaves had fallen, I returned 
 to America. My last absence had been 
 nearly four years. My pleasant wander- 
 jahre were ended, and before me was an un- 
 known future of toil." 
 
XII. 
 
 Once there was a man who had not where 
 to lay his head. He was a wanderer through 
 many lands, all his life long. He was 
 a pilgrim from the cradle to the grave. 
 Many lonely years went by, as his weary feet 
 pressed upon the sands of time. His life 
 was one long, pathetic story of one who loved 
 home, and who never had one. He was the 
 immortal author of " Home, Sweet Home." 
 
 In the winter of 1859, Mr. Wight reached 
 Boston, and in a few days went on to 
 New York. Soon after, he purchased a 
 house in First Place, Brooklyn. In this 
 city he lived during the rest of the winter. 
 When spring came he advertised for a small 
 cottage situated iu the country near New 
 York. He received, among many rej)lies, 
 one from the village of Rye, on the border 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 103 
 
 of Long Island Sound. On visiting the 
 place, he found that the cottage suited him. 
 He hired it, and moved there for the summer. 
 A railroad ran through the village, and so it 
 was easy to reach from the city. There were 
 many pleasant drives about the country. The 
 air was invigorating, and the soil was dry and 
 healthy. The salt-water bathing was good, 
 and the beach was not far away. He sold 
 his house in Brooklyn, and never returned 
 there to live. His idea was that he could 
 take care of his ward and patient with more 
 success in. the country, — for so he called 
 her who had been united to him by the 
 solemn rites of the church as his wife, and 
 whom, after his marriage, he had found to 
 be an incurable epileptic, even from her 
 earliest infancy. At Rye he was near enough 
 to New York to make it easy for him to 
 carry forward his plans in regard to literary 
 work. 
 
 In the ages past, where was once the 
 stillness of the sea, and where at a later time 
 the great ice-river, slowly, silently, and with 
 
104 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 resistless energy, rolled down from the North- 
 land to meet the restless, aggressive, and re- 
 lentless tides and waves, there was a mighty- 
 war of the elements ; and in the ages that 
 have come there is the solid land. Now the 
 soft arms of the inner sea embrace the capes 
 and jutlands along the tide- washed shore, 
 where reigns a long peace for the advantage 
 of man. This shore, " lying low, " was once 
 mantled by the great ice-river that came 
 down from the northern ice-sea. The 
 ice-river, " making no haste, taking no rest," 
 on its way to the prehistoric sea, wrote the 
 telluric history of vanished ages upon the 
 rocks and boulders that, like graven tablets, 
 lie scattered here and there amidst the ruins 
 of the past. " O Earth ! what changes 
 thou hast seen ! " Where once the tides in 
 the ancient sea and the ice-river, like mighty 
 giants, contended for the mastery, there the 
 earth, weary of the trouble, rose up and 
 vanquished them both. All along this low, 
 rocky shore that Long Island barricades 
 from the turbulent and stormy Atlantic, 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 105 
 
 miles upon miles from New York, are built 
 the habitations of men. For the most part 
 these men are ignorant of the wondrous 
 history written in the soil and on the rocks 
 upon which they daily tread. What matters 
 this to them ? They have no hunger, no 
 thirst, for such food and drink. How 
 strangely different are men ! One sees in 
 Nature a storehouse full of grain ; another 
 sees a soul, speech, music, order, and ever- 
 lasting motion. 
 
 About twenty -five or thirty miles from 
 New York, where the telluric forces were 
 busy in the ages past, scooping out hollows 
 for rivulets and sea-arms, and heaping up 
 rocks and boulders that were borne down 
 upon the great ice-river, is located the pleas- 
 ant village of Rye, on a vale which runs 
 along to the tide-water. There the ice-king 
 came down the frozen river, in the glacial 
 ages, and brought great loads of grim, graven 
 rocks and boulders, and piled them up in 
 scattered heaps ; and the mighty Norse god 
 came along with him, holding his mighty 
 
 5* 
 
106 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 hammer in his sinewy hand, and smote the 
 rocks into pieces, which he scattered as he 
 pursued his journey. In the fuUness of 
 time, when the Norse god and the ice- 
 king went away, driven before the headlong 
 south wind, spring and summer planted 
 the primeval forest. After that, as time 
 went on, man cut down the oak, the beech, 
 and the maple, and cast them into the fire. 
 Then mother Earth, grieving over her loss, 
 evolved from her mysterious energies the 
 mournful evergreen, and there grew the 
 cedar. 
 
 The old post-road ran along in front of 
 the base of a rocky bank, which rose abruptly 
 some twenty-five or more feet, overlooking 
 the setting sun. From the crest of this 
 bank the rock-strewn surface sloped gently 
 toward the road that curved to the border of 
 the sound. We frequently wandered over 
 this wild landscape, and talked about its for- 
 mation during the long years of the glacial 
 age. It was a charming place, especially 
 when the afternoon sun began to make long 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 107 
 
 shadows with the evergreen cedars. One 
 found a few gray old fruit-trees, covered 
 with hoary moss, bearing scattered leaves, 
 which vainly tried to hide bitter, untempting 
 apples, one sided, rough, and rugged as the 
 rocks upon which they fell. The first rays 
 of the rising sun played through the trees 
 and over the rocks. The place was in the 
 midst of things, and yet so secluded that the 
 passer-by could not intrude. It was almost 
 a solitude, filled with the wondrous story of 
 the past, breathing the mysterious spirit of 
 nature, and abounding in exquisite scenery. 
 Several acres of this rock-strewn, cedar- 
 covered land were purchased. A few rods 
 from the bank in front, which overlooks the 
 highway, on a level place, among the over- 
 arching trees, a clearing was made, the soil 
 removed, and a cellar blasted in the ob- 
 durate rock; and then upon a firmly laid 
 foundation a beautiful cottage was built. 
 When everything had been completed, at the 
 close of summer, the place was called " The 
 Cedars." The place was such as a man 
 
108 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 of literary tastes and ambition would select 
 for a home. A library and study looked to- 
 ward the afternoon sun as it mingled the 
 shadows of the rocks and cedars, and con- 
 tained the rare volumes and fine works of 
 art collected during years of travel in other 
 lands. Here he renewed his literary toil. 
 He had studied art, literature, society, and 
 government, among the civilized peoples of 
 the world, and was equipped for new and 
 important work. 
 
 He arranged and edited a dozen volumes, 
 entitled " The Home Library," which con- 
 tained the biographies of the great men of 
 the world, written by men of genius. It 
 was in the scope of his ambition to intro- 
 duce into the homes of America a hio:her 
 grade of reading-matter. What could be 
 more suitable, interesting, and instructive 
 for his countrymen and their children to 
 read, than the lives of the leading men of 
 history, penned by the best authors? He 
 would try to supplant the sentimental life 
 of the hero of fiction by the real lives of 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 109 
 
 such men as Washington, Columbus, Peter 
 the Great, Charlemagne, Julius Csesar, and 
 Oliver Cromwell. To these volumes he 
 added in a short time an edition of more 
 than a dozen volumes of the " French Clas- 
 sics ; " the famous Riverside edition of Ba- 
 con's works ; the novels of Dickens — the 
 most human of writers of romance ; Mil- 
 man's great work on Latin Christianity ; 
 the essays of Thomas Carlyle ; the miscel- 
 lanies of Lord Macaulay ; an edition of 
 Hazlitt's Montaigne ; translations of several 
 of the works of Balzac ; a translation of 
 Madame De Stael's " Germany." In the 
 mean time, he wrote a multitude of Keview 
 Articles, upon various vital questions of 
 that day. 
 
 To this earthly paradise, where nature had 
 been prodigal with her gifts, and where man 
 had reshaped nature, he took his ward and 
 patient, who was his wife only in name, and 
 tried to establish a home. It was a foolish 
 thing to endeavor to conceal her disease 
 from his friends and the world. It was 
 
110 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT, 
 
 an unmanly pride that led him to yield 
 to her entreaties that he would be silent. 
 This, like all untruth, has brought its ap- 
 propriate reward. Yet it must be kept 
 in mind that he was the literary man, the 
 philosophic student, who at that time had no 
 real knowledge of physiology and disease, 
 and who, with all the force of a poetic im- 
 agination, magnified the influence of mind 
 and soul over matter. Perhaps he was 
 not entirely without hope that the light 
 might yet shine upon the spirit sitting in 
 darkness. Although, when he remembered 
 that she had been an epileptic from infancy, 
 and that the best medical skill in Europe 
 had failed to cure her, he seemed to be con- 
 vinced that it no longer did any good to 
 hope against hope. Added to his great lit- 
 erary labors was the difficult task of caring 
 for her. " More than twenty women, old 
 and young, were tried as hired nurses, com- 
 panions, or housekeepers. Not one of them 
 would do. Some of them would flee from 
 the room in terror when my patient had an 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. Ill 
 
 attack. Some would hold up their hands 
 in hopeless bewilderment. Others would sit 
 down and cry with that natural sympathy 
 for suffering which wells up from woman's 
 heart, and for which God be praised." 
 
 In an incurable epileptic, there is dreamy 
 indifference to-day, and to-morrow there will 
 be tearful despondency; on the next day 
 great perversity of motive and conduct ap- 
 pear; then follow increased irritability ac- 
 companied by illusions, hallucinations, and 
 delusions. Then comes the fearful attack 
 which has given the disease the name of " the 
 fallino; sickness." After these hours and 
 days of depression and darkness, the unde- 
 veloped or impaired faculties emerge into a 
 lio-ht that shines with a little more clearness. 
 In the days and hours of trouble the epilep- 
 tic requires constant and faithful watching 
 and protection. In the intervals, when rea- 
 son assumes control to some extent, company 
 may be seen, or a journey undertaken, but 
 only under the care of a faithful attendant. 
 And while he was doino^ the best he could 
 
112 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 under the trying circumstances, there were 
 people, ignorant of the nature of her disease 
 and deficient in Christian charity, who gra- 
 tuitously attributed her moods, her sympa- 
 thies, her symptoms, and her fearful malady 
 to ill-treatment, neglect, and cruelty. 
 
 There sit the solitary hours ; there rise 
 the healing streams ; there moan the wan- 
 dering winds ; there vanish the setting suns, 
 all the summer long ; and the destiny of 
 man unfolds itself like the evolution of a 
 flower which comes and goes, rises and 
 falls, to silence and rest. 
 
XIII. 
 
 Let us stop for a moment and yiew the 
 spectacle of a civil war, gigantic, terrible, 
 and unrelenting, carrying affliction and sor- 
 row to millions of human hearts. Derang- 
 ing the plans and disappointing the hopes 
 of so many, it changed the destiny of a 
 gTeat nation ; it conferred freedom on a 
 despised race, and made the idea of lib- 
 erty regnant in every heart. In all war 
 there are ideas contending for mastery. 
 In the civil war universal liberty was striv- 
 ing against slavery. The pregnant say- 
 ing in the sunny South, during the later 
 years, that it was the rich man's war and 
 the poor man's fight, probes the question 
 deeply. In the South, there was the white 
 man of low estate, as well as the black 
 man in bondage, on the one hand ; and on 
 the other, there was a proud and dom- 
 
114 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 in ant aristocracy, on whose banner was em- 
 blazoned tlie talismanic name — Democracy. 
 In the North were millions of freemen 
 who wanted government by the people and 
 for the people. The principles of self-gov- 
 ernment, they felt, were committed to their 
 care and safe-keeping. Human liberty, with 
 all that it meant for them and their children, 
 was too priceless to give up without a heroic 
 struggle. And we now feel that all the 
 treasure which has been paid and all the 
 blood which has been shed have not been 
 paid and shed in vain. To guard the temple 
 of human liberty the sons of the Republic 
 stood with a wall of bayonets against the 
 aggressive hosts of the slaveholders' aris- 
 tocracy. What was the fight? It was a 
 mighty struggle of the people against an 
 ambitious aristocracy, whose purpose and 
 design were concealed by the magic name 
 which stood for popular government. It 
 will now be written upon the page of his- 
 tory that the people came off victors, — but 
 at a fearful cost of blood and treasure ; that 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 115 
 
 the heroic efforts of the brave men of an 
 unhappy cause ended in defeat and union ; 
 and that the tide of human advancement 
 and progress was not turned backward, but 
 that it will flow on and on, for all time, as 
 we fondly hope, bringing peace, prosperity, 
 knowledge, reverence, liberty, and happi- 
 ness into millions of homes. 
 
 At the time the civil war broke out, Mr. 
 Wight was doing business with five pub- 
 lishing firms ; four of them failed. Lit- 
 erature does not always flourish among men 
 who take to destroying each other. The 
 man who goes to war wants powder and ball 
 and something to eat ; he does not take to 
 poetry and philosoph}^, — he becomes a prac- 
 tical realist. The result was that The Cedars 
 had to be sold to meet pressing obligations. 
 That which had been called home must be 
 left behind. In this world we build for 
 others, yet in more ways than one we carry 
 away with us a mental picture of the habita- 
 tion we build, and the hand of change rests 
 on this picture, too. But there is one picture 
 
116 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 that cannot be taken away from us. It is 
 like the masterpieces, whose form and color 
 and spirit have been seized by genius and 
 spread on canvas. The best points of a 
 landscape — that which is beautiful ; that 
 which speaks, as if with a voice ; that which 
 makes music all the summer long ; that 
 which blends with living motion ; that which 
 has no place for the sentiment of decay ; 
 that which sees the eternity of ceaseless and 
 silent change — come out from the paint- 
 ing to-day, to-morrow, and every other day. 
 And we, too, have that which defies the in- 
 fluence and 23ower of change, it is that part 
 of us which comes from the Eternal — and 
 is immortal. 
 
 He went, perhaps by chance, to settle at 
 Carbondale, in a beautiful upland valley in 
 Pennsylvania, one that reminds us of the 
 famous valley of Wyoming. The home 
 there was called Brookside, and may be de- 
 scribed by extracts from his letters : — 
 
 " The climate is superb. This upland val- 
 ley is one of the most beautiful and one of 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT, 117 
 
 the most healtliy in the world. The air is 
 perfect bahn to my semi-rheumatic nature, 
 and I have been nowhere in America so well 
 as here. 
 
 " The place altogether surpasses my ex- 
 pectations. There is wealth, intelligence, 
 and refinement in the town, accompanied by 
 a real inland simplicity of manner, and a 
 much higher moral tone than that of the 
 great cities. Our neighbors are perfect, as 
 neighbors — friendly, unofficious, right-in- 
 tentioned, well-behaved, and not selfish. I 
 have no fear of their trying to steal my 
 house and lands. 
 
 "My house here is really beautiful and 
 convenient. It is a good deal better in every 
 way than the Rye house. There are ten 
 acres of lawn about the house filled with fine 
 orchard. I have been repainting the house, 
 fixing plumbing, and laying down sixty rods 
 of iron pipe, bringing a spring brook to the 
 house. I have been trouting twice with em- 
 inent success. Trout are good and cheap, 
 and life is pleasant here." 
 
118 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 He lets tlie unchangeable past take care 
 of itself. Regret, like remorse, eats into the 
 heart and soul. And so he looks forward. 
 Satisfied and delighted with his new home, 
 he names it " Brookside." His restless spirit 
 goes to work again. 
 
 " All things have rest ; why should we toil alone, 
 We only toil who are the first of things." 
 
 The following extracts from his letters will 
 show what he was doing about this time : — 
 
 " I am working very hard on Martin's 
 " History of France." I am to have one vol- 
 ume ready for the press by January 1st. 
 The whole work is in seventeen volumes, the 
 greatest historic work of our times. The 
 author has labored on it for thirty years. It 
 is not very easy to translate, and the amount 
 of matter is immense. 
 
 " We have fought the great fight of the 
 war here in Pennsylvania. I was on the 
 stump during the canvass, and have made 
 myself a name in this whole region. It was 
 a hard battle, and the consequences of the 
 victory are immense." 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 119 
 
 This refers to tlie campaign for the re- 
 election of Abraham Lincoln. The great 
 and pathetic personification of the toiling 
 masses, his great heart beat in every 
 word of his passionate appeal to the men 
 of the South : " We are not enemies, but 
 friends. We must not be enemies. Though 
 passion may have strained, it must not break 
 our bonds of affection. The mystic chords 
 of memory, stretching from every battlefield 
 and patriot-grave to every living heart and 
 hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet 
 swell the chorus of the Union when again 
 touched, as they surely will be, by the better 
 angels of our nature." 
 
 Mr. Wight had read medicine in a gen- 
 eral way, as one reads literature and history, 
 for the purpose of acquiring knowledge. 
 This was part of his purpose to become mas- 
 ter of human knowledge, for he was ambi- 
 tious to be learned in all things. At this 
 time it occurred to him that he would com- 
 plete his medical education. Then he could 
 apply his knowledge to practical use, for the 
 
120 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 benefit of others, and for the advantage of 
 himself. In 1864 he went to New York, and 
 attended a course of lectures at the College 
 of Physicians and Surgeons, one of the fa- 
 mous medical schools in America. In the 
 following year he attended another course 
 of lectures at the Long Island College Hos- 
 pital, which had been instrumental in intro- 
 ducing improved methods of clinical instruc- 
 tion. At this school, which is located in the 
 city of Brooklyn, he received the degree of 
 Doctor of Medicine, in 1865. 
 
 He returned to Carbondale, and began the 
 practice of his profession, and was successful 
 from the outset. He was a nurse, as well as 
 a physician, for he had been trained in a 
 school where duty and pity dominated the 
 heart. What office is greater than that per- 
 formed by the magnanimous and sympathetic 
 physician ? To help when help we can, to 
 soothe and comfort when there is no hope, 
 make the highest duty of man to man. 
 
 To practice medicine, to make books, or 
 to " take the stump " is easy enough for an 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 121 
 
 aspiring and vigorous nature, but add to this 
 a great sorrow and a consuming care, and 
 we need not be surprised to hear a complaint. 
 We make extracts from letters : — 
 
 " It has become impossible to take care of 
 my ' charge ' any longer in a domestic way. 
 The asylum is the proper place for her. The 
 insanity springing from her disease is becom- 
 ing more and more manifest ; it is more and 
 more troublesome to take care of her ; in 
 short, it is a moral impossibility to solve the 
 tough problem in any other way. 
 
 " It is a sad necessity, but I see no help 
 for it. It is a burden that I have borne for 
 a dozen years with a moral heroism no mor- 
 tal has any means of knowing ; but I cannot 
 bear it longer — it would kill me, and 
 then she would have to be placed in an 
 asylum under less favorable circumstances 
 and with less care." 
 
 There was a correspondence in regard to 
 this matter, with a view to placing the unfor- 
 tunate in the care of a good asylum. Some 
 letters written by the author, partly from a 
 6J 
 
122 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 professional standpoint, partly witli kind 
 suggestions, and partly with gentle admoni- 
 tions, had such an effect as to make her 
 more manageable during her lucid moments. 
 Again he wrote : — 
 
 " My friends, coming to know the situation, 
 advised an asylum. My heart revolted 
 against that, and it still revolts against it, 
 although I have had, for a long time, an 
 arrangement with a noble friend of mine, 
 the honored head of a New England asylum, 
 to care for her, in case of my death or some 
 imperative necessity." Then adds : " I shall 
 care for her as long as it is possible." 
 
 He had made the mystic journey of the 
 East, visiting many lands. Then he had 
 crossed the storm-troubled Atlantic. After 
 that he built a home among the cedars. He 
 left the evergreens and they shall know him 
 no more. He looks toward the setting sun, 
 and finds a new home in one of the upland 
 valleys of Pennsylvania. Then he leaves 
 that too, never to return. Indeed, there 
 is nothing in this world more eternal than 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 123 
 
 change. He now turns his face again to- 
 wards the West. Even yet he clings to her 
 whom he had years before made the idol 
 of his heart. She cannot make him happy, 
 and without her he is miserable. Would 
 that we could cure the incurable ! Would 
 that Fate might retrieve the unhappy dis- 
 aster ! 
 
 " The hills are shadows and they flow 
 
 From form to form, and nothmg stands ; 
 They melt like mist, the solid lands. 
 Like clouds they shape themselves and go." 
 
 " I would not let one cry 
 Whom I could save ! How can it be that Brahm 
 Would make a world and keep it miserable, 
 Since, if all-powerful, he leaves it so, 
 He is not good, and if not powerful. 
 He is not God ? . . . 
 . . . Mine eyes have seen enough ! " 
 
XIV. 
 
 When we write history, we must write 
 the truth ; we may not write things as we 
 wish them to be ; we may not conceal things 
 that are essential ; we must relate what has 
 been, as nearly as possible in the way that 
 it occurred. It is just so with biography. 
 We may not omit important facts and events ; 
 for it may happen that what we could 
 wish to be otherwise may indeed be that 
 which is most essential. Sometimes it hap- 
 pens that the better part of our nature is 
 brought out in what we deem to be our 
 calamities, and that our misfortunes which 
 we shrink from show us to best advantage, 
 although we could wish that they had not 
 come to us. In order that the meaning of 
 the evidence may not be changed, as it re- 
 lates to certain facts, it is given in such 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 125 
 
 form as to make it more like autobiography. 
 This evidence is made up of extracts from 
 letters, as well as matter written for the 
 press. 
 
 " At length, from a respectable family 
 that had known me from my youth, came, 
 half a dozen years ago, a good lady, edu- 
 cated, intelligent, refined, to spend the sum- 
 mer with us. She at once showed herself 
 capable of taking care of my incurable epi- 
 leptic patient in an efficient and friendly 
 manner. She won the confidence and sym- 
 pathy of my poor child, and won my ever- 
 lasting gratitude. 
 
 " An efficient friend could not always 
 remain with us. My nominal wife, my 
 epileptic ward, could not bear to part with 
 her ' Aunt Kate,' as she familiarly and 
 affectionately called her. A recurrence to 
 the old method of housekeeping was an im- 
 possibility. Boarding was attended with the 
 same difficulties. Two persons were neces- 
 sary for the care of an epileptic who could 
 never be left safely alone, except for some 
 hours on particular days. 
 
126 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 " A new jDlan was proposed by my patient 
 herself ; at first in jest, then in earnest. 
 The nominal tie between us should be sev- 
 ered, and then she might have two, instead 
 of one, to take care of her. It will be said 
 that no wife could make such a proposition. 
 Verily, no wife could. Let it be remem- 
 bered that she was wife only in name ; in 
 reality, adopted child. She had come to 
 regard it as religiously wrong to think of 
 fulfilling the relations of wife, in her con- 
 dition. She ardently desired to be released 
 from the responsibilities of a station she 
 could not fill. When asked by me — with 
 the ulterior object of divorce in view — to 
 assume the place required of her by the 
 esteemed bond of our union, she revolted, and 
 remained extremely unhappy till she discov- 
 ered my true meaning. A simple attestation 
 of this attitude on her part satisfied the 
 letter of the law. There was no witness 
 against her, except in the technical sense of 
 the courts. The testimony, as seen from 
 this point of view of our real life, was for 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 127 
 
 her, and as slie wished it. The truth, the 
 whole truth, and nothing but the truth, was 
 told by the only one who had the secret of 
 our hearts. That truth satisfied the law's 
 letter, while its just and pure spirit was sat- 
 isfied by the purity and justice of our aims. 
 " In order, however, to satisfy some scru- 
 ples of conscience, we made a first attempt 
 to procure a divorce on the naked merits of 
 the case, under that clause in the Indiana 
 law giving the judge power to release from 
 the bonds of matrimony when, in his opinion, 
 it is best for all parties concerned. The 
 cause of our failure is not a matter of public 
 interest. We succeeded elsewhere. Two 
 months after the divorce was procured I 
 married again. The divorced wife stood by 
 our side with her attorney during the cere- 
 mony, to signify her approbation in the 
 strongest manner. The marriage was pri- 
 vate, in our own rooms. As the clergyman 
 pronounced the last words of the service, she 
 said, in a clear, firm tone : ' It is all just 
 as I want it.' The marriage was solemnized 
 
128 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 in the presence of a dozen Christian men 
 and women, representatives of some of the 
 best families in the city, who would not have 
 sanctioned an iniquitous thing. The clergy- 
 man, pastor of one of the leading churches 
 in the place, who performed the ceremony, 
 had lived in rooms adjoining ours all winter, 
 and knew us well. 
 
 " At the close of the ceremony, myself 
 and wife adoj^ted the former wife in the most 
 solemn religious manner, promising to keep 
 her with us, to care for her, cherish, and 
 support her as long as she is spared to us, 
 as we hope for mercy at the judgment seat. 
 That adoption is in the form of a document, 
 signed by us, witnessed by those present at 
 the ceremony, and left in the hands of a 
 distinguished clergyman, open at all times 
 to right-minded persons for inspection. Be- 
 fore our marriage we signed legal bonds, 
 binding ourselves in heavy penalties, to the 
 same effect. These bonds are in the hands 
 of her attorney, where they will remain, and 
 may be seen by properly-intentioned people. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 129 
 
 " All these details are painful to me in 
 the extreme, but the wide circulation given 
 by respectable journals to the attack leaves 
 me no alternative. In Christian charity I 
 • have been willing to believe that sympathy 
 for an afflicted, helpless woman, that indig- 
 nation for her supposed wrongs, were motives 
 of the writer of that article. Whoever you 
 are that wrote it, I assure you, in the blessed 
 spirit of forgiveness, that your sympathy 
 seems to its unfortunate object but an im- 
 pertinent mockery. In her disease, which 
 has been laid upon her, perhaps the heaviest 
 physical calamity of mortal life, she is sur- 
 rounded with tried affection in those who 
 have cheerfully suffered, and will continue 
 cheerfully to suffer for her sake, and she 
 begs, for the dear Redeemer's sake, to be 
 spared the meddlesomeness of those who are 
 strangers, and necessarily must be strangers, 
 to our inner life. 
 
 " Thus, with the Maker of heaven and 
 earth looking into my heart, have I written 
 the simple truth in regard to this matter. 
 
 G* 
 
130 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 If the world, with exact knowledge of the 
 facts, blames me, I shall bear it meekly, 
 hopefully. ^ 
 
 " My poor child is more than satisfied. 
 She is positively happy about the arrange- 
 ment. I have taken the only course possible 
 whereby I could longer stand between her 
 and a perpetual asylum. I thank God for 
 a noble-hearted, self-sacrificing woman to 
 share my burden with me. 
 
 " Besides, my defense brings me by every 
 mail letters from some of the noblest men 
 and women in the land, all of them express- 
 ing sympathy, many of them making offers 
 of service. 
 
 " Many good men and women are, at the 
 present time, intimate with the family, and 
 cheerfully testify that she is tenderly cared 
 for, and is as happy as her physical condition 
 will permit. Wise neighboring women, who 
 are intimate with the household, declare 
 truly that she has never mentally developed 
 out of childhood into womanhood, and has 
 no conception of what a wifes love for a 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 131 
 
 husband means. Those who know the 
 parties best give them credit for Christian 
 virtue and goodness. 
 
 " Fortunately, however, the greater num- 
 ber of households are still sanctuaries of pure 
 affection, homes of domestic virtue, nurseries 
 of patriotism, shrines of morality, fountains 
 of chastity. Most married pairs cannot com- 
 prehend why people should wish to be di- 
 vorced. Their greatest happiness is in their 
 union ; no unhappiness would be so great to 
 them as separation. They toil on patiently 
 amid the storms and trials of life, comforted 
 by an affection as constant as the throbbing 
 of the heart. The benediction of heaven is 
 on their labors, and the prattle of children 
 by the hearthstone is music to them sweeter 
 than the symphonies of Beethoven]or Mozart, 
 more sacred than the Stabat Mater or the 
 Miserere. The rewards of obedience to the 
 Almighty are great, even in this world. 
 
 '"In the Christian family,' to use the 
 beautiful language of Clement of Alexan- 
 dria, ' the mother is the glory of the chil- 
 dren, the wife is the glory of her husband, 
 
132 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 both are the glory of the wife, God is the 
 giory of all together.' ' How can I paint,' 
 says Tertullian, 'the happiness of a mar- 
 riage which the church ratifies, . . . the ben- 
 ediction seals, angels announce, the Father 
 declares valid ? . . . What a union of two 
 believers, one hope, one vow, one discipline, 
 and one worship ! . . . They pray together, 
 fast together, instruct, exhort, and support 
 each other. They go together to the church 
 of God, and to the table of the Lord. They 
 share each other's tribulations and persecu- 
 tions. Neither conceals anything from the 
 other; neither avoids, neither annoys the 
 other. They delight to visit the sick, supply 
 the needy, give alms without constraint, and 
 in daily zeal lay their offerings before the 
 altar without scruple or hindrance. . . . 
 Psalms and hymns they sing together, and 
 they vie with each other in praising God. 
 Christ rejoices when He sees and hears this. 
 He gives them his peace. When two are 
 together in his name, there is He ; and 
 where He is, there the Evil One cannot 
 come.' " 
 
XV. 
 
 After long, toilsome, and weary years, 
 with their experience, success, and disap- 
 pointment, from the time he set out homeless 
 to make his way in the world, animated with 
 pure motives and dominated by high re- 
 solves, manfully contending against the blows 
 of fortune, seeking the association of the 
 learned, longing for the company of the wise, 
 needing the presence of gifted minds, wan- 
 dering through the mystic lands of the East, 
 awaiting a destiny commensurate with his 
 ambition, tossed by the storms of a varied 
 life, gaining the approval ol noble souls, 
 calumniated by the ignorant and unthink- 
 ing, trying to build for himself a home, turn- 
 ing with mournful courage toward the past, 
 looking into the unknown future with hope 
 and faith, solving rightly and well, as he 
 
134 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 thought and believed, the " tough problem " 
 of his destiny, he would now dwell under his 
 own vine and fig tree. 
 
 Only memories would now cluster around 
 Brookside. It was a thing of the past. He 
 went to New Albany, Indiana, where he re- 
 mained a time with a few faithful friends. 
 Thence, in the year 1867, he went to Ocono- 
 mowoc, Wisconsin, and there settled, as he 
 hoj)ed and supposed, away from the turmoil 
 and strife of the world. There he began 
 again the practice of his profession. Rest 
 and relief had not yet come. Outrageous 
 fortune would not be appeased. He was 
 pursued by invisible enemies, and open hos- 
 tility met him at every step. A man of less 
 strength and courage would have gone down 
 under the weight of calumny, and one who 
 had not the sense of being right would have 
 retreated, when so many had it in their 
 hearts to condemn. 
 
 He had been confirmed at New Albany by 
 Bishop Talbot. He and his wife attended 
 church at Oconomowoc, and both went to 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 135 
 
 the communion. Some objections were raised, 
 and the matter was referred to good Bishop 
 Kemper, of Wisconsin. He said that he had 
 no ohjection. The Eector, Rev. Ezra Jones, 
 was a true, firm, and noble friend. His 
 good wife, when a widow, writing to her 
 husband's brother long years after, said : 
 " And so Dr. Wight is gone, at rest at last, 
 after a very varied life. Your brother was 
 a true friend to him when most others con- 
 demned. That he was a good man, I never 
 doubted." What a blessed thing true and 
 tried friendship is in this world ; not that 
 which comes from the thunders of Sinai, but 
 that which springs from the benedictions of 
 Bethlehem. 
 
 The character of this friend is indicated 
 by an episode in his life. Born in New 
 Hampshire, educated at Vermont University, 
 prepared for the ministry in New York city, 
 and a missionary in Minnesota, he became 
 rector of an aristocratic country parish in 
 South Carolina. After the election of Mr. 
 Lincoln, the spirit of sectional feeling was so 
 
136 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 intense that he was warned to leave the 
 South, since he announced that he was for the 
 Union. " Such was the state of feeling then 
 in South Carolina that some of his parish- 
 ioners who connived at his escape incurred 
 danger of violence from more ferocious 
 neighbors on account of their humane act. 
 He sent away his wife with a babe in her 
 arms, and three or four small children by 
 her side, on the train for Louisville. He 
 and his Southern friends judged that they 
 would be safer without him than with him. 
 Leaving his furniture and his books behind 
 him, he started off alone, and after a long 
 and weary journey through the mountains, 
 found his way to the uprising North. He 
 never would relate, even to his most intimate 
 friends, all the incidents of that journey. 
 Separated from his wife and babes, not 
 knowing whether he should behold them 
 again in this world, hunted by men madly 
 thirsting for the blood of their Northern 
 brethren, footsore, discouraged, anxious for 
 his country, half broken-hearted, he strug- 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 137 
 
 gled forward amid the wild preparations for 
 civil war, protected — again to use his own 
 reverent phrase — by the good Lord. At 
 length he had the happiness of again 
 meeting his family in Vermont. In the 
 perils and hardships of that escape from 
 South Carolina a delicate constitution re- 
 ceived so rude a shock that he never fully 
 recovered from its effects. Subsequently he 
 settled in the beautiful village of Oconomo- 
 woc, in this State. The war ended as he 
 had foretold to the hotspurs of his South 
 Carolina parish, with disaster to them. 
 Many of them perished on the field of battle. 
 The collapse of the rebellion left their wid- 
 ows and orphans in poverty. Again and 
 again has that good minister, scarcely letting 
 his left hand know what his right hand did, 
 sent back from his scanty earnings aid to 
 the poor of his old Southern parish ; poor 
 now, affluent before the war. Individuals 
 there who took part in driving him away on 
 account of his Union sentiments have, since 
 the close of the rebellion, written him, in an- 
 
138 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 swer to his charity, letters o£ gratitude and 
 repentance that would melt the heart of a 
 stone." 
 
 " I was sick and ye visited me. Inasmuch 
 as ye have done it to the least of these, 
 ye have done it unto me." Heaven only 
 knows how many good deeds are recorded 
 elsewhere, that are not written here. How 
 wonderful will be the reading on the pages, 
 when the great book of Christian altruism 
 shall be opened ! It will disclose an epic 
 greater than any ever yet written by man. 
 It will call forth an anthem more pathetic 
 than any ever heard by mortal ears. It will 
 invoke a laudamus incomparably above all 
 that it has entered into the heart of man to 
 conceive. When sickness and injury enter 
 the hut or palace, the physician goes with 
 an "equal foot" and knocks at the door of 
 both, to bring such aid as men can to those 
 who are in need, and shrinks not from con- 
 tagion, or pestilence, or sudden danger ; 
 magnanimous, faithful, altruistic, he performs 
 an immortal work, as he visits the least of 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 139 
 
 the sons of man. The deep shadows of the 
 night fall over his way ; the winds sing or 
 moan among the leaves as he passes ; the 
 storm beats upon him without pity ; the un- 
 feeling cold benumbs the fibres of his body ; 
 the silent stars keep watch above his head, 
 and then he goes into the very presence of 
 pain and grief, his deed being twice blessed 
 if he can heal them both, and his work re- 
 ceiving a benediction when he cannot cure. 
 He stands side by side with that other doctor 
 who ministers to the pain and grief of the 
 mind and soul. 
 
 Dr. O. W. Wight undertook the arduous 
 duties of a country practice, going at all 
 times, day and night, in sunshine and in 
 storm, to succor and relieve the sick and 
 wounded. Those who had been injured or 
 were sick appealed to his sympathy. There 
 was sure to be a cheerful response. In the 
 sick-room he was always welcome. It was 
 a blessed thing for him to aid and help 
 others. He inspired confidence and hope, 
 and when hope fled, there was left a feeling 
 
140 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 that no one could do more. He had an ex- 
 cellent measure of success, all that any one 
 could have there. He had the success which 
 comes to the true physician, which is not 
 measured by gain, but that which comes to 
 the good and faithful servant. He was a 
 great worker, and work for him was worship. 
 In this way he sought the evolution of his 
 mind and soul, and he seemed to be the 
 same cheerful and hopeful person after he 
 had been assailed by the slings and arrows 
 of fortune. 
 
 The days were again tranquil. He had 
 left the stormy sea. It was pleasant to be 
 near the borders of the lakes of Wisconsin. 
 Memory ran back to the lakes of the English 
 poets, and recalled the vision of Lake Erie. 
 Then toil for the good of others threw for- 
 getfulness over the painful memories of the 
 past. It seemed as if life was new again. 
 As he has left the impression, — perhaps 
 almost a story, a kind of tradition, — one 
 can see him standing on the bridge which 
 spans the clear water falling into the little 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 141 
 
 lake. He seems to be thinking of his mystic 
 journey in the East and combining its visions 
 with the pictures of the newer West. 
 
 " Hence, iu a season of calm weather, 
 
 Though inland far we be, 
 Our souls have a sight of that immortal sea 
 
 Which brought us hither, 
 
 Can in a moment travel thither ; 
 And see the children sport upon the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore^ 
 
 " And I have felt 
 A presence which disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interposed, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
 A motion, and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, 
 And rolls throug-h all thing's." 
 
 Time goes on. It is going on always. 
 Space expands. It expands everywhere. 
 Time's on-going cannot cease. Space can- 
 not limit its expansion. Yesterday becomes 
 to-day, and to-day will have another shape 
 
142 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 to-morrow. We are here to-day, and will 
 
 be somewhere else to-morrow ; and so we 
 
 move in the abyss of endless expansion. As 
 
 it were, we are on a ship which sails upon 
 
 the great sea of life. This sea is fathomless 
 
 everywhere, and boundless on every hand. 
 
 Now comes the storm. After that we have 
 
 the calm, and even then " the waters heave 
 
 around us," and we may hold it good to love 
 
 the tranquil places betwixt the storms, and 
 
 drink in all their delights. Yet we may 
 
 hold it well, perhaps, to dread the storms, 
 
 and shrink from their embrace. But with 
 
 Him whose blessed feet walked upon the 
 
 troubled sea, we may have no fear. 
 
 In Palestine, on the main road to Hebron, 
 
 a small town of great antiquity is situated 
 
 upon a limestone ridge. The name of this 
 
 town is Bethlehem, or the House of Bread. 
 
 Of this place Shakespeare sang : — 
 
 " Over whose acres walked those blessed feet 
 Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed 
 For our advantage on the bitter cross." 
 
 In later years, a Bethlehem in the sub- 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 143 
 
 urbs of old London was seized and made 
 a prison for the unfortunate who had " lost 
 their reason," and the beautiful word " Beth- 
 lehem " was crushed into the madman's word 
 " Bedlam." Ah ! which shall it be, Bed- 
 lam, or Bethlehem ? She had been his be- 
 trothed ; she had been his wife ; she was 
 his patient ; she was his ward ; she was his 
 child ; she was his sister. She was unfor- 
 tunate ; she became more and more un- 
 fortunate ; she can no longer live with the 
 world ; she may not see the madman's Bed- 
 lam ; she may go to Bethlehem. Thither, 
 after all these long years, he takes his 
 adopted daughter, — only those who knew 
 him well could tell how kindly and with 
 what tearless grief, — and leaves her in care 
 of the blessed sisters. 
 
 Soon after there came the brief announce- 
 ment, — My w if e is at rest. He laid her at 
 rest with his children, for they had also gone. 
 He sold out everything, and owed no man 
 anything. He was again homeless. He 
 had only one friend left, — his pet dog, — 
 
144 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 linking him to those he loved and who had 
 departed. 
 
 " Should the whole frame of earth by mward throes 
 Be wrenched, or fire come down from far to scorch 
 Her pleasant habitations, and dry up 
 Old ocean, in his bed left singed and bare, 
 ^ Yet would the living Presence still subsist." 
 
XVI. 
 
 Late in the autumn of 1871, O. W. 
 Wight went to Brooklyn, where he remained 
 during the winter, with his brother, J. S. 
 Wight, and where he secured needed rest 
 and recuperation. He had given up his 
 practice at Oconomowoc, and was again 
 homeless ; and yet he was looking forward, 
 in the same hopeful, cheerful way, as ever. 
 At the same time he seemed to feel that he 
 had received a severe blow, that he had suf- 
 fered a great calamity, that it was cruel to 
 take away from him everything in this world 
 he held dear. But his thoughts were busy 
 with problems relating to the great North- 
 west, and he took more than a passing inter- 
 est in its affairs. He had faith in its re- 
 sources and possibilities, as well as the men 
 who had gone there to live. He looked upon 
 7 
 
146 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 these men as having industry, enterprise, 
 ambition, and personal liberty. The broad 
 acres of fertile sea-girt lands were sustaining 
 a people who had faith in themselves and 
 hope in the future. The well to-do New 
 Englander, the toiling Scandinavian, the 
 home-loving German, converged there, and 
 mingled their life blood into a stream of 
 vital unity. This stream flows on into the 
 future, bearing upon its tide the grandest 
 hopes and possibilities. Divergent and dif- 
 ferentiated branches of the Aryan race were 
 uniting with a common j^ui'pose, and would 
 have a common destiny. Their gain and 
 their elevation were full of meaning to all 
 men who toil. 
 
 On his way east, while passing through 
 the State of Pennsylvania, he had the njis- 
 fortune to lose his pet dog, which acciden- 
 tally escaped from the car, as the train 
 stopped at one of the interior towns. The 
 train went on, and the two friends were sep- 
 arated. One went on to Brooklyn ; the 
 other wandered about the strange streets. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 147 
 
 But so strong was his attachment to the now 
 homeless dog, that he went back and hunted 
 him up, finding him in the care of a kind 
 woman. He returned with him and both 
 were happy. And then he wrote the ro- 
 mance of his pet dog. But like so many 
 other things in this world, both romance and 
 dog have disappeared. 
 
 While in Brooklyn he wrote short articles 
 for the Milwaukee Sentinel, mostly on polit- 
 ical topics. He had been born and brought 
 up a Democrat. He was one of the people, 
 and was for them and their government. 
 But when a slaveholder's aristocracy put on 
 the garb of Democracy, he allied himself 
 with the Republican Party and helped elect 
 Abraham Lincoln. When the power of this 
 aristocracy had been broken, when the Union 
 had been preserved, and when certain Kepub- 
 lican leaders became the willing instruments 
 of monopoly, and were reaching after power 
 and influence which were almost imperial 
 and absolute, he longed for the Democracy 
 of the immortal founders of the Republic. 
 
148 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 When the rights and liberties of the toiling 
 masses were imperiled he moved with fear- 
 less energy to their defense. He was against 
 the mind that falsified the principles of eter- 
 nal justice. He spurned the man who did 
 not come with an open hand into the pres- 
 ence of those who toil. He had no sympathy 
 with those who heap up fabulous wealth from 
 the earnings of the men who swing the axe 
 and hammer, who dig and plough the soil, 
 who drill and blast the rocks, who build of 
 wood and stone, and who are the hope of 
 their country's highest good. 
 
 The following paragraphs, taken from his 
 address to representative citizens of Wiscon- 
 sin, contain the highest political wisdom, as 
 well as the best principles of statesmanship : 
 
 " In calling this convention to order, it 
 seems to me necessary to give a reason for 
 our political course. Briefly as possible I 
 will state the principles which ought to guide 
 us in adhering to, or in departing from, ex- 
 isting parties. 
 
 " Man's first allegiance is to the eternal 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 149 
 
 source o£ justice. The Ruler of the universe 
 claims and enforces our fealty. A higher 
 law, symbolized in the order of the world, 
 woven into the web of intellectual and moral 
 life, ever demands human obedience. To 
 the will of the Sovereign of heaven and earth 
 every mortal must yield assent. 
 
 " The state is founded upon this abiding 
 government of the world. The architects of 
 human governments build more or less wisely, 
 according to their clearer or obscurer vision 
 of the indestructible good. As a rule, gov- 
 ernments are abiding in proportion to the 
 amount of God's justice which they embody. 
 
 " It is, therefore, in the nature of things, 
 that men owe only a secondary allegiance to 
 the state. We are bound in obedience to 
 the government under which we live, so long 
 as that government conforms to the higher 
 law. When, in the progress of society, the 
 judgment and the conscience of the public 
 are developed into antagonism with the gov- 
 ernment, it is the duty of a people to change 
 an older and lower form of government for 
 
150 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 a higher and better. The right of revolution 
 is founded upon the obligation of fealty to 
 unchangeable justice. Our fathers broke 
 their allegiance to the government under 
 which they were born, and instituted another, 
 in order to secure for themselves and their 
 posterity the broader liberty that springs 
 from the embodiment of ampler justice in 
 the state. They recurred to the common 
 duty of mankind to translate their progres- 
 sive enlightenment into civil and political 
 institutions. The Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence expresses in lofty form the ethics of 
 revolution, and stands as the highest chapter 
 in the gospel of liberty. . . . 
 
 " As the fabled Egyptian phoenix, when 
 it had grown old, burned itself in the temple 
 of the sun, but from the ashes sprang up a 
 new phoenix, destined to live its allotted 
 time ; so from the embers of a perished party, 
 consumed in the flame of a civil war, rises 
 the new party, which is already rejoicing in 
 its strength. The party of spoliation, the 
 revived Federal Part}'^, may rake unmolested 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 151 
 
 in the ashes for proofs of vanished political 
 sins. Leaving antagonism behind us, ours 
 shall be the noble task of restoring wise and 
 frugal government, or restoring peace, lib- 
 erty, and safety to the whole nation. 
 
 " They tell us there are no issues requiring 
 the formation of a new political organization. 
 As the Democratic Party perished by becom- 
 ing the instrument of slavery, so the Repub- 
 lican Party is perishing as the instrument of 
 monopoly. A spontaneous organization took 
 place among the people, fifteen or twenty 
 years ago, to resist the encroachments of the 
 slave power. The like process is going on 
 to-day to resist the power of monopoly. The 
 principles of Jefferson were violated towards 
 four millions of black men. From the mouth 
 of their labor was taken the bread it earned. 
 The same principles are now violated towards 
 ten millions of toiling white men. From the 
 mouth of their labor is taken much of the 
 bread it earns. While two hundred millions 
 of dollars are collected from the people by a 
 tariff, for the expenses of government, a 
 
152 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 greater sum is transferred from their hard 
 earnings to the coffers of a few, through the 
 monopolies created by the same tariff. The 
 producers of the country are paying every 
 year dividends on a thousand millions of 
 ' watered ' railway stocks and construction 
 ' rins: ' steals. We have not at this time a 
 wise and frugal government that restrains 
 men from injuring one another. We have 
 instead, an unwise and expensive paternalism 
 that does not leave men free to regulate their 
 own pursuits of industry and improvement. 
 Arrayed against the people at this very hour 
 are corporations whose aggregate income 
 greatly exceeds that of the national govern- 
 ment. The party in' power is allied with 
 these corporations. It can no more break 
 with them than the old Democracy could 
 break with the owners of slaves. It was 
 necessary to organize a great political party 
 to deliver four millions of ignorant blacks 
 from injustice ; still more is it now necessary 
 to organize a new party to deliver from in- 
 justice ten millions of intelligent white men. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 153 
 
 No issues ! The uprising of tlie people, 
 north, south, east, and west will soon teach 
 the old leaders that it is time to stop fighting 
 in the graveyard of the past, to heed the 
 duties of the living present. 
 
 " Representatives of the citizens of Wis- 
 consin, I have encountered many obstacles in 
 my endeavor to bring you here together. 
 Earnest conviction has alone nerved me to 
 the task. I am not an office seeker. I 
 never held an office in my life. Make no 
 effort here or elsewhere to nominate me for 
 an office, for I shall not accept. Moreover, 
 if any man comes among you seeking his 
 own self, let him lose it. Animated by a 
 common purpose of elevating the tone of 
 public life, of redressing wrongs, of deliver- 
 ing from oppression, of rebuking corruption, 
 of establishing equal justice for all, let us 
 become genuine, disinterested political re- 
 formers." 
 
 One characteristic of O. W. Wight, ap- 
 parent in his life, and often mentioned by 
 himself, was that he looked upon what came 
 
 7* 
 
154 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 to his hand to do as a problem to be solved. 
 He put all his purpose, energy, and strength 
 into his work, with the idea of making it the 
 best possible under the circumstances. It 
 was a problem to solve ; it was a piece of 
 work to do. In the work he found his duty, 
 and that satisfied his heart. In the problem 
 he found intellectual activity, and that satis- 
 fied his brain. In the consentaneous results 
 of both the duty and the problem he found 
 a sense of approbation and encouragement, 
 and that satisfied his soul. And when he 
 had mastered the elements and principles of 
 one thing, he moved uj)on the citadel of 
 another. So when the old leaders, unmind- 
 ful of the dangers and perils, refused to 
 weigh anchor, declining to set sail upon the 
 great sea of political reform, he left them 
 to wander and dig among the ghosts and ashes 
 of the dead past. He had performed his 
 duty ; he had solved the problem for himself ; 
 as they would not follow, he did not remain. 
 He " stumj)ed " the State of Wisconsin, 
 in the interests of political reform. There 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W, WIGHT, 155 
 
 was no doubt about the venality and corrup- 
 tion that had invaded the Republican Party. 
 That party had, in a great measure, served its 
 purpose, and was outliving its usefulness. 
 It began to be a house divided against itself. 
 The Democratic Party had been put out of 
 power and had been severely punished for 
 being on the wrong side of the great move- 
 ments which make for human progress. Did 
 this party forget nothing? Did its leadeis 
 disdain to learn anything new? His object 
 was to seek needed reform in the reorganiza- 
 tion of this party. And it was largely 
 through his energy and efforts that the Dem- 
 ocrats of Wisconsin, after years of defeat, 
 were led to a new victory. His practical, 
 logical, and eloquent speeches during the 
 campaign, especially among the Grangers, 
 helped to defeat the party allied to monopoly. 
 If corruption was in the Republican Party, 
 the spirit of office seeking was still in the 
 Democratic Party ; the latter did not want 
 to be reformed, and the former would not be 
 reformed. How often would the chickens of 
 
156 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 both parties have been gathered under the 
 wings of reform, but they would not. Odious 
 and unscrupulous men of both parties wage 
 a war of extermination, and those who are 
 left to tell the tale, combine to rob, op- 
 press, and spoliate the people. In its evo- 
 lution, human nature is greater than parties 
 and governments. The leaven of bad men 
 in parties and governments is more perni- 
 cious and harmful than all other influences 
 combined. The man who rules for his own 
 aggrandisement is an ignominious failure. 
 The machinery of government must be run 
 for the people. The highest trust under 
 heaven is to be the administrator of the 
 affairs of a great and free people. One can 
 never cease to love and admire — after the 
 immortal founder of the republic — its no 
 less immortal restorer. And every good 
 citizen prays that God may always raise up 
 such a ruler for the people. 
 
 Governor Taylor, in 1875, *' with the ad- 
 vice and consent of the Senate," appointed 
 Dr. O. W. Wight " chief geologist " of the 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 157 
 
 State of Wisconsin. This position brought 
 him into notice as an organizer of work, and 
 as an executive officer. It also in new ways 
 brought him into new relations with impor- 
 tant questions of science. He extended his 
 studies from man to the soil on which man 
 lives. He was interested, not only in the 
 history of man, but also in the history of 
 man's planet. The evolution of one must 
 be co-related to the evolution of the other. 
 He now continued to read that mighty book, 
 whose successive leaves the great Author 
 imprinted and folded around the evolving 
 earth, and on which were written imperish- 
 ably the characters that reveal to us the steps 
 of the slowly going changes to be wrought 
 by the wise plans made before the founda- 
 tions were laid. To read this book rightly 
 is to read the secrets of the universe. To 
 accept the lessons that it teaches is to believe 
 in and profit by the text of modern revela- 
 tion ; and so knowledge and reverence grow 
 more and more side by side. 
 
 The soil must give food and drink to man. 
 
158 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 It must be mantled by the mobile air. It 
 must be watered by the moving clouds. It 
 must be broken by the winter frosts. It must 
 be ploughed by the creeping worm. It must 
 be manipulated by the busy beam of the 
 solar orb, and it must be cultivated by the 
 active hand of man. That which is taken 
 away must be given back. The fountain of 
 fertility must not run dry. Careless, waste- 
 ful, indifferent man, who can, if he will, 
 make the desert blossom as the rose, must 
 be taught to conserve the productiveness of 
 his acres. He must understand the ques- 
 tion of supply and demand, as it affects 
 the soil on which he lives. He builds and 
 plants for to-day and to-morrow as well. 
 As he inherits the past, so he must give 
 the present to the future. He cannot im- 
 poverish his acres with impunity, for his 
 wastefulness and ^^arsimony will leave a 
 crop of thorns and thistles to his children. 
 He is a grand embodiment of the law of 
 correlation and the conservation of energy, 
 and he will be held to a strict accountability 
 for his part in the evolution of the race. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 159 
 
 One of the great problems affecting tlie 
 destiny of man on this planet relates to the 
 conservation of the fertility of the soil. The 
 man who goes hungry becomes demoralized 
 and degraded. Hold it as you will, the 
 brain that is suffering from mal-nutrition 
 is in a poor condition to rise to elevated 
 thoughts of God's universe and his provi- 
 dence. The heart that pulsates to the foot- 
 steps of Want does not always appreciate 
 the sublime doctrine of charity. The mind 
 and soul which should sing together, will 
 each make a different music, if the body 
 which they inhabit and which dies daily, is 
 not daily rebuilt, by means of those beauti- 
 tiful gifts which mother earth alone can 
 bestow. 
 
 Blessed is the man who plants his corn 
 and reaps his grain, with the archway of 
 heaven bending over his patient head. He 
 is thrice blessed : blest in the faith that the 
 harvest will surely come ; blest in his daily 
 toil that brings him each morning to a re- 
 newal of his life : blest in his reverential 
 
160 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 study of the sublimest of all works. Some- 
 where it has been said, that God did plan 
 and shape the circling worlds ; did contrive 
 the gladness of the spring; did make the 
 mellow light of autumn ; did let fall the 
 crystal flakes of winter ; did send forth the 
 cooling, renovating winds ; did engrave the 
 records upon the folded rocks ; and " for 
 our advantage," did write the Holy Books : 
 And all these things are meant for him who 
 turns and tills the fruitful soil. 
 
XYII. 
 
 Anothek field of labor now opens to the 
 Doctor, — one wliich seems to be more to his 
 taste, — one in which he can apply his talent 
 for study and investigation, and one which 
 will enable him to display his executive 
 ability. He is appointed health officer of 
 the city of Milwaukee. He at once laid 
 hold of the great principle of prevejitive 
 medicine. Men had been working for cen- 
 turies to learn how to cure disease. Fabu- 
 lous loss and expenditure, incredible toil 
 and suffering, immortal heroism in the face 
 of death, had made men weary, but they 
 were not discouraged, though the long-looked 
 for secret had not yet been discovered. The 
 learned doctors were so busy in the almost 
 vain endeavor to cure, that they did not take 
 time to think how they might prevent dis- 
 
162 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 ease. And yet the same great principle 
 runs through so many things : It is better to 
 prevent crime than it is to imprison thieves 
 and hang murderers ; it is wiser to maintain 
 social order than to obliterate the footprints 
 of revolution ; it is more desirable to de- 
 stroy the causes of disease than to give 
 names to maladies we cannot cure. The 
 ship is sinking, and the men on. board try to 
 pump out the water, but never think of going 
 into port to stop the leak. 
 
 Hygeia is a very ancient goddess. She 
 came to earth among primeval men. And 
 she even kindly rules over the beasts of the 
 field and forest. She is the most lovable 
 and beneficent of those mystic beings which 
 came to bless or harm before the dawn of 
 history. The earliest historic man has taken 
 refuge in her sanctuary. The old Hebrew 
 raised his voice in worship at her altar. The 
 sons of Buddha knelt at her shrines. The 
 faithful Moslem prayed and fought under 
 her protection. The sages of the ^gean 
 Isles have the honor of giving her a name. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 163 
 
 And tlie blessed Master approved her work, 
 and gave lier his benediction, — for that 
 which is clean is next to godliness. 
 
 Hygeia blesses the food we eat, and puri- 
 fies the water we drink; she makes clean 
 the garments we wear, and renovates the 
 house in which we live ; and she helps to 
 build the temple of this body into a fitting 
 abode for the indwelling spirit. Happy is 
 the man who entertains as a perpetual guest 
 this beneficent being, — happy in his work, 
 happy in his play, happy in his sleep, happy 
 in his worship. To him the sun shines 
 with new and newer light ; the winds blow 
 more acceptably ; the seasons roll round 
 more benignly ; the heart has better feel- 
 ings ; the mind has nobler thoughts ; the 
 soul has higher aspirations. Her wish is to 
 crown every human being with ripeness of 
 years and fullness of wisdom. Who would 
 not labor at her commands, and be eter- 
 nally obedient to her laws ? Who would 
 not dwell with her dutiful children, and find 
 the happiness of this life more and more ? 
 
164 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 One can understand the upheaval and de- 
 struction caused by the earthquake ; one 
 can appreciate the ruin and the desolation 
 wrought by the cyclone ; one can compre- 
 hend the loss and the calamity of the con- 
 flagration ; one can realize the horrors and 
 pains of famine. But faithful women and 
 brave men flee in terror before the pesti- 
 lence, — they flee, because it is secret, in- 
 visible, and relentless. But now, however 
 dreadful it may have been in the past, pes- 
 tilence can be held in check by Hygeia. 
 And this goddess stands revealed as the 
 personification of science, — that science 
 which prevents the people from perishing. 
 And it only amounts to this, that the beau- 
 tiful idea of protecting and saving the peo- 
 ple from disease has been crystalized into 
 the form of a gentle and benignant woman. 
 One of the fathers of medicine has lik- 
 ened the physician unto a blind man in the 
 dark. The blind man went into a dark 
 room, with a club in his hands, to encounter 
 a robber who had made an attack upon his 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 165 
 
 friend. He could not see at all, and be- 
 sides it was dark ; and yet he must try to 
 defend his friend against an enemy. If the 
 club strikes the enemy it kills him ; if it 
 falls upon his friend, it destroys him. In 
 the parable, the sick man is the friend, and 
 the enemy is the disease. And one fears 
 that the parable at times has been true. 
 For it may be that the causes of disease 
 have been unknown. And so medicine is 
 not yet an exact science ; curative medicine 
 has not been perfected ; a^nd preventive 
 medicine is still imperfect. And then the 
 good and lovable Hygeia sprang into pro- 
 gressive life, and we hope that she will be 
 immortal. At the same time her practice is 
 being founded on true science, and has al- 
 ready risen to a high degree of perfection. 
 The science and practice of preventive med- 
 icine are going rapidly towards a higher 
 level. One is amazed at the revelations of 
 modern times. The telescope has revealed 
 the wonders of the starry heavens, requiring 
 volumes to describe them. And the micro- 
 
166 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 scope has revealed to us the mysteries of an- 
 other universe at our feet. We have the 
 stellar universe above us ; we have the uni- 
 verse of man within ; and we have the mi- 
 crohic universe below. We have a small 
 being that is neither plant nor animal ex- 
 clusively, — but is both in part combined. 
 The microbe is like a green plant, and it is 
 like an animal; it can take its nitrogen 
 from ammonia compounds, and so is like a 
 plant ; it cannot take its carbon from car- 
 bonic acid, and so is like an animal. This 
 mixture of good and evil is like the Sphinx. 
 It stands upon the border of the desert and 
 looks two ways ; one leads into the vegeta- 
 ble, and the other leads into the animal 
 kingdom. 
 
 And then the half is not told. Fire is 
 beneficent, if it is kept in chains ; water is 
 a good friend, if it is imprisoned ; gravic 
 force is a kind protector if its law is obeyed ; 
 we can send the benedictions of peace 
 through the electric current, but the same 
 subtile agent can rive the strongest oak. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT, 167 
 
 Now this little vegito-animal, this microbe 
 is a friend and a benefactor to man, — he 
 lives on the dead, destroying' that which is 
 mischievous and harmful. He is an indis- 
 pensable scavenger, cleansing the soil and 
 purifying the air. The cycle of economic 
 changes necessary for growth and decay 
 would be impossible without this unicellular 
 organism. He is not always man's friend, 
 — and when he becomes an enemy, how 
 baneful ! how deadly ! He is more malevo- 
 lent than the plagues and woes of Egypt. 
 The scavenger becomes an assassin. He 
 comes in the dark ; he comes in the light of 
 day ; but we cannot see him ; and we only 
 know of his presence when the victim falls 
 at our feet. These strange beings destroy 
 the dead body of the beggar, as well as that 
 of the imperial Caesar. And sometimes 
 they will consume the body that is alive, — 
 as if they were the avengers of sin and 
 crime, — as if they delighted to feast on the 
 blood of the innocent. Their abode is in 
 the dirt that lies on our floors ; in the filth 
 
168 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 that gathers in corners ; in the slime that 
 oozes from neglected places ; in garbage 
 that accumulates in our kitchens ; in the 
 waste that befouls the ways of our going 
 and coming. The glory of the Sanitarian is 
 that he can keep these little plants from 
 transj^lantation, that he interpose a barrier 
 to the immigration of these little animals, 
 provided he has the legal authority and 
 power. 
 
 What did Hygeia tell the health commis- 
 sioner to do ? Hygeia said : ^Preserve the 
 health of my peojjle, for they perish for the 
 lack of hnowledge. That was the spirit of 
 his commission. That was the motive of 
 his work. That was the watchword of his 
 duty. And right loyally did he obey and 
 carry out the order. Upon the door behind 
 which contagion and infection were at work, 
 was put the well-known mark of danger, so 
 that one could pass by on the other side. 
 The yellow flag of the microbe, as it rose on 
 the breeze, mutely told the pathetic story of 
 the deadly contest within, where none but 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 169 
 
 the good physician and the faithful nurse 
 can be of service. They may imperil life, 
 — but others may pass to their peaceful pur- 
 suits in safety. As a great poet sang of an 
 ill-used race of men who till the soil, so we 
 may sing of an ill-used race of men who 
 cure the sick. But more pathetic must be 
 our song of him who defends the citadel of 
 public health against the attacks of dis- 
 ease. 
 
 Dr. Wight in his "Maxims of Public 
 Health," wrote : " In the city of Milwau- 
 kee I spent a month, as Commissioner of 
 Health, in making a careful and faithful in- 
 spection of the dairies from which the milk- 
 supply came. The conditions of food of 
 cows, cleanliness and ventilation of stables, 
 drainage, water, surroundings, etc. ; whether 
 the animals were healthy, turned out to pas- 
 ture in summer, constantly confined in win- 
 ter, etc. ; whether the proprietors were filthy, 
 negligent, etc., — all the facts were written 
 out separately for each dairy ^ tabulated, and 
 indexed. The index alone made over two 
 
 8 
 
170 MEMORIAL OF O. W. WIGHT. 
 
 hundred and fifty pages of manuscript. 
 When all was completed, I invited citizens, 
 through every newspaper in town, to call at 
 the health office and read a detailed descrip- 
 tion of the places from which they obtained 
 milk for their households. Out of one hun- 
 dred and twenty thousand inhabitants, the 
 population at that time, just eleven came to 
 see the record. Yet the apathy of Milwaukee 
 citizens on this subject is not exceptional. 
 Will somebody account for it in a rational 
 wav ? About fifty per cent, of a city's mor- 
 tality is of children under five years of age. 
 Among the causes of such premature mor- 
 tality, bad milk, or milk poisoned with dis- 
 ease germs, may be reckoned among the first. 
 The poor little ones, with their pale, up- 
 turned faces, with bloodless hands folded on 
 their motionless breasts, with their dumb 
 lips, plead to heaven in vain ; for even a 
 voice from the dead cannot arouse the living 
 from a fatalism more appalling than that of 
 the Mohammedans. What effect would it 
 have if an enlightened preacher, instead of 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 171 
 
 talking at the funeral about a mysterious 
 Providence, were to accuse the milkman, 
 point blank, of murder ? The people would 
 probably mob the preacher instead of the 
 milkman." 
 
 After pointing out the unsanitary condi- 
 tions of the public schools of Milwaukee, he 
 adds : — 
 
 " And this is not all. The habit of dull- 
 ness, begotten by the unsanitary conditions 
 herein pointed out, lasts during life, and 
 more or less^ cripples the productive energy 
 of a whole generation of citizens. More- 
 over, this vital question touches the pride 
 and hope of almost every household. We 
 must also reckon the cost of increased sick- 
 ness, and a larger percentage of death. It 
 seems heartless to dwell upon the economic 
 side of the great and important problem. 
 Above all, and beyond all, are human suffer- 
 ing, constitutions broken for life, seeds of 
 disease early sown, pain too deep for tears 
 in the panting breast of many a little one, 
 the heartache of parents, the shroud, the 
 
172 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 emblems of mourning, the solemn dust to 
 dust and ashes to ashes closing blighted 
 careers which sanitary wisdom might have 
 prolonged over the customary years of use- 
 fulness." 
 
XVIII. 
 
 The administration of the Health Officer 
 of Milwaukee soon began to benefit her 
 citizens in many ways. At first people do 
 not like to submit to rules of conduct which 
 will make for their advantage. The per- 
 sonal liberty to do harm to others is some- 
 times more precious than obedience to the 
 wisest laws. The personal liberty to create 
 a focus of disease for self and the vicinage 
 does not tend to the pursuit of happiness, 
 nor is it according to the Constitution. To 
 abridge such personal liberty required time. 
 And to educate men in the science of their 
 own well-being is not an easy task. Yet 
 these things were accomplished. And the 
 citizens of the lake citv learned a o'ood les- 
 son, and gave evidence and testimonial to 
 the wise head and firm hand that suggested 
 
174 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 and enforced a better sanitary administra- 
 tion. At length the methods and the results 
 drew the attention of intelligent men in other 
 cities. So far did the influences of this 
 work extend, that Dr. O. W. Wight, in 
 September, 1881, received the following let- 
 ter : — 
 
 Detroit, Mich., September 6, 1881. 
 
 0. W. Wight, Health Commissioner, 
 Milwaukee, Wis. : — 
 
 Dear Sir, — In compliance with the in- 
 struction given me this afternoon by the 
 Board of Health, I write to inform you of 
 your unanimous choice as Health Officer of 
 our city, and at the same time to urge you 
 to accept the ajDpointment and to inform us 
 when you can enter upon your duties. 
 Very respectfidly, 
 
 D. O. Farrand, 
 
 Pres. Board of Health. 
 
 The doctor accepted the appointment, and 
 went to Detroit, where he found difficulties 
 in different directions. It was a heavy task 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 175 
 
 to conserve the health of a great city, when 
 the people were indifferent, when there was 
 opposition from medical men, when the au- 
 thorities were not liberal with means and 
 power. One grows weary of rolling up hill 
 the " huge round stone " of obdurate in- 
 difference. — Thou citizen, who dost talk 
 much about thy personal liberty ; who dost 
 scorn to be the slave of any man ; who dost 
 boast of thy coming and going in all things 
 as thou wilt ; who art one of the rulers of 
 the Republic ; who hast no expectant ears 
 for the pratings of the sanitarian ; who dost 
 set thyself above the laws of nature and 
 the blows of chance ; — thou wilt suffer, for 
 the remorseless microbe will eat thee ; thy 
 sense shall grow dim from the poison of the 
 deadly ptomaine ; the fever of Sepsis shall 
 consume thee ; and thou shalt fall into the 
 forgetfulness prepared by Stupidity for all 
 his angels. 
 
 " At first the people objected to having 
 their houses placarded, as a violation of 
 personal liberty. A little argument con- 
 
176 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 vinced reasonable citizens that no man has 
 the natural or acquired right to expose his 
 neighbors to deadly contagious disease by 
 concealing it in his own house. Personal lib- 
 erty to give small-pox to somebody else had 
 better be abridged as soon as possible. Per- 
 sonal liberty to send scarlet fever into a 
 school with your child is rather diabolical 
 than beneficent. Personal liberty to infect a 
 church with a diphtheria corpse is tempting 
 Providence to start an epidemic. A law 
 abiding community submitted, and to-day 
 the system of placarding, if it were left to 
 an election, would receive a majority of 
 votes in its favor. Experience proves its 
 value in many ways to the citizen. He 
 knows and feels that, by reason of it, his 
 family is more secure against diseases that 
 cost money, anxiety, and sorrow." 
 
 And then one sees the Health Officer, as 
 he goes to the hovel of a poor woman, whose 
 babe lies sick with small-pox. The woman, 
 with a mother's instinct, runs for an axe to 
 defend her little one. She does not compre- 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. Ill 
 
 hend the duty of the health officer, nor does 
 she understand his legal authority, — but she 
 disputes his power. Neither does she real- 
 ize the peril to herself and her other chil- 
 dren from the dread disease. And as for 
 her neighbors, how little does she care ! She 
 takes the law into her own hands. While 
 she is gone for the axe, the health officer 
 takes a rubber blanket from a peg in the 
 wall ; he tenderly lifts the little one from 
 her cradle, wraps it in the blanket, carries it 
 to his carriage, and drives rapidly to the 
 pest-house, which is a regal palace compared 
 with the wretched hovel whence it was 
 taken. Then the mother goes to him and 
 on her bended knees begs the sacred privi- 
 lege of nursing her afflicted babe. Yes, she 
 may bestow upon it all her affection, and 
 nurse it with a mother's care, in a place that 
 will not bring peril to others, and where 
 there is some chance of recovery. She is 
 happy — God bless her. 
 
 At one time he thought to strike the enemy 
 of public health in one of its secret recesses 
 
 8* 
 
178 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT, 
 
 — in the sewer itself. He would disinfect 
 the great refuse-river that runs under the 
 floor of the city, and destroy the multitudi- 
 nous microbes which live there and perform 
 their allotted work. Imitating a practice as 
 old as Homer, he burned sulphur in the man- 
 holes above the Stygian waves of the dark, 
 filthy river. And when the sulphur began 
 to burn, the fumes found their way through 
 the traps into the adjacent houses, — and 
 the frightened inhabitants rushed into the 
 street, declaring that the Imp of darkness 
 and the day of doom had come. Two things 
 were demonstrated : one, that the traps did 
 not seal the sewer tight ; the other, that dis- 
 infecting the sewer lowered the death rate. 
 
 " In nine out of ten, probably in ninety- 
 nine out of a hundred, houses in this city 
 connected with the public sewers, the gas is 
 a perpetual guest. Like the traditional 
 ghost, it comes through closed doors. It 
 does not go when it is ready, but comes to 
 stay. Nothing but the subtile cunning of 
 science can bar its ingress. It is worse than 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 179 
 
 the skeleton that is said to be in every man's 
 closet. It is more unwholesome than a rot- 
 ten corpse. The cadaver might be enclosed 
 in a single room. The poisonous gas is 
 everywhere. The effluvium of the corpse 
 does not lie in ambush. The gas comes 
 from the organic decay of the whole neigh- 
 borhood. To-day it brings with it the con- 
 tagion of typhoid ; to-morrow it introduces 
 diphtheria ; next day it smuggles in scarlet 
 fever. It gives no warning, and its unknown 
 presence is not shunned. It sleeps with 
 you, creeps into every cell of your lungs, 
 and lays shadowy fingers on every drop of 
 your heart's blood." 
 
 The exordium and the peroration of a ser- 
 mon by the health officer on Hoio to mahe 
 a place unhealthy^ are of interest : " Most 
 people have heard the story of the good old 
 prosy minister who, as soon as the deacons 
 began to snore and the whole congregation 
 began to nod, gave a sudden and shrill blast 
 on a dog whistle. Everybody was wide 
 awake in a moment. ' When I preach the 
 
180 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 gospel,' the minister pathetically said, ' you 
 go to sleep ; but as soon as I begin to raise 
 the devil, you are all attentive enough.' 
 
 " If I had prepared a paper on How to 
 Make a Place Healthy^ you would have 
 regarded the subject as safely orthodox, and 
 probably would have shown confidence in 
 the sanitary preacher by listening in a pas- 
 sive manner. When I propose to raise the 
 deuce, by discoursing on the theme. How to 
 Make a Place Unhealthy^ you will probably 
 be on the alert to detect sanitary heresy." 
 
 An interesting discourse follows, closing 
 with memorable and touching words : 
 " Many an unfortunate man weaves about 
 himself and his household, through his own 
 sanitary ignorance, not unfrequently with 
 the concurrence of another's sanitary crime, 
 a fate more terrible than that told by Ugo- 
 lino to Dante in the ' Inferno.' Surrender- 
 ing to the warlike Archbishop of Pisa, Ugo- 
 lino was imprisoned, with his two sons and 
 his two grandsons, in a tower which long 
 bore the name of Torre della Farae^ the 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 181 
 
 Tower of Famine. One morning after, 
 they heard the lower door of the tower 
 locked. The key was thrown into the adja- 
 cent river, and the prisoners were deliv- 
 ered into the hands of Hunger as their 
 executioner. As the historian Napier says, 
 ' Their tragic fate still sounds in awful num- 
 bers from the lyre of Dante, after more 
 than five hundred years.' 
 
 " I will let the unhappy Shade of Ugolino 
 tell the tale, in thirty lines of poetry, which 
 says Landor, are unequaled by any other 
 thirty in the whole dominion of poetry." 
 
 " And I heard locking up the under door 
 Of the horrible Tower ; whereat without a word 
 I gazed into the face of my sons. 
 I wept not, I within so turned to stone : 
 They wept : and darling little Ansehnn mine 
 Said : Thou dost gaze so, father, what ails thee f 
 Still not a tear I shed, nor answer made 
 All that day, nor yet the night thereafter. 
 Until another sun rose on the world, 
 As now a little glimmer made its way 
 Into the dolorous prison, and I saw 
 Upon four faces my own very aspect, 
 
182 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 Both of my hands in agony I bit : 
 And thinking I did it from desire 
 Of eating, on a sudden they uprose, 
 And said they : Father, much less pain 't will give us 
 If thou dost eat of us : thyself did clothe us 
 With this poor flesh, and do thou strip it off. 
 I calmed me then, not to make them more sad. 
 That day they were silent, and the next. 
 Ah ! obdurate earth, wherefore didst thou not 
 open? 
 
 When we had come unto the fourth day, Gaddo , 
 
 Threw himself down outstretched before ray feet 
 
 Saying : My father, why dost thou not help me ? 
 
 And there he died ; and, as thou dost see me, 
 
 I saw the three fall one by one, between 
 
 The fifth day and the sixth ; when I betook me, 
 
 Already blind, to groping over each. 
 
 And three days called them after they — were 
 
 dead ; 
 Then hunger did what sorrow could not do." 
 
 "I have no disposition to pronounce a 
 malediction upon my fellow-men ; but, within 
 my own knowledge, more than one poor 
 household has perished as pitiably, not with 
 hunger, but with fever, for which a hard, in- 
 different, avaricious landlord, who could not 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 183 
 
 be made to answer at the bar of sanitary 
 justice, shall answer in the great hereafter. 
 What the finger of retribution has written 
 on the forehead of the offender cannot be 
 erased by the blasphemous and essentially 
 mendacious cry, Am I my hrother's keeper f 
 And he who, by his sanitary stupidity and 
 obduracy, drags down to untimely sepulture 
 with himself his wife and his little ones, 
 shall not be allowed to plead ignorance of 
 Nature's inexorable law before a judge who 
 endowed him with powers of knowing, under- 
 standing, and obeying." 
 
XIX. 
 
 Dr. Wight had read and studied books 
 on law, from time to time. He was in- 
 terested in the principles of law, and in 
 their application to the government of so- 
 ciety. His knowledge in this respect was 
 like that in the domain of general literature. 
 He was familiar with the generalizations of 
 the subject of Law. And so it was not a 
 difficult task to complete his legal studies. 
 This he did during the first years of his resi- 
 dence in Milwaukee. And on the twenty- 
 ninth day of March, 1873, he was admitted 
 to practice as an attorney and counsellor at 
 law, and solicitor in all Courts of Record in 
 the First Judicial Circuit of Wisconsin. 
 On the eighth day of April, 1873, he was 
 duly admitted to practice as an attorney and 
 counsellor at law and solicitor in chancery 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 185 
 
 in the Supreme Court of the State of Wis- 
 consin. And on the fourteenth day of April, 
 1873, he was duly admitted an attorney and 
 counsellor of the Circuit and District Courts 
 of the United States for the Eastern District 
 of Wisconsin. After Dr. Wight went to 
 Detroit to assume charge of the Health 
 Office of that city, he was admitted to prac- 
 tice law in the various courts of the State of 
 Michigan, as well as the Supreme Court of 
 the United States, as attested by the follow- 
 ing Kecords : On the twenty-first day of 
 September, 1882, he was admitted and 
 licensed to practice as an attorney and 
 counsellor at law, and solicitor and coun- 
 sellor in chancery, in the several courts of 
 the State of Michigan. On the sixteenth 
 day of November, 1885, he was admitted to 
 practice as an attorney and counsellor at law 
 and solicitor in chancery, in the Circuit 
 Court of the United States, for the Sixth 
 Circuit and Eastern District of Michigan. 
 And on the ninth day of December, 1885, 
 he was duly admitted and qualified as an 
 
186 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 attorney and counsellor of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States. 
 
 As opportunity offered, Dr. Wight en- 
 tered, to some extent, into the practice of 
 the profession of law. A case in which he 
 took great interest was one which he related 
 to a circle of friends at his brother's house 
 in Brooklyn. The following are the leading 
 facts of the case : A poor woman had been 
 indicted for the crime of infanticide. The 
 evidence in the hands of the public prose- 
 cutor seemed to be very strong. Public 
 feeling against the defendant ran high. She 
 was without friends and without money, 
 and her case appeared well-nigh hopeless. 
 The doctor undertook her defense. He 
 brought forward convincing evidence that 
 the defendant could not have caused the 
 death of her infant. The medical testimony, 
 as well as the testimony as to facts, made a 
 deep impression on the jury. In his ad- 
 dress to the jury, he first gave a simple and 
 clear statement of the unanswerable evi- 
 dence proving the innocence of his client ; 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 187 
 
 and then he added that his client was a 
 devout Catholic, and that her religious con- 
 victions were wholly inconsistent with so 
 dreadful a crime, and that there could not 
 be the shadow of a motive for committing 
 it. A speedy verdict in her favor was ren- 
 dered, and the poor woman was set free. 
 She repaid her benefactor with tears, thanks 
 and blessings, for she had nothing else to 
 give. 
 
 The following is taken from his defense 
 of certain persons who had pleaded guilty of 
 conspiracy to defraud the government : — 
 
 " Finally, the enlightened administration 
 of justice has in view not simply the inflic- 
 tion of punisment for crimes committed, but 
 also, and foremost, the reformation and pres- 
 ervation of the citizen. Those who have 
 pleaded guilty before this court to the 
 charge of conspiracy to defraud the govern- 
 ment are not in need of severe punishment 
 to remind them of their obligation to obey 
 the laws. Their affection for the govern- 
 ment will not be increased by long incarcer- 
 
188 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 ation. Having suffered severely already, 
 in body and estate, clemency will impress 
 more profoundly than severity. A great 
 government that could afford to pardon the 
 leaders of a mighty conspiracy which cost 
 the nation half a million of lives and several 
 billions of treasure, can surely be contented 
 with inflicting a minimum of punishment on 
 citizens misled by its own agents into a con- 
 spiracy to defraud the government. These 
 men have repented, and have brought forth 
 fruits meet for repentance by aiding the 
 government with their testimony. To strike 
 them when they are down, when they have 
 ceased to contend, with more severity than 
 is absolutely necessary, would be a viola- 
 tion of the public sense of justice, the in- 
 evitable tendency of which would be to 
 weaken, not to strengthen respect for the 
 law. At such a juncture, mercy is wisdom, 
 and severity is tyranny. Mercy in these 
 cases is literally twice blessed, blessing the 
 government that gives, and the prisoner that 
 receives : it is — 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 189 
 
 * like the Hours 
 That sit open-handed on the clouds, 
 And press the liberality of heaven 
 Down to the laps of thankful men.' " 
 
 As he understood them, the principles 
 guiding the practice of law may be, in part, 
 expressed as follows : We often hear of the 
 license of counsel in the treatment of wit- 
 nesses. In fact, the witness often complains 
 of the difficulties encountered in giving tes- 
 timony ; and he especially dreads the cross- 
 examiner. Now, what is the duty of coun 
 sel? He speaks for his client, since his 
 client cannot speak for himself. It is his 
 duty to defend the rights and interest of an- 
 other for whom he speaks and acts. This is 
 also his business. He must ward off an at- 
 tack ; he must repel an invasion ; he must 
 protect his client from the threats and men- 
 aces of an adversary. He must use his best 
 skill and exert all his powers to prevent his 
 client from suffering an injustice, from 
 being wronged. He must leave nothing un- 
 done to prove his innocence, to gain his ac- 
 
190 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 quittal, to promote his interests, to maintain 
 his rights. In matters that are relevant to 
 the issue he may search the depths of the 
 heart, he may probe the profoundest feel- 
 ings, and he may traverse the ways of the 
 most devious intellect. He is like the skill- 
 ful surgeon, who causes pain that life may 
 continue. 
 
 The law entrusts the advocate with ex- 
 tensive powers and with great liberty of 
 speech, such as in e very-day life would not 
 be tolerated. In what he may conscien- 
 tiously do to defend his client he is, as it 
 were, only limited by his own sense of duty ; 
 and if he has a high sense of duty, in his 
 own field of work he is supreme. In his 
 search for truth he must not be reckless, 
 nor rash, nor unreasonable. If he goes be- 
 yond the law and if he violates the rules of 
 evidence, he may be admonished, repri- 
 manded, or punished by the court. He is 
 not at liberty to seek after truth by means 
 that are illegal and wrong. He must pur- 
 sue his work by methods that are legal and 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 191 
 
 right. We all respect the magnanimous and 
 upright advocate ; he is an honor to his pro- 
 fession ; he is a terror to those who do evil ; 
 he is a hope for those who are assailed and 
 wronged ; he is a public benefactor and an 
 ornament to society. 
 
 Too frequently the advocate has to deal 
 with a witness who is a partisan, who is hos- 
 tile, who is prejudiced, who is offensive, who 
 is unscientific. He may be excused for 
 treating such a witness with rigorous sever- 
 ity ; he may bring to bear on him his most 
 powerful weapons ; he may drive him against 
 the wall of truth ; he may dissect every fibre 
 of his motives ; he may impale him on the 
 sword of the cross-examiner ; he may ex- 
 pose his prejudices, his pretensions, and his 
 presumptions. And yet, as a high authority 
 has said, an advocate is a warrior, and not 
 an assassin. 
 
 Dr. Wight appears to have had three 
 leading objects in the study and practice of 
 law : one, the acquisition of knowledge ; one 
 the relations of law to history ; one, the em- 
 
192 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 bodiment of law in the Constitution. He 
 took satisfaction in conquering every de- 
 partment of human knowledge. Simply, 
 it was his ambition to know whatever was 
 knowable. Beyond that he traced the prin- 
 ciples of law into the evolution of history. 
 What, indeed, would Grecian history be 
 without the laws of Greece? One of the 
 historical monuments of this ancient and 
 classic land bears the inscription : Go tell 
 the one who passes by that here obedient to 
 our country^s laws we lie. And we may 
 stop for a brief moment to contemplate the 
 pathetic dust that was once ensouled with 
 the breath and life of immortal heroes. One 
 can never forget the grand and pathetic 
 justice of Socrates, as he tells his friend 
 Crito, if he tries to destroy the laws of his 
 country, that the laws in Hades will be 
 angry, and will not receive him kindly on 
 his arrival, — and so he drinks the poison. 
 What would the history of Rome be without 
 Roman law ? And after the fall of old 
 Rome, has not her law, in one form or an- 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 193 
 
 other, lived on in the jurisprudence of more 
 modern nations, giving life, stability, and 
 perpetuity ? And we too, in the newness of 
 our national life, trace the roots of our own 
 laws back to the same great source. Laws 
 are rules of action. Actions are civil deeds. 
 And criminal deeds are offenses against the 
 laws. But deeds, civil and criminal, of in- 
 dividuals and states make up the events 
 recorded in history. 
 
 Dr. Wight had " read an average of 
 one hundred pages of history daily during 
 more than twenty years of a laborious life. 
 . . . How much more fruitful the reading 
 might have been if it had been guided from 
 the beginning by the experience accumulated 
 at the end ! " He had gone over the field of 
 the world's history, and was digesting and 
 shaping the material in his mind. The 
 plans of work were being arranged. It was 
 a continuation of the same purpose of bring- 
 ing before the people a better kind of read- 
 ing that he began years previous, in editing 
 the volumes of the " Home Library," which 
 
194 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 contained the lives of the great men of his- 
 tory. He says : " A considerable number 
 among the millions of intelligent people in 
 this country have a desire to know some- 
 thing of the world's marvelous story, and 
 would willingly set themselves the task of 
 reading, at odd hours, a reasonable number 
 of books of history if some experienced 
 friend could be found to designate the par- 
 ticular works best adapted to the end in 
 view, and to indicate the proper sequence in 
 which to pursue them. . . . Any sj^stematic 
 study, or even reading of history, may well 
 besrin with that of Greece. The Hellenes 
 occupied both shores and the islands of the 
 ^gean Sea. Their enchanting land faced 
 the east on the one side, and the west on 
 the other. They were midway between Asia 
 and Europe. Greek history touches the re- 
 motest antiquity, and reaches down to the 
 present time. Except the Christian religion 
 Greek culture is the most important factor 
 in European civilization. The Aryan race 
 made its earliest and most important achieve- 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 195 
 
 ments in Hellas. The history of the Greeks 
 is not only profoundly instructive and inter- 
 esting in itself, it is also the key to all other 
 histories of civilized men." 
 
 The study and practice of law enabled 
 Dr. Wight to prepare a valuable work on 
 the Constitution. The work is indexed by 
 the leading words and topics of the Consti- 
 tution, and is adapted as a book of refer- 
 ence. The opinions of the distinguished 
 jurists, and the decisions of the courts as to 
 the construction of the Constitution and its 
 amendments, are so arranged as to make 
 them available to the student of constitu- 
 tional law, as well as to lawyers who may 
 come to try cases in the future, under the 
 application of the supreme law of the land. 
 It is the design of the author to have this 
 work published, as soon as time permits and 
 opportunity offers. 
 
 In brief. Dr. Wight was an educated 
 physician, an able lawyer, and a skilled en- 
 gineer ; and he brought to bear his three- 
 fold knowledge upon the application of san- 
 
196 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT, 
 
 itary science to the preservation of the public 
 health. His zeal was commensurate with 
 his acquirements. His ambition was to ben- 
 efit the public by giving advice on hy- 
 giene, when that advice had been fortified 
 by law, and based on sound views of engi- 
 neering. In this way he was more than 
 equivalent to a sanitary board composed of 
 a physician, a lawyer, and an engineer. 
 
XX. 
 
 In the mean time the President of the 
 Board of Health, Dr. D. O. Farrand, had 
 been taken away in the prime of life. The 
 Health Officer felt that he had lost a true 
 friend. And when this loved and lovable 
 man was laid at rest, he paid him a heart- 
 felt tribute. All hearts were touched by 
 his simple, plain words, earnest in the ex- 
 treme, and full of hope, rising from the 
 transitory, until the unseen and the eternal 
 appeared to open for him who had put off 
 all that was mortal. Another noble and 
 blameless life had been given up in the ser- 
 vice of " all sorts and conditions of men." 
 And everybody mourned his departure. 
 The bereavement was hard to bear. We 
 ask. Why are the good and useful taken, 
 and the bad and useless left ? Then we 
 say. We know not why. 
 
198 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 As time went on, there arose an '' irrecon- 
 cilable difference of opinion as to methods 
 and aims " between the Health Officer and 
 the Board of Health. The Health Officer 
 had " toiled hard " for years, " reduced the 
 death rate, and abated nuisances by the 
 thousand." He said : " It is not my fault 
 that I quit the service, yet I am glad to 
 lay down a heavy burden." He sent his 
 resignation to the mayor. This step caused 
 much regret in municipal circles. And 
 when asked to reconsider his action, he re- 
 plied : " I came to the conclusion deliber- 
 ately and I will resign. Such expressions as 
 
 Dr. 's greatly reduce the effect of the 
 
 work of the health department and create 
 insubordination on the part of the public." 
 Finally, with honor, with integrity, with 
 respect, he left the Health Office, and went 
 forth a " free man," with only one regret, — 
 that any one could be found to stand be- 
 tween his efforts and the good of the public. 
 Yet such things have been from the begin- 
 ning, and we fear will be to the end. They 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 199 
 
 who will not see are of necessity blind ; 
 there are none so deaf as they who close 
 their ears ; they are the most stupid who 
 will not learn ; and there are none so use- 
 less as they who oppose the public good. 
 In this, as in all human affairs, we find men 
 who tend to reversion of type in the domain 
 of enlightenment and progress. This is a 
 veritable disorder which seems to be hope- 
 less and without remedy. 
 
 But the doctor had laid down the burden 
 of his office, — and was again looking for- 
 ward : this had been one of the maxims of 
 his life. To be and act in the living pres- 
 ent were the stepping-stones to the higher 
 good of the future, in which every man 
 should have faith. The unalterable and van- 
 ished past is among the records of things 
 done, right or wrong. The present is the 
 only thing that lives. The future is being 
 born eternally into newness of life. So he 
 was looking forward. 
 
 In the spring of 1886 a brief letter came 
 from Detroit, announcing that he had re- 
 
200 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 signed his position as Health Officer, had 
 sold out everything, and had made prepara- 
 tion for a journey to the East and around the 
 world, in order to see and study the Aryan 
 peoples in their homes, and so fulfill a long- 
 cherished desire. He had already engaged 
 his passage across the ocean on the " Trave." 
 He could no longer endure the heavy burden 
 of toil and responsibility in the Health Office. 
 He was worn and weary, and if he did not 
 get relief he would die. He thought the best 
 way to rest and recuperate was to travel. 
 He had no ties to bind him, for he was 
 virtually alone. He would be at my house 
 at a certain time, and tarry a few weeks be- 
 fore embarking. 
 
 When he came, it could be seen that the 
 fingers of time had been busy. Change 
 comes to all things done by man, and to 
 man himself. Memory ran back through 
 the vista of years, and touched on all it 
 could, and left all it could not bring. 
 The heroic struggle for a place and name 
 seemed brief enough, and yet it could not 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 201 
 
 last. Thus to live and jvork was different, 
 so diverse, compared with one who digs 
 contentedly in the solemn dust. There was 
 a momentary retrospect, but no vain re- 
 gret, only a looking forward from the van- 
 tage-ground already conquered. A thought 
 of nothing lost, but of something missed, 
 in the brief cycle of the past. 
 
 " We are the voices of the wandering wind, 
 Which moan for rest, and rest can never find ; 
 Lo ! as the wind is, so is mortal life, 
 A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife." 
 
 Then in story he again wandered over the 
 famous Lake District of England ; after 
 that went down to the shores of sunny Italy ; 
 once more journeyed amid the scenes on the 
 banks of the Rhine ; — in nature he found 
 much interfused, and more in man : and be- 
 hind all was a memory that would not fall 
 into forgetfulness. And so one knew that 
 more than time had been at work : that am- 
 bition and toil had done their part and that 
 Destiny had done all they could not do. 
 It was his purpose to go over into Central 
 
 9* 
 
202 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 Asia. He desired to see and study the 
 strange people of that strange land. It was 
 thence that migrations had taken place. It 
 was in the East that we find the cradle of 
 the human race. To this day they have not 
 greatly advanced in civilization. To travel 
 over their rugged hills and through their 
 dense forests would involve fatigue and 
 hardship that could only be borne b}^ one 
 in robust health. These peoples appear 
 never to have ceased to war with each other, 
 and this would augment the danger of travel 
 through their inhospitable country. It was 
 difficult to persuade him from braving the 
 perils of the wild tribes of men who live 
 tnostly without law and order in this land 
 where man has appeared to live always. 
 But he did not fully give up his design of 
 visiting this cradle-land until he had gone 
 over toward the East far enough to find 
 that journeying further was impracticable 
 and impossible. 
 
 The day of going came, when the " Trave " 
 was to sail out on the trackless deep, as they 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 203 
 
 say, over the lost Atlantis, having all her 
 cultivated fields, her noble cities, and her 
 monuments, submerged for long ages, wait- 
 ing for upheaval in the time to come. The 
 day was sunny. A light haze veiled the 
 sky, as if to limit the vision into the future. 
 The elements were silent. The storms were 
 dumb. There were no winds to " wrestle 
 and to rave." The majestic Hudson as of 
 old was contending with the heaving tides 
 of the ocean. There was hurrying to and 
 fro of busy feet. The hum of industry 
 and commerce arose from the metropolis of 
 the West. Man was ceaselessly setting 
 foot upon the ever-vanishing present be- 
 tween two eternities, — one gone, the other 
 to come. Why should the highest of God's 
 creatures appear to " walk with aimless 
 feet ? " We know not now, — hut then we 
 shall hnow even as we are hnovjn. And 
 on that day we parted, not as we had parted 
 before, but with an expectancy less sure. 
 For the morn of life had gone, and the sun 
 was drawing toward the west. And rest 
 
204 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 comes sooner then. One knows not when 
 or where those he loves will fall into silence. 
 Yet there need be no fear. For the great 
 Father, in his universal and unalterable 
 Providence, does nothing but good to 
 his children. In many ways our lives and 
 fortunes had been linked together. Across 
 the tide both ways more than once was 
 held a helping hand. So the future would 
 make for pain and grief, not to him who 
 first met his fate, but to him who was left 
 at his post of duty. Sometimes we all have 
 prophetic visions of the future. Science is 
 only a form of seeing, — but seeing is wider 
 than all science. There seemed to be a 
 light that shone into the future farther 
 than the eye could see. The years that had 
 vanished seemed to be of so little worth. 
 The boundless and deathless future opened 
 up another expansion. On these two shores, 
 the one here and the other hereafter, we 
 said the word — Farewell. 
 
XXI. 
 
 It would be impossible to condense the 
 narrative of this long journey. Its purpose 
 can only be indicated by extracts from its 
 preface, as well as by some remarks and re- 
 flections. The book in which it is found is 
 commended to the reader. The author 
 says : — 
 
 '♦Last year I made a long, winding jour- 
 ney around the globe, in order to observe 
 every country in which an Aryan people 
 has established civil government. One 
 looks in vain elsewhere for progress and lib- 
 erty. The Aryan nations of antiquity 
 Greece and Rome, must be studied in his 
 tory, for the Greek and Roman peoples 
 have passed away and can no longer be 
 studied in their daily life. Yet the lands 
 occupied by the vanished races may still be 
 
206 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 visited by the traveler, who can at least be- 
 come familiar with the scenes in the midst 
 of which they dwelt. The study of Aryan 
 peof)les, whether living or departed, can 
 alone reveal to us the origin and develop- 
 ment of the world's civilization. 
 
 " History is comparatively barren without 
 a knowledge of geography. Maps may aid 
 us much, especially when studied with the 
 help of some experience and a vivid imagi- 
 nation; but traveling alone can give us 
 true geographical knowledge. Current his- 
 tory becomes real to us, is translated into 
 personal experience, only when by traveling 
 we observe at once people and country in 
 their intimate relations. In pursuit of such 
 vital knowledge, I traversed Europe from 
 north to south, from east to west, and 
 journeyed far off to Australia and New Zea- 
 land, on the other side of the globe, where 
 fresh Aryan communities are planting civil 
 liberty in the southern hemisphere. 
 
 " Art, science, literature are, with a very 
 few notable exceptions, the products of Aryan 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 207 
 
 civilization, and can be studied only in 
 countries occupied by Aryan peoples. 
 Above all, in sucli countries alone do we 
 find recognition of human rights and the 
 establishment of institutions for the benefit 
 of the many. There is doubtless room for 
 progress in the most enlightened nations, 
 for civilization has not yet borne all its 
 fruits. . . . 
 
 " The leading purpose of the book, how- 
 ever, is political and social. I have aimed 
 to draw faithful portraits of the leading 
 civilized nations of the world as they exist 
 to-day. Of course, the features of the great 
 peoples of the earth can be drawn only in 
 outline on the small pieces of canvas that 
 constitute the brief chapters of a single 
 volume. Yet generalizations, if true to fact, 
 if they are the results of accurate observation, 
 if, above all, they embody the real laws that 
 govern the development of humanity in 
 time and space, are the best aids to a fruit- 
 ful study of detailed history. 
 
 " The reader may or may not accept my 
 
208 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 philosophical definition of a nation, yet it 
 will certainly reveal to him that underlying 
 every independent national existence is a 
 problem wider, deeper, than form of govern- 
 ment, territorial possession, succession of 
 events, or transition of passing generations 
 of men. Whether my particular theory is 
 accepted or not, my object will be gained if 
 I succeed in convincing the reader that the 
 Providence of history has a rational basis. 
 Travel among the peoples of the world may 
 well have a higher aim than personal amuse- 
 ment or material pleasure. 
 
 " * What sliapest thou here at the world ? ' 
 ' 'T was shapen long ago ; 
 The Maker shaped it, 
 And thought 't were best even so.' " 
 
 To indicate the guiding principle in 
 studying and giving " an account of the rise, 
 progress, achievements, decline, and fall of 
 nations, " a description of his idea of a na- 
 tion may be noted : " It is quite evident that 
 a nation is not merely a territory ; is not 
 simply a portion of the earth's surface. The 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 209 
 
 place occupied by a nation, a people, is no 
 
 more a nation, a people, than the house a 
 
 man lives in is a man. 
 
 " O Earth, what changes thou hast seen ! 
 There where the long street roars hath been ^ 
 The stilbiess of the Central Sea. 
 
 "Yet nations have seen more changes 
 than the earth. Many a kingdom has 
 passed away, while surrounding sea and land 
 remain substantially the same. The same 
 clouds gather on the brow of Olympus, the 
 same sun shines on the plains of Thessaly, 
 the same glorious atmospheric haze rests on 
 the hills of Attica, the same tempest lashes 
 the -^gean Sea, the same stars keep nightly 
 vigils over Delphi, the same winds sweep 
 over Salamis and Platanea, as of old, but the 
 real Hellas is no longer there. The mariner 
 on the Mediterranean now, as in the days 
 of ^neas, gazes upon Italy ' lying low ; ' 
 yet that wonderful land has been the habi- 
 tation of successive nations, successive peo- 
 ples, that exist no more. The Israelites 
 were a nation in their bondage, in their 
 
210 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 wanderings, in the Babylonish captivity, as 
 well as when they possessed the land ' round 
 about Jordan.' They are a people still, al- 
 though dispersed over the whole globe. The 
 portion of the North American continent 
 now occupied by our nation has existed 
 from the formation of the sea and the dry 
 land ; yet its fertile soil, its lakes, its rivers, 
 its mountains, its long lines of coast, failed 
 to produce a people, till causes above the 
 earth j^lanted here a great republic. 
 
 " Neither is a nation a form of govern- 
 ment. Not only rulers and dynasties change, 
 but governments change in their most essen- 
 tial forms, while nations live on. Rome was 
 at first a monarchy, then a republic, then an 
 empire, but the nation continued. The Is- 
 raelites remained the same people, while 
 governed by patriarchs, by law-givers, by 
 judges, by kings, by foreign rulers. France, 
 within a comparatively recent period, has 
 been a monarchy, a republic, a kingdom, 
 again a republic, an empire, and once more 
 a republic ; yet the French people, the 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 211 
 
 French nation, has preserved its distinctive 
 characteristics, whether governed by Louis 
 XIV., by a National Assembly, by a mili- 
 tary chieftain, by a Bourbon king, by Napo- 
 leon III., or by M. Carnot. Even England 
 was once a republic, without change in the 
 strong individuality of the British people. 
 The Italian nation remained distinct while 
 ruled in sections by different dynasties, or 
 cut up into many turbulent republics. It 
 has retained the peculiar features of its in- 
 dividual life — a people different from all 
 others — during repeated conquests, during 
 the tumultuous changes of a thousand years. 
 Greece remained the same nation, the same 
 wonderful people, during as many mutations 
 in government as the wit of man could in- 
 vent. The government of the United States 
 was once a loose confederation, then a con- 
 stitutional union ; yet we remained the same 
 American people, the same nation, differing 
 essentially from all other peoples, all other 
 nations. A nation, therefore, is not a mere 
 form of government. 
 
212 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 " Again, a nation, a people, is not a mere 
 collection of human beings, is not an aggrega- 
 tion, thus to speak, of individuals, any more 
 than the world is ' a fortuitous concourse 
 of atoms.' No subject of Augustus Caesar 
 was ruled by Antoninus Pius, yet they were 
 both emperors of the same Roman people. 
 No Frenchman living in the time of Des- 
 cartes is living to-day, yet who believes that 
 France has ceased to live ? The English- 
 men of the nineteenth century are standing 
 on the graves of the Englishmen governed 
 by the Tudors, yet who doubts that England 
 still exists. Who questions that Homer and 
 Pindar, though separated by many vanished 
 generations, sang to the same Hellenic peo- 
 ple? We speak of Moses and David as 
 heads of the same nation of Israelites, though 
 widely divided by the shadow-land of perish- 
 ing mortality. A dark stream of time sepa- 
 rates Castellar and the Duke of Alva, yet 
 the stream is bridged by the Spanish na- 
 tional life. Not a soul of us will be here in 
 a hundred years, yet, I trust, the American 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 213 
 
 people will be here. Generations come and 
 go like the shadows of summer clouds, but 
 the nations live on, obedient to laws that 
 have a wider sweep than the laws that gov- 
 ern individual life. 
 
 "If, then, a nation, a people, is not essen- 
 tially a territory, a form of government, or 
 a fortuitous concourse of individuals, what 
 is it ? The house a man lives in, the clothes 
 he wears, and his material body, are not the 
 real man. His continuous life, that which 
 gives him through all external changes a 
 consciousness of his identity, is his soul, his 
 spirit, his intellectual and moral being. Just 
 so it is with a nation. A people, a nation, 
 has an inner life, an organic existence, that 
 preserves its identity, through all changes of 
 territory, of government, of passing genera- 
 tions. It is an idea, a great generalizing 
 principle, a predominant thought, an organ- 
 izing sentiment, a vital force, a mode of 
 evolution, call it what you will, that consti- 
 tutes the soul, the essence of a nation. This 
 principle, this dominant idea, gathers men 
 
214 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 around it, animates them with, a common 
 national life, educates them, gradually forms 
 their speech, directs their efforts in a certain 
 course, coordinates their energies, produces 
 through them jDcculiar laws, shapes literature 
 and art, builds political and civil institutions, 
 determines forms of religion, moulds social 
 life, creates manners. Loyalty to this cen- 
 tral sentiment, this reigning idea, constitutes 
 the soul of patriotism ; disloyalty to it begets 
 rebellion. When this sentiment, this idea, 
 perishes from the minds of men, the nation 
 animated by it, ensouled by it, inevitably 
 perishes and passes away." 
 
 This idea, this thought, this principle, that 
 runs ever in the current of national life, that 
 binds individuals together, that shapes pub- 
 lic policy, that makes a people a larger 
 family, that gives all a common purpose and 
 interest, that overshadows minor differences, 
 that animates in the pursuits of peace, that 
 leads to defense in war, that works in the 
 administration of affairs, — this idea, this 
 soul, of a nation, was the key of inter preta- 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 215 
 
 tion, used in reading history, in studying tlie 
 enlightenment, evolution, and progress of the 
 Aryan peoples, in traveling through the 
 countries of Europe and elsewhere, from 
 west to east, from south to north, from the 
 North Cape to the ^gean Isles, from the 
 Isles of the Central Sea to far-off Australia. 
 
 On our way, we will tarry briefly at the 
 North Cape to look at the 7nidnight sun. 
 
 On the coast of Norway is a labyrinth of 
 islets and islands, intersected by waterways 
 so numerous that they bewilder the traveler. 
 The islets, made mostly of stone, lie in zones 
 and clusters between the tranquil inner 
 straits and waterways and the stormy At- 
 lantic. Water and land are everywhere inter- 
 mingled in the most inextricable confusion. 
 The hardy fisher-folks have built their nests, 
 like sea-birds, on ledges of rocks, and their 
 frail skiffs lie anchored upon the smooth 
 waters below. Some of the islands are of 
 such size and elevation that they remain in 
 sight all day, frowning in the clear sky, as 
 the little steamer winds its devious way to- 
 
216 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 wards the land of the midnight sun. For a 
 thousand miles smaller islands form a break- 
 water to the silent waterways, in which men 
 and boys fish in their fragile boats, and 
 where the women and girls row to church or 
 to market. And on a large inner channel, 
 next the mainland, the commerce of Norway 
 is carried on in safety. 
 
 On the voyage to the North Cape, you 
 seem to be always environed by land ; a solid 
 wall rises in front of you ; behind you there 
 is never an opening ; here the shaggy cliffs 
 are hung with waterfalls ; yonder is a snow- 
 capped peak ; there the sea - bed is visible 
 under the keel; at one time silence reigns 
 supreme ; at another the roar of cascades 
 breaks upon the ear; anon a silver cloud 
 drops its shadow upon the scene ; you turn 
 to the right because there is no gateway on 
 the left ; and then you turn to the left to 
 avoid the sullen rocks on the right ; but you 
 move ever onward toward tho wonder-land 
 of the north. You are in the midst of the 
 enchanted land which is the home of the 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 217 
 
 Norseman, who builds his house in green 
 corners, who constructs his roadways along 
 narrow dells, who cuts fodder for his beasts 
 on mountain ledges, who makes the gleeful 
 streams grind his corn, who can " cling and 
 live " wherever the feathery pine and silver 
 birch can find foothold and growth. 
 
 'T is here that he who loves the sea may 
 always look upon the land ; 't is here that he 
 who loves the land may always look upon 
 the sea, and 't is here where land and sea 
 forever meet, and where the sky bends o'er 
 fair scenes, and its clouds are mirrored with 
 the waterfalls and rocks in the silent depths 
 below, and where Nature's ceaseless motions 
 agitate the cooling air all the summer long^ 
 to satisfy and soothe the heart of mortal 
 man. 
 
 One voyages toward the North Cape, go- 
 ing out into a wide expanse of water, as the 
 afternoon glides on, and waits for the mid- 
 night sun. Night approaches, but darkness 
 does not come. The sun curves toward the 
 horizon, but does not deign to touch it. Now 
 
 10 
 
218 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 it " hides behind a bank of violet cloud, and 
 the opal fringe emits a dazzling effulgence." 
 At some distance the sky is cloudless, and 
 seems to open to an immeasurable depth. 
 Every color and every cloud-shape above is 
 reproduced in the bosom of the sea. The 
 mystic beauties of the Arctic heavens shine 
 forth during a night in which no trace of 
 night appears. The tourist speaks not : 
 there is a hush of delighted silence, and all 
 eyes are drinking in the strange scene of a 
 night beautified by the unveiled majesty of 
 the great orb of day. " A midnight where- 
 in the sea is as ethereal as the air, and, like 
 the air, streaming with strange splendors, a 
 midnight in which the very Viking ships as 
 they silently steal athwart a glittering path- 
 way of sunlight seem like spectre ships glid- 
 ing in a radiance at once beautiful and weird, 
 is never to be forgotten ; it lives as a revela- 
 tion, an exchange of the material for the 
 spiritual, a glimpse within the golden gates : 
 ' And I beheld a new heaven and a new 
 earth.' " 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 219 
 
 When the great earth swings southward, 
 to lift the sun on high, and the Norse-land 
 emerges from the long winter night, and the 
 cheerful day begins and lengthens, as the 
 season turns her footsteps toward the frozen 
 zone, the orb of day rises, nor sets, but gilds 
 both day and night, and rolls above the sea 
 and land even at the midnight hour, or what 
 in other lands would be the midnight hour, 
 and so is called the midnight sun, which 
 shines until its brief race is run, and leaves 
 the North Cape in darkness. 
 
 " Early Monday morning we started back, 
 southward. Lyngenfiord soon hove in sight, 
 on the west shore of which is a long line 
 of snow-capped mountains, five or six thou- 
 sand feet high. They were distant, yet in 
 the clear atmosphere looked so near. The 
 captain of the steamer promised us a cotil- 
 lion of whales, and a coronation of a moun- 
 tain by the sun at midnight. The proper 
 place was reached a little past ten o'clock in 
 the evening. Great whales soon began their 
 gambols, according to programme. In the 
 
220 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 distance was a mountain, with lofty dome, 
 which the sun was nearing behind a curtain 
 of illuminated clouds. The ship was so placed 
 that the coronation would take place, weather 
 permitting, from eleven o'clock to near twelve, 
 when the sun would emerge, full-orbed, into 
 an open space, at midnight. The elements 
 were propitious and the exhibition was un- 
 speakably grand." The sun is invisible: in 
 the sky there is a circle of glory, and in the 
 midst is the kingly head of the dusky colos- 
 sus. Now the thin clouds, like aerial tapestry 
 held by unseen fingers above the monarch, 
 begin to burn along their lower edges. " One 
 might think they had caught fire from the 
 earth below, had not this new splendor been 
 pure as that of the diamond. Now the halo 
 around the mountain's stately brow expands, 
 and the hanging tapestry of clouds pulses 
 and flashes as its flaming fringe consumes 
 the texture of purj)lish gray. See how the 
 cloud flickers and breaks up into glowing 
 shreds, which float aloft in upward streaming 
 films of dazzling fire ! Below us is the sea. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W, WIGHT. 221 
 
 around us are the Silences ; the sea an ex- 
 panse of damascened steel, the air still as 
 with a holy hush ; and before us, high up in 
 the heavens is the mountain's lofty dome, 
 limned in lines of glistening light and dia- 
 demed with living lustre. The sun now 
 glides out, and just above the shoulders of 
 the Giant, it hangs in the beautiful scene 
 its perfect disk of glossy gold. Our tourists 
 look at each other with thoughtful eyes, but 
 speak not. The hush that is on all things 
 is in their spirits. The silent rapture of the 
 scene steals upon them, and theirs is the 
 Sabbath of the soul. How eloquent is this 
 reverent gazing at yonder beatific vision ! " 
 In strange contrast with the voyage among 
 the islets and islands of Norway was the 
 voyage among the islands of the Mediter- 
 ranean. From the shores of Italy " lying 
 low " across the Adriatic to these historic 
 islands was a brief and pleasant voyage. 
 The sea-girt isles, where Homer and Pindar 
 sang in immortal verse ; where Socrates and 
 Plato discoursed philosophy ; where Solon 
 
222 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 and Lycurgus gave wise and wholesome 
 laws ; where Agamemnon and Ulysses led 
 the heroic arms of Hellas against Tro}^ ; 
 where Aristides and Demosthenes were elo- 
 quent and just ; where Olympus and the 
 Acropolis faced the morning sun, — the en- 
 chanted sea-girt isles, with all their storied 
 song and history, were embosomed in the 
 Central Sea, as of old : but their glory had 
 faded ; their famous art was in ruins ; their 
 eloquence was dumb ; their bravery was in 
 the dust ; their liberty was in chains ; all 
 that was distinctive of the Hellenes was to be 
 found on the page of history or on their 
 dilapidated monuments ; all that was best 
 and valuable of these vanished peoples has 
 come down to us on the dark stream of time 
 through the intervening centuries. One 
 sails along the shore of Leucadia whose pro- 
 jecting headland is called Sappho's Leap : — 
 
 " The very spot where Sappho sung 
 Her swan-like music, ere she sprung 
 (Still holding in that fearful leap 
 By her loved lyre) into the deep, 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 223 
 
 Aud, dying, quenched the fatal fire, 
 At once of both her heart and lyre." 
 
 And beyond Leucadia one views the isl- 
 and of Ithaca, an upheaved limestone ridge, 
 once the home of the great Ulysses, the 
 wandering hero whose deeds were sung by 
 blind old Homer. 
 
 " As one that for a weary space has lain 
 
 Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine 
 In gardens near the pale of Proserpine, 
 Where the -^sean Isle forgets the main. 
 And only the low lutes of love complain, 
 And only shadows of wan lovers pine, 
 As such an one were glad to know the brine 
 Salt on his lips, and the large air again, 
 So gladly, from the songs of modern speech 
 Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free 
 Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers ; 
 And through the music of the languid hours, 
 They hear like ocean on a western beach 
 The surge and thunder of the Odyssey." 
 
 " As the morning sun illumined the rocky 
 heights of Salamis, flashed on the Acropo- 
 lis, aud shone over the hills and plains of 
 Attica, we sailed across the very waters 
 
224 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 where the mighty naval battle was fought 
 between the Greeks and Persians more than 
 twenty-three centuries ago, into the harbor 
 of Piraeus. The curious pointed to a rock 
 on our left, where Xerxes, seated on a 
 throne, witnessed the defeat of his fleet and 
 sadly realized that his costly expedition 
 had come to nought." 
 
 The Acropolis is a solitary rock of semi- 
 crystalline limestone and red schist, which had 
 doubtless been washed for ages by the waves 
 of the old Pliocene sea. " The brightest race 
 of mankind made it in the bygone centuries 
 the point in all the world richest in art. 
 As one stands upon it, in the midst of deso- 
 late ruins, and " tries " to reconstruct in 
 imagination its temples, theatres, and stat- 
 ues," he will turn from the storied past, 
 and look out upon its environment : " On the 
 south is the Saronic Gulf, with Salamis in 
 the foreground, and ^gina, the fabled 
 home of the Myrmidons, in the distance. 
 A breeze comes up from the sea tempering 
 the heat of the sim shining ' through pel- 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 225 
 
 lucid air.' On the southeast is Mount 
 Hymettus, still renowned as of yore for 
 its honey. Away to the northeast and 
 north is Mount Pentelicus, where marble 
 was quarried for temples and statuary. 
 On the northwest is Mount Parnes, dark 
 with forests of pine. To the southwest 
 appears Mount ^^galeos, near the beauti- 
 ful Bay of Salamis. Within this pano- 
 rama of distant hills, following the same 
 circuit from the southeast round to the 
 southwest, one observes the Temple of 
 Olympian Jupiter, begun by Pisistratus 
 and finished after seven hundred years by 
 Hadrian, of whose one hundred and thirty 
 columns in Pentelic marble sixteen still re- 
 main ; Hadrian's Triumphal Arch, also of 
 Pentelic marble, in the Corinthian order ; the 
 monument of Lysicrates, called the lantern 
 of Demosthenes ; still nearer, the Prytaneum 
 or Senate House ; close by, the ruins of the 
 Theatre of Bacchus, the proscenium and 
 orchestra well preserved, built by Hadrian 
 on the site of the ancient Theatre of Diony- 
 
 10* 
 
226 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 sus ; and right at one's feet the remains 
 of a Roman Music Theatre, erected on the 
 site of the Odeum ^ of Pericles, of which 
 no trace has been discovered. Turning to 
 the northward, are seen the remains of the 
 Doric Temple of Theseus, with six columns 
 on each front, thirteen on each flank, and the 
 Tower of the Winds, which still has a sun-dial. 
 On the west, reversing the order from the 
 nearer to the more distant objects, appear, in 
 succession, the Areopagus, the Pnyx, where 
 the public assemblies of Athenian citizens 
 were held, from which were heard the 
 voices of the greatest orators of Greece, 
 where St. Paul preached his wonderful ser- 
 mon ; the prison of Socrates, and the tomb 
 of Philopappos, on the Museum Hill, with 
 its ruined walls, beyond which was the 
 Academy where Plato taught. In the val- 
 ley of the Ilissus, which winds around the 
 southern side of the city to the west, may 
 be observed the modern villa and gardens 
 of Ilissia, on the site of the ancient Lyceum, 
 
 1 Music Hall. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. IF. WIGHT. 227 
 
 where Aristotle had his school. Ou the 
 west of the city is the little river Cephis- 
 sus, running south, in the valley of which 
 the great dramatist Sophocles spent his 
 youth. . . . The Acropolis was the citadel 
 of Athens. . . . On the highest part of the 
 Acropolis stood the Parthenon, the finest 
 building ever constructed in the world, of 
 which the west side still remains. I counted 
 six columns standing entire at the Posticum. 
 Eight columns on the front and seventeen 
 on the sides of the Cella also remain. The 
 Turks used it as a powder-house, and it was 
 blown up during a bombardment in 1687. 
 Nothing remains of the master work of hu- 
 man genius but mournful ruins. My eyes 
 have never beheld a sadder sight." 
 
 After traveling through various countries 
 of Europe, and visiting the midnight sun, 
 as has been described. Dr. Wight returned 
 to London, where he made preparations for 
 a voyage to the other side of the globe. 
 Ou the first of September, 1887, he left 
 England, by steamship, for Australia, pass- 
 
228 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 ing the Isle of Wight where his ancestors 
 lie buried, sailing down the west coast of 
 Europe, and between the " pillars of Her- 
 cules," one of them the famous Rock of 
 Gibraltar, thence between Scylla and Charyb- 
 dis, the dread of ancient mariners, — in 
 view of smoking ^tna, and going on, 
 through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea 
 into the Indian Ocean, in sight of Mount 
 Sinai and the spot that marked the well of 
 Moses. The heat in the Suez Canal and 
 the Red Sea was intense, trying, afflicting, 
 — almost intolerable. It was a relief when 
 the steamship sailed out upon the great In- 
 dian Ocean, where the sea breeze laden with 
 vapor absorbed the heat of the sun's rays, 
 and made it delightfully cool and pleasant. 
 In the mighty steamship, so strongly fash- 
 ioned by the hand of man, and guided by 
 man's genius, one is borne in safety across 
 the sea, as if in the cradle of the deep. On 
 and on one goes day after day, under the 
 stars, and under the sun, until the broad 
 ocean is left behind. A thing of beauty, 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 229 
 
 strength, and speed has circled half of the 
 globe. " A great ocean steamer, like the 
 ' Etruria,' the ' Trave,' the ' Victoria,' or the 
 ' Ormuz,' is perhaps the most striking sym- 
 bol of our wonderful material civilization. 
 It is the product of all the ages.* When a 
 savage of genius, taught by the attempts 
 and failures of countless generations 
 dimly handed down by tradition, launched 
 the first successful canoe, a new era dawned 
 upon the struggling race. Unnumbered 
 centuries vanished before the bold Phoe- 
 nicians sailed through the Pillars of Her- 
 cules out ujjon the western ocean, or the 
 daring Norsemen rowed their boats over 
 the rough Northern Sea to Iceland. As 
 the Koman poet sang : — 
 
 " In oak or triple brass his breast was mailed, 
 Who first committed to the ruthless deep 
 His fragile bark, nor inly shrank and quailed, 
 To hear the headlong south-wind fiercely sweep. 
 With northern blasts to wrestle and to rave ; 
 Nor feared to face the tristful Hyades, 
 And the wild tyrant of the western wave, 
 That lifts or calms at will the restless sea." 
 
230 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 The immense ocean is crossed, and Aus- 
 tralia and New Zealand are reached, — two 
 lands with 1,200 miles of deep sea between 
 them. There the Aryan race has planted 
 new colonies, who have applied their master- 
 ful genius to subduing nature and making 
 her forces subservient to the wants of man : 
 when the clouds are empty, they bring up 
 water from the depths of the earth to irri- 
 gate the desert and the waste places. And 
 on the soil which they make fruitful, they 
 plant the seeds of civil liberty, and they ad- 
 vance and aggrandize the many. After see- 
 ing this new civilization, he says : " From 
 Aukland I took ship for San Francisco. It 
 was my intention to write another chapter, 
 giving my impressions of the Pacific Ocean 
 and some of its islands, but I was help- 
 less during nearly the whole voyage with 
 tropical fever. After ten days spent in con- 
 valescence on the Pacific coast, I crossed the 
 North American continent to my home, I 
 had started eastward, and kept going east- 
 ward till I returned. The more one travels, 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 231 
 
 the more one realizes that all peoples, from 
 the beginning of the world, in all lands, 
 have been toiling in every field of human 
 endeavor, material, mental, and moral, and 
 that each generation inherits all the fruits 
 and toils of the past : ' Other men have 
 labored and ye are entered into their la- 
 bors." 
 
XXIT. 
 
 In Detroit Dr. Wight had many warm 
 friends who gave him a cordial reception, 
 after returning from his long, winding jour- 
 ney around the world. He had looked for 
 rest, and had not found it. Or if he had, 
 tropical fever had used up the store of re- 
 newed strength. A brief letter from San 
 Francisco related how he had been injured 
 in a storm at sea, when the great ship stag- 
 gered under the blow of a heavy wave, and 
 threw him, as well as others, against what- 
 ever came in the way : in the mean time he 
 seemed to recover slowly from the injury. 
 
 Even while sick and in distress, he began 
 to write an account of his travels, giving his 
 observations on the society, government, and 
 institutions of the various Aryan peoples he 
 had visited, and recording their progress to- 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 233 
 
 wards a higher civilization and a better civil 
 liberty. He entitled his book " A Winding 
 Journey around the World." It would be 
 impossible to condense the matter of this 
 work. The work is already in a condensed 
 form. It contains a readable account of his 
 earlier journeys abroad, at a time when he 
 was looking forward. In the " Winding 
 Journey," the views and statements given are 
 of remarkable breadth and scope, showing 
 the extent of his study, the ripeness of his 
 scholarship, and the fertility of his genius, 
 as well as the profundity of his learning. 
 Of each people, each nation, through whose 
 territory, whose land, he journeyed, he gives 
 an epitome, describing manners, customs, and 
 society ; politics, governments, and institu- 
 tions ; science, art, and literature ; in fine, 
 noting progress, present condition, and hopes 
 of the future. And through all runs one 
 great guiding principle, one dominant 
 thought, one eternal purpose, one supreme 
 law : The evolution of man under the order 
 of a universal and unalterable Providence, 
 
234 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 The first edition of his book of travels was 
 published in Detroit, and largely sold by 
 subscription in that city. In the meantime, 
 the doctor went to Milwaukee, where a large 
 circle of friends gave him an enthusiastic 
 welcome, and where a large number of coj)ies 
 of his book were sold. A contract had been 
 made with Houghton, Mifflin and Co., to 
 publish a new edition in the east. They 
 brought out the book in an improved form. 
 And one can always admire their excellent 
 work. 
 
 The severe labor of writing this book and 
 the effects of tropical fever exhausted his 
 strong constitution and broke down his 
 hfealth. Yet it must be remembered that he 
 had been a ceaseless worker, a laborious 
 student, a voluminous writer, giving himself 
 no rest for many years, knowing that this 
 life is short and trying to make the most of 
 it. In time the strongest natures and the 
 most vigorous constitutions yield to the in- 
 roads made by the stress and strain of inces- 
 sant toil. He was no exception to toiling, 
 perishing mortality : " And he, shall he, 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 235 
 
 • •••••• 
 
 Who loved, who suffered countless ills, 
 Who battled for the true, the just. 
 Be blown about the desert dust. 
 Or sealed within the iron hills ? " 
 
 The author of this biography, knowing 
 that his brother was not very well before his 
 long journey around the globe, had advised 
 him not to go over into Asia. After his 
 voyage to Australia he knew by letters that 
 he had not become strong again ; but he 
 was not informed as to the serious changes 
 that had taken place in his health. He had 
 expected him to come to his home in Brook- 
 lyn in a few weeks after the publication of 
 the book of travels. He had written in the 
 mean time, and had received answer that the 
 traveler and writer had still some tropical 
 fever. At that time some advice was sent, 
 as well as such a thing can be done. For 
 it is very difficult to give advice, without 
 seeing and examining the patient. Soon 
 after came a copy of the neio hook. It had 
 been finished, and was well done. Its author 
 
236 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 wrote that he was going to Milwaukee : this 
 brought excitement, when rest was needed ; 
 the fever burned anew ; and then he has- 
 tened back to Detroit. 
 
 One day in October*, 1888, came the an- 
 nouncement that Dr. O. W. Wight was ill, 
 perhaps seriously ill, that he seemed to be 
 slowly losing strength. He had returned 
 from Milwaukee, and had suffered from a 
 severe chill, when fever had followed with 
 exhaustion and prostration. Kind friends 
 cared for him, and in a few days, with my 
 consent, removed him to Harper's Hospital, 
 where he had everything that medical skill 
 and good nursing could do for him. In the 
 meantime word was sent as to his condition, 
 and soon the request for me to hasten to 
 Detroit. In as much haste as possible the 
 journey was undertaken. Strange thoughts 
 and feelings came to mind and heart, as the 
 steamcar sped on. The changing day turned 
 into the changeful night. And then the sun 
 of a new day rose clear and bright. In 
 the crisp air and in the forenoon light, the 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 237 
 
 steamcar curved along the shore of Lake 
 Erie beyond Buffalo. The same lake is 
 there, but the restless water is not the same, 
 as in the past. One is carried back in mem- 
 ory through the years that have gone, and 
 faint outlines of half-forgotten things strug- 
 gle to reappear ; a dim picture of vanished 
 scenes rises before the eyes, and a composite 
 made of reminiscences and the present is 
 more like a dream than a reality. The car 
 glides on towards the mist and roar of the 
 eternal cataract. The bridge, with which 
 the genius of man has spanned the walled 
 river, is crossed, and we tarry by the ex- 
 panding, rushing, falling, roaring waters. 
 They seem to stand for a moment upon the 
 terrible brink, and then, like the south wind, 
 plunge headlong into the turmoil of the 
 mighty chasm below. One has strange im- 
 pressions and feelings made by the acceler- 
 ating velocity of the compact mass as it 
 curves and falls ceaselessly into the rising 
 spray and seething foam, as if the spirit of 
 the water had become angry and was throw- 
 
238 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 ing itself eternally into tlie abyss of destruc- 
 tion, and had then risen into a new life, 
 hurrying and rushing onward toward the 
 whirling and hurling rapids, to beat and 
 lash itself into utter exhaustion, and thence 
 flowing on in the majestic and placid river 
 to the next inland sea. One could feel as 
 well as see the motion of the great cataract, 
 in which gravic force is correlated into the 
 pulverization of the solid rocks. I had seen 
 the exhibition of this mighty power and maj- 
 esty before. But now other and different 
 thoughts came to my mind : I had studied 
 the mighty forces that move the sun and his 
 dependent family of planets ; that stretch 
 across the abyss from world to world, and 
 from star to star ; that upheave the crust of 
 the earth and the envelope of the sun ; that 
 extend through the illimitable spaces of the 
 universe, and turn to bind all things into 
 one, under universal Providence ; and I had 
 thought, and was then thinking, upon the in- 
 finite expansion of eternity beyond, with all 
 its un fathomed mysteries ; and then over- 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 239 
 
 shadowed by the magnitude of these greater 
 things, the awful cataract seemed to diminish 
 until it was a brook-fall fit to turn a mimic 
 wat%r-wheel for a truant schoolboy ; and yet 
 the very spirit of immensity and eternity 
 would anon rise toward the overarching 
 bow, and force itself to appear in the very 
 midst of the waters which seemed to be fall- 
 ing eternally. 
 
 On reaching Detroit, I at once drove to 
 Harper's Hospital, and saw the sick man 
 with conflicting emotions. It was my desire 
 to have him get well, and so there seemed 
 to be some hope. But after consultation 
 with his good physician, Dr. Book, it did not 
 seem as if he could live much longer. The 
 strong man was broken into incurable weak- 
 ness. But the feeble, feverish body still 
 held the same courageous heart, the same in- 
 domitable spirit, the same soul that was obe- 
 dient to God and his laws. Time was not 
 now looking backward : it was still the 
 watchword of a heroic life — ever forward. 
 I asked him if he had anything to say to 
 
240 MEMORIAL OF O. W. WIGHT. 
 
 me ; with great effort he said slowly, the 
 words standing far apart, " There are two 
 expansions.^^ Then I knew that the hour of 
 his departure was at hand, that his life Jiere 
 was closing, and that it was opening to that 
 which lies beyond. I knew well his modes 
 of thought and the way in which he viewed 
 things : I knew he was contemplating the 
 expansion which lies beyond time and space. 
 He told me by signs that he did not desire 
 to get well, that his life had been all labor, 
 and that he wished to go. And so I laid his 
 head upon the pillow, and he seemed to be 
 satisfied. 
 
 And so our ceaseless toil ends in a hand- 
 ful of dust, — with a hope of immortality 
 beyond. And it were well to have it even 
 so, for so God hath shaped it. Yet it 
 seemed as if fortune had flung me back 
 through all the fleeting vanished years, 
 which had been crushed into one supreme 
 moment without pity. Again the two eter- 
 nities meet. And now the work of one is 
 done. At last rest has come to weary feet, 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 241 
 
 — Fame ! so poor, so little, and so low, one 
 could not hear her song, — it were better 
 yet to live, if rightly so, even though it 
 were here ; but it were better yet to live be- 
 yond, where that which causes death must die, 
 and leave our better life wholly emancipated. 
 
 " But when those others, one by one, 
 Withdrew themselves from me and night, 
 And in the house light after light 
 Went out, and I was all alone, 
 
 " A hunger seized my heart ; I read 
 Of that glad year that once had been, 
 In those fallen leaves which kept their green, 
 The noble letters of the dead : 
 
 ' * And strangely on the silence broke 
 The silent-speaking words, and strange 
 Was love's dumb cry defying change 
 To test his worth ; and strangely spoke 
 
 " The faith, the vigor, bold to dwell 
 On doubts that drive the coward back, 
 And keen, thro' wordy snares to track 
 Suggestion to her inmost cell. 
 
 " So word by word, and line by line, 
 f^>^^ The dead man touch'd me from the past, 
 11 
 
242 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 And all at once it seemed at last 
 His living soul was flashed on mine, 
 
 " And mine in his was wound, and whirl'd 
 About empyreal heights of thought. 
 And came on that which is, and caught 
 The deep pulsations of the world. 
 
 " Ionian music measuring out 
 The steps of Time, the shocks of Chance, 
 The blows of Death." 
 
,,-^. -^.2), 
 
 HfcLIOTYpe PRIKTINO CO. BOSTON. 
 
XXIII. 
 
 Thus lived and wrought a self-made man, 
 — and so his labor ceased. All that is 
 mortal of him lies under the sod of Green- 
 wood, at rest. He was placed in kindred 
 dust by loving hands. He laid down by 
 the wayside, where the stone casts a shadow 
 behind the sun of the afternoon of life. 
 His pillow was the weary and pathetic dust 
 of silent suffering. And yet it may be, it 
 must be, best. This brave and tender soul 
 loved the good, the beautiful, the true. 
 And now he rests beyond every storm of 
 life. His spirit has vanished into the 
 viewless eternity. How brief the stay, the 
 storm, the struggle here ! How endless is 
 the eternity beyond ! And yet we linger a 
 little while to recount some of the things 
 he did, — a few of the many he did so well. 
 
244 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 Union College conferred on Lira the de- 
 gree of Master of Arts, while he resided at 
 Rye. He had not been educated at any 
 college or university. This was a timely 
 recognition of his learning, his attainments, 
 and his success in the field of literature. 
 About the same time, the degree of Master 
 of Arts was given him by Yale College. This 
 distinction he had earned by his own efforts. 
 It was in some way a compensation for the 
 studies and toils of his youth, when he had 
 to work his own way in every field of know- 
 ledge and learning. These degrees were 
 not conferred as a matter of course, when 
 there had been three years of waiting af- 
 ter a four years' curriculum. They were 
 given because they were deserved, on ac- 
 count of the merit, the learning, and the suc- 
 cess of the recipient. These honors were 
 gratifying to his laudable ambition. He 
 had conquered the fields of learning up to 
 the lines set by these deserved honors, and 
 had gone a long way beyond them. But 
 they were some encouragement, — an in- 
 centive to work in the future. 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 245 
 
 That he was ambitious, there can be no 
 doubt. Take away all that the word am- 
 hition means and implies and it would be 
 necessary to rewrite the history of the 
 world. And when it had been rewritten, 
 we would find our historian under the spell 
 of ambition, — and his history would be of 
 little worth. The ambition that leads to 
 the performance of great deeds, that aims 
 at the liberty, elevation, and happiness of 
 the many, must not be thrown away. It 
 is neither criminal nor sinful : it is praise- 
 worthy to the extent that it lifts us up and 
 draws others unto us. This was the nature 
 of his ambition. It was this that moved 
 him to his ceaseless labor. It was this that 
 sustained him to the last. It was this that 
 inspired his vision when the end came. 
 
 That he longed for fame was certainly 
 true. To aspire to eminence was no new 
 thing. Others had so longed and so as- 
 pired. To be a leader among men, not 
 from material power, but from intellectual 
 force, was laudable and desirable. Have 
 
246 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 there not been a long line of worthies, as we 
 traverse the centuries, from Plato to Des- 
 cartes, from Aristotle to Bacon, from Thucyd- 
 ides to Gibbon, from Democritus to Darwin, 
 from Homer to Shakespeare, whose names 
 and works have been remembered ? Their 
 fame has extended into all lands. They are 
 the world's inheritance. A- new motion has 
 been given to society, government, and civil- 
 ization, in all lands, because these men have 
 lived. Such fame as they have achieved, if 
 rightly and fully earned, was not foreign to 
 his wish. He desired to be in the company 
 of the great, the good, and the wise. 
 
 All along his eventful life he has been as- 
 sociated with the press. No one knew bet- 
 ter how much has been done for the world 
 by the invention of printing. He appreci- 
 ated how liberty and happiness increased by 
 the diffusion of knowledge. Something of 
 what has happened to the advantage of man 
 during the brief existence of the press may 
 be seen in the following words taken from 
 one of his speeches : — 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 247 
 
 " In reofard to the influence on society of 
 the mingled good and evil of the press, it 
 may be remarked that the former is per- 
 manent and the latter transitory. The good 
 that men do is not interred with their bones. 
 The evil that they do lives not long after 
 them. The Almighty has so attuned the 
 soul of man that it responds with tones of 
 harmony to every touch of truth and beauty. 
 On the other hand the touch of falsehood 
 and deformity jangle it like sweet bells out 
 of tune. Good is eternal. Evil is a perish- 
 able accident. The air of Heaven is so con- 
 stituted that it transmits harmonies and ar- 
 rests discords. In like manner, human 
 society is so fashioned by the hand of its 
 Maker that it rejects the evil poured out to 
 it from the press and absorbs the good as 
 nutriment into its very growth. . . . 
 
 " In conclusion, it may be said without any 
 exaggeration that the wonderful progress 
 of modern society dates from the invention 
 of printing. In the Oriental fable a voice 
 that was frozen into silence subsequently 
 
248 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 thawed and became audible. The lips of an- 
 tiquity were dumb in the chilly atmosphere 
 of the Dark Ages, but they were warmed into 
 eloquence by the rising sun of the Renais- 
 sance, after Tyndall had printed the Bible. 
 The press restored to mankind the wisdom of 
 the ancient world. Thanks to the scholar- 
 ship and the invention of Germany, the lyr- 
 ics of Pindar and Horace, the deeper melody 
 of Homer and Virgil, the trumpet tones of 
 liberty in Demosthenes and Cicero, the sci- 
 ence of Aristotle, the thought of Plato, the 
 compact narratives of Thucydides and Taci- 
 tus, the Philosophy of Greece and the ju- 
 risprudence of Eome, are brought within the 
 reach of the humblest scholar. The press 
 embalms for us the souls of the dead. The 
 spirits of Dante and Shakespeare, of Leo- 
 nardo da Yinci and Leibnitz, of Bacon and 
 Descartes, of Cervantes and Milton, of 
 Spinoza and La Place, hover this side of 
 the eternal world in the mysterious drapery 
 of printed words. 
 
 " I pause on the threshold of a theme as 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 249 
 
 vast as the world's literature. At a ban- 
 quet given in honor of rare eloquence and 
 political genius, it has seemed to me best to 
 recall the several features of a subject that 
 lies at the roots of our government and is 
 interwoven with the destiny of the Repub- 
 lic." . . . 
 
 In his literary productions, he was clear, 
 definitive, incisive, earnest, fearless, honest. 
 He has been a voluminous writer. And the 
 guiding principle in all was truth : the truth 
 was better than any man ; it was higher than 
 anything which man did. His work was 
 like that of the knight-errant : to set things 
 right that had gone wrong ; to aid in the 
 evolution of man to a higher good. We may 
 listen to what he says of William Words- 
 worth : " He spoke as the unsophisticated 
 child . always speaks, from the heart. Ser- 
 pent critics might hiss, but his time was too 
 precious to waste with them. He who is 
 conversing with angels feels not the bite of 
 vipers. He has other than carnal weapons 
 
 with which to bruise their heads. Born 
 
 11* 
 
250 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 among the hills, the favorite of nature, what 
 did Wordsworth care for Jeffrey's ridicule, or 
 the neglect of contemporaries ? More than 
 half a century he wrote and lived poetry. 
 Hills and mountains put on for him looks 
 of benediction ; Nature smiled upon him 
 in flowers, and sung to him her love with 
 warbling tongues. He could afford to be 
 laughed at by the foolish, to be hooted at by 
 literary owls. What had he to do with the 
 world's approbation ? He was a born poet, 
 and could not listen to the cry of critic or 
 multitude. Like a benign spirit, he brooded 
 over the world of affection and sentiment, 
 and in being true to these, he was true to 
 himself. His voice has been borne on the 
 bosom of the mountain wind, and already 
 the ear of humanity is ravished by its kindly 
 tone. An age of imitation never recognizes 
 the inspired teacher who is true to man in 
 being true to his own nature. Just so far as 
 the spirit of the times is false will the true 
 poet be neglected. The one who tacks to 
 catch the popular breeze may run with 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 251 
 
 rapidity, — alas, not often heavenwards. 
 When the multitude are repenting, woe to 
 those who have received their greatest fa- 
 vors, and joy to those who have raised heroic 
 and prophetic voices of warning and true 
 guidance ! Happy the age in which a strong, 
 devout soul converses with the spirit of the 
 universe in the hearing of men I Words of 
 bitterness and of jest may be thoughtlessly 
 uttered, but many shall learn to worship ; 
 seeing the light of consecrated genius that 
 shines in truth and sincerity, they shall 
 learn to glorify Him whose most perfect 
 image is the divinest poet." 
 
 And here we revert to philosophy; in a 
 few words the evolution of the human mind 
 is pictured : " The philosopher, starting with 
 full faith in the integrity of his intellectual 
 nature, believes that he has knowledge, not 
 merely of his own sensational states, but also 
 of the existence of things, as consciousness 
 clearly attests. This faith in reason is com- 
 mon to all philosophers. Philosophy, in its 
 strictest meaning, is the thinking of thought. 
 
252 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 a science of the liiiman mind whose veracity 
 is an object of belief. When mind is turned 
 inward upon itself, when it applies itself to 
 the observances of its own powers, when it 
 searches after the laws of its own manifes- 
 tations, when it watches itself in the act of 
 acquiring knowledge, when it follows itself 
 through the various operations of sensation, 
 perception, reasoning, doubting, believing, 
 etc., then the work of philosophizing has 
 been seriously begun. That philosophy 
 should at once be achieved, that it should 
 leap into existence without defect, without 
 blemish, complete and divinely beautiful, 
 like Athene, or Wisdom, from the brain of 
 Zeus, or the Supreme Intelligence, no man 
 could expect. Every science has been the 
 growth of ages. It is no more wonderful 
 that opinions have differed in regard to 
 questions of philosophy than that they have 
 differed in regard to questions of chemistry. 
 The chemist is certain in regard to some 
 things ; and as much may be said of the 
 philosopher. The earliest cultivators of any 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. \V. WIGHT. 253 
 
 science find out a few facts, which are none 
 the less facts for being mingled with many 
 errors. When a science is more fully de- 
 veloped and fairly achieved, then a wise 
 historical retrospect may clearly discriminate 
 between error and fact, and point out the 
 progress that has been made by decrease of 
 the former, and increase of the latter. Phi- 
 losophy, the most difficult of all sciences, 
 must, in the nature of things, be the first 
 to be established, the last to be perfected. 
 Scientific investigation, of whatever kind, 
 can proceed only with the aid of intellectual 
 instruments given by philosophy. It must 
 always be remembered that in the simplest 
 physical sciences the mind is the investiga- 
 tor ; unless it strictly obey laws which are 
 derived solely from itself, it will arrive at 
 nothing or error. Without the Greek met- 
 aphysicians and the schoolmen, there had 
 been no modern science. Science sometimes 
 shows her folly and ingratitude by ignor- 
 ing her super-sensual helper, without whose 
 aid she could not even know that a phe- 
 
254 MEMORIAL OF 0. \V. WIGHT. 
 
 nomenon has a cause, and would thus lose 
 the primary stimulus of her wonderful ac- 
 tivity." 
 
 We pass from the philosophic and the 
 poetic to the pathetic realism of storm and 
 disaster, when the winds are let loose and 
 drive the abode of the mariner to wreckage 
 and destruction. And so it has been, and 
 so it will be again ; some are lost and some 
 are saved. Safe is the open sea, and safe is 
 the solid land : but where sea and land meet 
 and wrestle, danger and peril wander up and 
 down, as if they made the mournful music of 
 the troubled shore. We give only the pic- 
 ture of the wreck and loss: "On the seventh 
 of May, 1850, they embarked on board the 
 ' Elizabeth ' for the New World, leaving be- 
 hind them the blackened fields of revolution, 
 and that Kome which has been the arena of 
 contending civilizations during a period of 
 more than a hundred generations of men. 
 The only other passengers were a young 
 Italian girl and Mr. Horace Sumner, of 
 Boston. Captain Harty died on the third 
 
 I 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 255 
 
 of June, off Gibraltar, with the confluent 
 small -pox. The mate took the command. 
 Ten days after, little Angelino sickened with 
 the same frightful disease, and barely sur- 
 vived. Alas ! when misfortunes come^ they 
 come not single sjnes, but in fierce battal- 
 ions. July fifteenth the barque was off 
 the Jersey coast, somewhere between Cape 
 May and Barnegat. It was about noon. 
 Trunks were packed, in expectation of land- 
 ing next morning. About nine o'clock in 
 the evening the breeze rose to a gale. Sails 
 were close-reefed, but currents and tempest 
 drove the vessel faster than any knew to- 
 wards the sandbars of Long Island. About 
 four o'clock the next morning she struck. 
 Her broadside was exposed to the merciless 
 blows of the enraged sea. The brine rushed 
 through the broken bottom. The crash of 
 fallmg timbers and the roar of waves that 
 swept over her were fearfully mingled. The 
 foaming spray quenched the lights, and the 
 cabin-door was unhinged by the mad-rushing 
 water. The words : ' We must die ! Let 
 
256 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 Its die calmly then,^ were shrilly uttered 
 above the heavy thunder of the ocean's roar. 
 Prayer gushed up in agony from despairing 
 hearts. Kindly and encouraging words of 
 parting were spoken ; and messages, stamped 
 with the priceless value of dying utterance, 
 were intrusted to each other for absent 
 friends, if perchance some one might sur- 
 vive. The crew were on the forecastle, and 
 the passengers in the cabin. Across the 
 vessel amidships, between them, the heavy 
 seas were at measured intervals sweeping. 
 Mrs. Harty, the wife of the deceased cap- 
 tain, beckoned at the cabin door, and was 
 observed by Davis, the mate. It was about 
 seven in the morning, and the cabin threat- 
 ened to break up. The sailors were ordered 
 to the rescue, but refused to go. Davis, 
 holding fast to the bulwarks, and stopping 
 while the seas combed over him, crossed to 
 the passengers. Two of the brave sailors 
 followed him. The passengers with great 
 difficulty and peril were conveyed to the 
 forecastle. On the shore, not far off, were 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 2d1 
 
 wreckers, heartless as the dreary sand-hills 
 washed by the cold waves. One sailor, 
 aided by a life-preserver, reached the strand. 
 Another, supported by a spar, followed in 
 safety. Mr. Sumner made the attempt, and 
 was swallowed up by the ocean. Mrs. Harty, 
 seated upon a plank, holding fast by handles 
 of rope, supported by Davis and a brave 
 sailor, reached the shore almost lifeless. 
 Margaret refused to be separated from her 
 husband and child. The day wore away, 
 and at length, about three o'clock, most of 
 the crew jumped overboard, only part of 
 whom gained the beach. Four seamen yet 
 remained with the passengers. The cabin 
 had gone, and the stern of the ship had sunk 
 out of sight. At length the foremast fell, 
 carrying with it the deck and all upon it. 
 Two of the seamen clung to the mast and 
 were saved ; the rest were lost. The child 
 touched the shore of the New World, warm 
 but lifeless. Margaret sank at once. When 
 last seen, she had been seated at the foot of 
 the foremast, still clad in her white night- 
 
258 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 dress, with her hair fallen loose upon her 
 shoulders. It was over — that twelve hours' 
 communion face to face with death! It was 
 over ! and the prayer was granted, That Os- 
 soli, Angelino, and I may go together^ and 
 that the anguish may he hriefy In these 
 words we have a vivid picture of the fate 
 of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, than which none 
 can be more pathetic, none more tragic. 
 And it was none the less tragic, none the 
 less pathetic, because the prayer seemed to 
 be answered. To go through the wreck and 
 the storm, — leaving the roar of the tempest 
 and meeting the sweetness of the silence, — 
 what a fate ! 
 
 Science, philosophy, realism, and duty in- 
 spire the following paragraph, in which is 
 aptly described the dual obligation of the 
 physician to heal and teach : "In our pro- 
 fession, we have to deal not only with form 
 and structure, but also with the visitations 
 of Providence in the form of disease. Man, 
 by his ignorance and waywardness, has vio- 
 lated the laws of the Almighty, and the con- 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 259 
 
 sequences of such isolation are visited upon 
 him, involving the innocent as well as the 
 guilty. Fearful problems of life are there- 
 fore i3resented to us at every step in our 
 course. It is our business to perpetually 
 teach as well as heal. Upon our diligence, 
 caution, promptness, soundness of judgment, 
 often hang the issues of life and death. We 
 tread among open graves, while suppliants 
 around us extend their trembling hands to 
 us as ministers of God's healing art, revealed 
 through patient investigation to a perishing 
 world. It is a sacrilege to approach the 
 great work without due preparation. The 
 dearest interests of the living are committed 
 to our keeping, and no man whose honor is 
 not fire-proof should be allowed to wear the 
 badge or hold the diploma of the medical 
 profession. Moreover, it should not be for- 
 gotten that a true practitioner will seek the 
 reward that comes from a consciousness of 
 duty performed as well as the compensation 
 of material gain." 
 
XXIV. 
 
 " My heart leaps up when I behold 
 A rainbow in the sky ; 
 So was it when my life began ; 
 So is it now I am a man ; 
 So let it be when I grow old, 
 Or let me die." 
 
 And so there comes an hour to every one 
 that lives, — a momentary fragment of time, 
 — when all that eye can see, or ear can 
 hear, or hand can touch, seems like the 
 shadow of a summer cloud as it speeds 
 upon the shore, — and when there is a 
 vision of things new and strange, — an 
 ins2?iration of " something deeply inter- 
 fused," of something besides the transient 
 forms that meet us on every hand : and 
 what this spirit is we do not know. And 
 when our eyes, and ears, and hands are 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 261 
 
 weary, we rest and think, — and then we 
 say : these motions that our common senses 
 feel are only fragment of the eternal mo- 
 tions that a higher sense reveals. 
 
 " Strong Sou of God, immortal Love, 
 Whom we, tliat have not seen Thy face, 
 By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
 Believing where we cannot prove. " 
 
 The earth, and moon, and sun, that rise 
 and fall, and all the wandering host of 
 worlds beyond, as turned and swung by cos- 
 mic law, in all their complicated and endless 
 motions, are revelations to the seer, in every 
 clime, in every land. They are but shad- 
 ows of things to be ; and as they move, 
 they tend to one far-off event ; and the 
 story that they tell to him who is the seer 
 must needs be true, and runs in words 
 which make it clear that the universe of 
 God is one. That two there cannot be : 
 all worlds, all suns, are one ; under the do- 
 minion of universal law, all things evolve ; 
 a providence of good unfolds the smallest 
 flower and turns the greatest sun. 
 
262 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 Inspiration and revelation have come to 
 all peoples, in all lands, and in all times. 
 To be a seer of tlie truth and a revealer of 
 it to men is not an exceptional fact which 
 has taken place now and then, here and 
 there. The mind and soul of man has 
 yearned for truth and life all through the 
 centuries and the ages that have vanished. 
 So they will in all times to come. Truly 
 the Spirit of God interfuses all souls, aud 
 comes as a witness to every heart. But 
 most of all to wise and holy men is his 
 presence known, — those who have tried to 
 fill the soul and mind and heart of man 
 with faith, hope, and love. These men have 
 lived in every land, have taught in every 
 clime, have raised up those who fall in every 
 time. It is they who see the truth, and 
 teach the sons of men. 
 
 Oriental precept tells us that the wise 
 Confucius divined the law and revealed it 
 unto his brothers who were blind, to guide 
 them in the devious ways of life. The gen- 
 tle Prince Siddhartha, whose stainless shrines 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 263 
 
 are daily overlaid with flowers, in whom 
 the light of Asia shines, reveals a hope and 
 refuge, greater than any one can tell, to 
 countless weary hearts. The strong and 
 devout soul of Socrates still converses with 
 the Spirit of the universe, in the hearing of 
 men who care to listen to that voice which 
 seemed to reveal the very source of inspira- 
 tion. Daily with the Father communed 
 the blessed Son, whose sermon on the mount 
 is a deeper inspiration and a mightier 
 revelation than the world has elsewhere 
 seen or heard. And it seems that all true 
 prophets since the world began, and all 
 true poets in the vanishing years, are seers, 
 inspired to make revelations of the truth to 
 man. 
 
 That there was an inspiration, as well as a 
 revelation, in some way vouchsafed to him, 
 we cannot doubt, who knew him well. It 
 was not in the low and vulgar way of com- 
 mon men, but from an insight — a seeing — 
 into the universe of man and nature, where 
 lives and moves the eternal Spirit. That 
 
264 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 we may know in some sense how this was so, 
 we may j)araphrase the thoughts of the poet 
 " On the banks of the Wye, while he was 
 visiting the ruins of Tintern Abbey: " — 
 
 In his boyish days nature was to him all 
 in all. In after years he could not paint 
 what then he was. It was then the sound- 
 ing cataract like a passion haunted him 
 with the enchanting music of its waterfall. 
 The forms and colors of the high rock, the 
 lofty mountain, and the deep wood, then 
 awakened an appetite for Him who shaped 
 the world, — and shaped it long ago. A 
 feeling of a Presence and a love for what 
 the eye could see burned and agitated all the 
 elevated thoughts within. All the achinof 
 joys and all the dizzy raptures of that time 
 are passed. The shore on which they rose is 
 " lying low." Other gifts were his, of more 
 abundant recompense and greater power. 
 For in the passing years he had learned 
 to look on nature, not as in the hour of 
 thoughtless youth, but often hearing the 
 still, sad music of humanity. It was not 
 
MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 265 
 
 harsh, nor did it grate upon the ear, though 
 it was of ample power to chasten and sub- 
 due. 
 
 " And I have felt 
 
 A presence which disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts : a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
 A motion, and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 That he had faith in this life is well at- 
 tested by what he said and did and wrote on 
 occasions too many to enumerate. And it 
 was all to him a very real and earnest thing. 
 To such natures life is always intensely 
 realistic, even in its moods of elevated 
 thoughts. And that he believed in a future, 
 another world vaguely expressed by the 
 word eternity, he has expressly told us. 
 
 When he mentioned some great pictures 
 he collected at Rome and at Dresden, the 
 impressions made by these " precious pic- 
 
 12 
 
266 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 
 
 tures " could be recalled in sleepless nights ; 
 they were seen as imperishable, and with 
 the expectation of being carried "into the 
 next world." 
 
 That he was in youth a dreamer — a philo- 
 sopher, and Plato his master — may be true, 
 but that in later years he became a practical 
 realist was shown by his works. And yet 
 the solution of every practical problem, as 
 it came to thought and hand, was touched 
 by a wise philosophy, beautified by a poetic 
 imagination, and vivified by pathetic elo- 
 quence, — until its shadow fell over into the 
 hereafter. And its fruition kept company 
 with the good, which is eternal, — and part- 
 ed with evil, which "is a perishable acci- 
 dent." 
 

 Aq.^