BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 15 



far from Milwaukee. He returned greatly improved and 

 resumed with renewed zeal his usual avocations. But he 

 had passed far beyond the boundary line of three score and 

 ten, and realized the truth of the old verse : — 



*♦ For age will rust the brightest blade, 

 And time will break the stoutest bow; 



Was never wight so starkly made 

 But time and age will lay him low." 



On the 24th of July, 1889, he received numerous visitors 

 to congratulate him upon the commencement of his nineti- 

 eth year. He was weak physically, though able to meet 

 them in the drawing-rcom at Tower Grove, and his mind 

 was as clear as ever. This, however, was his last appear- 

 ance in public. An attack of malaria upon an already 

 enfeebled system speedily dissipated all hopes of recovery, 

 and he died at 3 :25 Sunday morning, August 25th. The 

 death, peaceful and painless, occurred in his favorite room 

 on the second floor of the old homestead ; by the window 

 of which he sat nearly every night for more than thirty 

 years until the morning hours, absorbed in the reading 

 which had been the delight of his life. This room was 

 always plainly furnished, containing only a brass bedstead, 

 tables, chairs, and the few books he loved to have near him. 

 The windows look out upon the old garden which was the 

 first botanical beginning at Tower Grove. On Saturday, 

 Ausust 31st, after such ceremonial as St. Louis never be- 

 fore bestowed upon any deceased citizen, Henry Shaw was 

 laid to rest in the Mausoleum long prepared in the midst 

 of the Garden he had created — not for himself merely, 

 but for all the generations that shall come after him, and 

 who, enjoying it, will " rise up and call him blessed." 

 There, amid the trees, the grass, and the flowers which were 

 so near and dear to him from infancy to old age; with the 

 soft evening sky bending over him like a benediction, and 

 the vesper song of birds mingling with the farewell hymn, 

 he was left to sleep the sleep that knows no waking. And 

 so the lonjir and useful life was rounded to its close. 



