MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN BULLETIN 115 
as clear as ever. This, however, was his last appearance 
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 fur- 
nished, 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 be- 
ginning at Tower Grove. On Saturday, August 31st, after 
such ceremonial as St. Louis never before 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 gen- 
erations 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 bend- 
ing 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 long and useful 
life was rounded to its close. 
America was Mr. Shaw’s country not merely by adoption, 
but by deliberate and well-considered choice—a choice he 
never regretted and of which he was always proud. When 
he retired from business he was in the prime of manhood, 
and with wealth amply sufficient in those days for the grat- 
ification of tastes far more luxurious than were his. It 
would have enabled him to live in England, or in any part 
of the Continent, much more easily and pleasantly, as a 
gentleman of leisure, than it was then possible to do in 
America. He had nothing except personal preference to 
keep him here, and very much, one would suppose, to in- 
duce him to take up permanent residence abroad. Yet after 
long and repeated absences—which, in most cases, would 
have ended in such residence—he returned to St. Louis to 
live and to die; to begin, carry forward, and consummate 
