188 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



in the pursuit of his enlightened plans, will continue to follow him 

 now that he has rested from his labors. 



The rest into which he has entered came to him in a green old 

 age, after a life as full of years as it was full of honors. He was 

 not only blest with an old age which was 



serene and bright, 



And lovely as a Lapland night, 



but he also had that which, according to the great dramatist, should 

 accompany old age "As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends." 

 And the manner of his death was in perfect keeping with the man- 

 ner of his life. Assured for months before the inevitable hour came 

 that his days on earth were numbered, he made no change in his 

 daily official employments, no change in his social and literary diver- 

 sions. None was needed. Surprise, I learn, has been expressed 

 that in the full prospect of death he should have " talked " so little 

 about it. But the surprise is quite unfounded. Professor Henry 

 was little in the habit of talking about himself at any time. Yet 

 to his intimate friends he spoke freely and calmly about his ap- 

 proaching end. Two weeks before he died he said to one such, a 

 gentleman from New York, to whom he was strongly attached : " I 

 may die at any moment. I would like to live long enough to com- 

 plete some things I have undertaken, but I am content to go. I 

 have had a happy life, and I hope I have been able to do some 

 good." In an hour's conversation which I had \vith him six days 

 before he died, he referred to the imminence of his death with the 

 same philosophic and Christian composure. And perfectly aware 

 as he was, on the day before he died, and on the day of his death, 

 that he had already entered the Dark Valley, he feared no evil as 

 he looked across it, but, poised in a sweet serenity, preserved his 

 soul in patience, at an equal remove from rapture on the one hand 

 or anything like dismay on the other. For his friends he had even 

 then the same benignant smile, the same warm pressure of the hand, 

 and the same affable words as of yore. With the astronomer, New- 

 comb, he pleasantly and intelligently discoursed about the then 

 recent transit of Mercury not unheedful of the great transit he 

 was making, but giving heed none the less to every opportunity for 

 the inquiry of truth. Toward the attendants watching around his 



