HON. MARSHALL P. WILDER. 87 



is advanced in years ? If goodness has crowned his 

 days, and the harvests of successive years have been 

 garnered in the mind as a well-filled storehouse, and 

 the love of children and grandchildren throws its 

 arms around him or climbs his knees " the envied 

 kiss to share," and hope opens the portals of heaven 

 on his vision, and his soul is at peace, like a fore- 

 taste of the rest that awaits him at the end of his 

 pilgrimage, why should not old age be the happiest, 

 the loveliest, the cosiest season of the life on earth ? 

 We are apt to forget that the heart never grows 

 old, and that out of the heart are the issues of life. 

 The soul never grows old, and the soul is the man. 

 We know that this mortal frame of ours is not the 

 thing that is to be, and not even the thing that is, 

 if we are to judge by the power to be, to do, to suffer, 

 and to enjoy ; for we know that the real life of man 

 is the soul, and that that is what loves, learns, hopes, 

 rejoices in the smile of God and friends, and lives 

 the most when it is freed from these trammels of 

 the body. 



We all recognize Colonel Wilder as a prominent 

 public benefactor. If he had done nothing more 

 than to introduce many new fruits and flowers, and 

 to multiply new varieties by hybridization, he would 

 have laid the community under great obligations to 

 him. But his range of activity has been far wider. 

 A large part of the beauty, the cultured taste and 



