ADDRESS 



OF 



HON. SAMUEL S. COX. 



WE have found by recent sad experiences in this Hall that 

 death is no respecter of persons. Neither is he a respecter of 

 seasons. He may choose the merriest month for the saddest 

 bereavement. In May last, when the sun was warm, the sky 

 blue, the flowers in bloom, and the trees luxuriant in leaf, he 

 entered yonder quaint structure secluded amid its greenery and 

 bore away one of our rarest minds and purest men. By one fatal 

 wrench of his skeleton hand a splendid career of eighty years was 

 closed ; in a twinkling the one hard problem of a long and studious 

 life was solved; the wonder- world beyond had become a "discov- 

 ered country" to JOSEPH HENRY. Its season, we trust, is per- 

 petual May to him. Its new life removed from him, if not from 

 his bereaved family and friends, the sting of death, and from the 

 grave its victory. 



The lightning, which had been evoked by him to transmit its 

 instantaneous message to the remotest parts of the earth, sped on 

 its quick errand to tell the learned of all lands that an intellectual 

 magnate had been translated. The magnetic cord whose first duty, 

 as arranged by him, was to send the tidings of a new star over land 

 and under ocean to every seat of science, heralded to all that "God 

 had unloosed his weary star," and that he was a lost luminary in 

 the galaxy of intellect. 



Wail! for the glorious Pleiad fled! 



Wail! for the ne'er returning star! 

 Whose mighty music ever led 



The spheres in their high homes afar. 



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