Goodwin.] ^"" [Dec. 10, 



the mechanic to a higher intelligence and a more respectable social posi- 

 tion. There have been men who have amassed millions, and w^ho have 

 not failed to give generously of their abundance when it could be done 

 with great eclat ; but who had, nevertheless, either grown rich at the 

 expense of their neighbors, as mere gambling- speculators, or been loose 

 in their principles of integrity, or excessively iDarsimonious in their per- 

 sonal habits, or hard and rigorous to the last cent in all their daily trans- 

 actions, especially with their dependents, employes, and clerks. Not so 

 with Mr. Merrick. He expended freely as he went ; he was generous and 

 kind to all his dependents ; in raising himself he lifted up others ; their 

 rising was the very mode and condition of his ; all his operatives respected 

 and loved him ; all his business transactions were for the mutual benefit 

 of the parties concerned ; all his prosperity was the prosperity of those 

 around him, and of the city in which he lived. 



It is no small achievement thus to acquire a large property — by honest 

 industry, by extraordinary skill, and tact, and enterprise, withoiit parsi- 

 mony, or stint, or exaction, but in the spirit and constant exercise of a 

 large liberality. Indeed, this is one of the grandest schemes of benevo- 

 lence and philanthropy that a man can conceive and carry out. 



It implies a certain greatness of mind, a certain self-containedness, 

 voluntarily to stoi^ in the career of acquisition and leave the field to 

 others. 



It is no slight mark of the eminence and worth of any man that, at his 

 decease, he should leave a sensible gap in a great city, that his departure 

 should be widely felt as a public bereavement. 



Every gas-burning lamp that lights our streets, our halls and our par- 

 lors, is a perpetual illumination of the name of Merrick. Merrick and 

 Fi-anklin, both sons of New England, will remain indissolubly associated 

 as long as our Franklin Institute i-etains its name and remembers its 

 founder. The great railways converging upon Philadelphia will be ave- 

 nues and radiants for the enduring fame of the citizen who planned, and 

 early presided over, the Pennsylvania Road, which has become the head 

 of the great family, and now stretches its arms over a continent. His fire 

 engines were long since eloquent with his name in many a city and village 

 of the land ; the beautiful frigate Mississippi bore it proudly around the 

 globe ; and later, in our great national life struggle, the same name re- 

 verberated along the rebel coast with the guns of our best and mightiest 

 armored steamship of war.* 



To sum up the character of our departed friend : He was a man of 

 quick perception, of clear intelligence, of singular forecast, of large and 

 liberal views, of rare sagacity, of imperious, even overbearing, will, and 

 of indomitable energy ; a just man, of honorable sentiments, of strict in- 

 tegrity, to be trusted anywhere and in anything, faithful in the least and 

 in the greatest alike ; a man of a kindly nature, of ready sympathy, in- 

 stinctively and on principle benevolent, always benevolent — his benevolence 



* The New Ironsides was furnished to the Government, hull, armor, and machincrj-, by " Mer- 

 rick & Sons." 



