“‘Keep in your heart a shrine to the ideal, and upon this 
altar let the fire never die.’ 
The one who blesses—who makes the world better—is the 
true priest.’ 
“These also are the words of Elbert Hubbard, of sad, but 
happy memory.—Generous, as all great souls, he gave them to 
the world,—and I, as freely, have adopted them. 
“The hour is late.—Good night.” 
With this seemingly abrupt conclusion, characteristic of the 
man,— “suaviter in modo, fortiter in re” (gentle in manner and 
strong in deeds),—the Master passed, in pensive mood, out into 
the starry stillness of the night; saddened, it seemed to me, with 
memories of the past,—memories which reminded him, too for¬ 
cibly perhaps, of the long struggle of the upward trend—the scien¬ 
tifically certain, far off quest of a world-wide, free philanthropy; 
—thinking maybe, of the many who have profited by his handi¬ 
work yet never stayed to thank the giver. 
The greatest souls are, still, stung by ingratitude. 
Hear Shakespeare thus:— 
“Blow, blow, thou winter wind! 
Thou art not so unkind 
As man’s ingratitude.” 
And it may be the Master has been sore tried in this regard 
and finds it hard, as Pope has poetized:— 
“To bear unmov’d the wrongs of base mankind, 
The last and hardest conquest of the mind.” 
However that be, it distresses me to think the interview, so 
useful and instructive, should have caused him pain. 
But now I hear his footfall down the terraces, descending to 
his home beside the lake,—a home made comfortable and cosy 
through the unceasing efforts of his faithful wife, the one we 
all so gladly hail as “Mother;”—and it is time that I, too, said 
good night, and retired to my pine-protected cottage hermitage. 
35 
