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Robert Ingersoll Tribute Knowles


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Tribute Knowles

Robert Green Ingersoll


A TRIBUTE TO MRS. IDA WHITING KNOWLES.

New York, Dec. 16, 1887.

MY FRIENDS: Again we stand in the shadow of the great mystery
-- a shadow as deep and dark as when the tears of the first mother
fell upon the pallid face of her lifeless babe -- a mystery that
has never yet been solved.

We have met in the presence of the sacred dead, to speak a
word of praise, of hope, of consolation.

Another life of love is now a blessed memory -- a lingering
strain of music.

The loving daughter, the pure and consecrated wife, the
sincere friend, who with tender faithfulness discharged the duties
of a life, has reached her journey's end.

A braver, a more serene, a more chivalric spirit -- clasping
the loved and by them clasped -- never passed from life to enrich
the realm of death. No field of war ever witnessed greater
fortitude, more perfect, smiling courage than this poor, weak and
helpless woman displayed upon the bed of pain and death.

Her life was gentle and her death sublime. She loved the good
and all the good loved her.

There is this consolation: she can never suffer more; never
feel again the chill of death; never part again from those she
loves. Her heart can break no more. She has shed her last tear, and
upon her stainless brow has been set the wondrous seal of
everlasting peace.

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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
12

A TRIBUTE TO MRS. IDA WHITING KNOWLES.

When the Angel of Death -- the masked and voiceless -- enters
the door of home, there come with her all the daughters of
Compassion, and of these Love and Hope remain forever.

You are about to take this dear dust home to the home of her
girlhood, and to the place that was once my home. You will lay her
with neighbors whom I have loved, and who are now at rest. You will
lay her where my father sleeps.

"Lay her i' the earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring."

I never knew, I never met, a braver spirit than the one that
once inhabited this silent form of dreamless clay.

END

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