Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1882-02-11
AUTHOR OF ssEaOTE. SWEET
HOME,,
Som G Interesting Facts About His Life
and His Death.

From the New York Times.
correspondent of the leading Yorkshire
paper. the Leeds Mercury, writing lately from
Tunis, says in regard to a visit to the foreign
cemetery there:
..For the first time since came to Tunis a
great wave of home-sickness swept over me-
How far off wei and the silent dead be-
Meath my feet-seemed to be from the land of
our birth And even as this thought was surg
Ing through my heart. my eye fell upon one
special grave for which had been searching
There was plain stone slab. surrounded by a
little bed OF heliotIope and dwarf roses and it
bore an inscription telling how beneath it Law
Col John Howard Payne a citizen of the
United States OF America and how this monu-
ment had been erected by his grateful fellow
conntrymen in honor of the author of Home.
Sweet Home strange. indeed. is the irony of
fate We shape our OWE destnies i'm fancy: we
plan and plot and labor and cOntriye aud each
one of us for himself has formed his own ideal of
the end at which. in due season. in the fullness
OF this time. he is 10 arrive and probably not
once, IN the whole history of the human race
has that end. when it did come been i'm har-
mony with the visions thus INDUCED in But
surely. OF all the strange freaks of malicious for
tune, there has been none stranger. none sad
Ger, than that which sent the man who wrote
Home. Sweet Home TO die an exile on African
Soil. and which has lett him to a grave here
among our English dead at Tunis.'
since poor Payne died on the shores of AZ
hui'itu> va iiiiItUlistiFeS nave passed
who are now utterly forgotten. as are tho
writer's of hundreds of pretenrious works in
poetry and prose, now not worth the paper they
are written on: but the Impoverished African
consul = name remains a household word where
ever the English language is spoken, for his
simple lines had about them that which makes
the whole world kin" He died bachelor.
With but one near relative. an elder brother.
well known and in high repute as LAWYER
ms brother, who lest an only child q daush-
yer, had been "a a father TO Howard WHO was
Indeed a most trying ard expensive relative he
Ing utterly guileleSs of common prudence and
always out at elbows. When he died the
brother. Ia feeble health. was unable To give
Close and prompt attention to winding up How
ards affairs The result was that MANY ner-
eonal possessions. which the family would have
dearly cherished, Eever reached them Among
these were a cane he set great store by, and al
ways carried. the Gift Of his friend Irving. a
unique and splendid desk. and "a superb port
Iono. containing most valuable paintings and
sAeteled by West. Leslie Washington Aston
ana other celebrities. gifts from the artists to
Payne His niece detected some of the con-
tents OF the portfolio one day i'm Broadway
ehop; out returning few days later to prose
cute further inquiries, found ti.em persistently
eyaded- The only relies OF her uncle that she
ever succeeded in getting were SOME perfectly
vaiuetess papers which. 10y the Kind Offices Of a
friend, were rumnaged, rat-gnawed. out of the
cellars 9th cons ulafe at Tunis