The Wichita daily eagle., 1891-10-18
IN NiEMORIAM: LEONARD WASH
RURNE.

Our friend is dead. Grief has no
tongue. If colors were articulate and
black could speak, could it, by mourn
full numbers, lessen one pang we feel?
Could cypress boughs soften the un-
speakable woe that the finger of death
inspires? Ye sorrowing. sigh superla-
tives and weep in yelling words. For
aught? The throat is still parched, the
eyes red and the heart numb.
Death has less terror when he halts
old tottering age and relegates the worn
and rusty habiliment of spiritual force.
Death has less terror when his icy hand
touches the crippled and the MANNED
into sleep. Death has less terror when
his dispensation drops on the heavy
ladened and oppressed. But death has
his full terror when he strikes
budding manhood, forescent mentality
and blithesome hearts. Leonard Wash
burne was so. Never a shadow crossed
his heart. Never a reverse came to his
happiness. In the inchOate stages of
manhood, he was always the same gay,
lCllON IL MN CNCA hIIClC W olo
a palace and all seasons spring. In him
nature We'd with her precedents in phys
ical perfection and fired his soul with
perpetual flame of restless action. He
was always moving-ever enlivening
his life with that agility which went
hand-in-hand with the sunshine of his
soul. His was the jaunty grace of
wanton caprice: no overhanging bough
in the forest too high that he would not
essay a leap; no craggy height so dizzy
that he would not mount up and up in
the exhilaration of intrepidity; no breath
less brink that he would not hazard all
his life upon for the flushed cheek of
daring: no unstable footing that he
would not rejoice in minutes flutter-
ing fear of falling. And so he met his
death-in the tumbling and pitching cab
of locomotive. 1t was the same old
promptings for excitement that lead him
on and filled him till the fatal moment.
But he was Young and strong. Nature
struck low whom she had given so much.
Nature. the deifcation of force, the SYM
Dol of life in death and death in life, put
out the spark and touched with decaying
contamination every muscle, every ten
don, every fibre, every nerve in the
splendid embodiment of physical fruition.
And the old man who, with only one
more week to live, lives on in his wrinkles
and coddles his feeble head between his
rugose hands; and The grief-stricken,
helpless woman who prays for the
blessing of death. prays unanswered for
her release; and the torn and mangled
who are tortured in the cruelty of hope.
lessness still hold the vital spark. They
live on. But he, he whose every inch
was intensified vigor lies cold in
death. Nature is traitor to herself.
His bright soul never knew death, nor
the fear of death; for death is less ter
rible than the fear of death. He had
no fear of death, and his death was in
Simultaneous. He died as he lived. Let
us thank Providence for that.
But he is dead. Our friend is dead
After he has gone we see him, still.
Death cannot bar affiIiation.
On our backs on summers day in a
clover field we lie. An opalescent cloud
let idly drifts sthwsrt the torquoise
deep. In a pleasant daydream we
watch its fleecy sails. Il fades away
away. fainter and fainter. and. alas! is
gone-gone into the torquoise deep.