Arizona republican., 1903-07-01
FUNERAL OF MSS sroDDARD
An Eastern Newspaper Account of
 the Sad Rites.

The Binghamton (N. Y.) Republican of the date of June 25 prints the fol- lowing account of the funeral of Miss Florence Stoddard, daughter of Secre- tary and Mrs. Isaac T. Stoddard:
 The funeral of Miss Florence sstod- dard was held from the home oi her grandfather. Judge Celora F. Martin, No. 136 Oak street. yesterday afternoon at 3:30 o'clock. Burial, which was pri- vate, was in Floral Park cemetery.
 The house was filled with friends and relatives and the floral offerings were profuse. On the casket wreaths of smilax were closely draped
 Rev. F. f. Trefz officiated. and in his sermon paid the following tribute to Miss Stoddard's character:
 ''The heart of sorrow belongs to us Within the very portals of laughter and joy mas death penetrated and left It's footsteps to the grave. Our young friend stepped across this imperceptible boundary of lifes frontier. and we stand, dumb with woe and inarticulate. in the attempt to voice our sorrow. Here Is infinite pathos; here a profound tragedy. Some questions must be saved for the answering when we reach Gods throne. and this is among them.
 Then if this be be life-darkness, light and darkness again; silence, cry and forever more silence: tear, a laugh and then the sepulchre-it is DOT tentous with gloom and wearied with endless succession of tragedy.
 But We do not believe that this is all of life. Beyond this earth room lies another. This is our thought: it is the thought of the ages. The irrefuta- ble argument for immortality is love. Because man loves, he hopes. To live again is not the thought of any year. nor the single vagary of a sect. Nay, 1t is not the product of civilization, the creature of wisdom. nor the child of re- ligion. It is fact, endless in its argu- ment, immortal in it's youth and i'm mutable In it's beauty. Before the dawn of history, in the faint and crepuscular light there lived a race of whose GUS toms, government, religion and domes- tic life We are ignorant. From them we received a rude figure of a man sitting on a skull-their symbol of inn mortality. In Druid aisle, along sallow sands and complaining surf of tropic region, amid the frozen caverns of the north, above the pomp and pageantry of kings, and woe and wall of savage mother, it has sounded the refrain death never, life ever and forever It has never changed. Empires have risen and crumbled into decay; races have lived and died; creeds have been formed and perished; religions have come and gone: Bibles have been re- written and faiths revised, but un- wearied. undimmed. it has survived the wreck of the ages. the flight of time
 At this very moment the angel sits by the open sepulchre and declares She is Tot here, she hath risen We shall place the precious casket away. hut the jeweled soul adorBs the treas ure-house of God. Could we swing back the pearly gates and witness the things of revelation with Johns vision. we might see her gaze in wonderment upon our sorrow.
 If earth another grave must bear, Yet heaven hath won a sweeter strain, And something whispers my despair That, from an orient chamber, there Floats down-'Auf wiedersehen.'
 The bearers were Norval s. Douglas, Thomas NJ. Moves. George B. Rich, Stephen H. Perkins, William T. Arms and Louis E. Turner
 Miss Stoddard's father, I. T. Stod- dard, who has been acting governor of Arizona. arrived in the city yesterday morning with Mrs. Stoddard, and their son, Celora NJ. Stoddard.
 Those from out of town who attended were Roy s. Goodrich of Arizona and the Misses Fay Beebe and Gertrude Archibald of Albany.