like roots drinking in the riches of the North; his speech like
branches dropping bounty over all the tropic states, seeming to be the
one indispensable man of his section, but who in the midst of his
career is smitten and, dying, left his pilgrim band in bondage.

Here is Sir William Napier writing, "I am now old and feeble and
miserable; my eyes are dim, very dim, with weeping for my lost child,"
and went on bound midst the thick shadows. Or here are the man and
woman, set each to each like perfect music unto noble words, and one is
taken--but Robert Browning was left to dwell in such sorrow that for a
time he could not see his pen for the thick darkness. Here is the
youth who by one sin fell out of man's regard, and struggling upward,
found it was a far cry back to the lost heights, and wrote the story of
his broken life in the song of "the bird with the broken pinion, that
never flew as high again." Sooner or later each life passes under
bondage. For all strength will vanish as the morning dew our joys take
wings and flit away; the eye dim, the ear dull, the thought decay, our
dearest die. Oft life's waves and billows chill us to the very marrow,
while we gasp and shiver midst the surging tide. Then it is a blessed
thing to look out through blinding tears upon a friendly face, to feel
the touch of a friendly hand and to know there are some who "remember
those in bonds, as bound with them."

Now this principle of social sympathy and liability gives us the secret
of all the epoch-making men of our time. Carlyle once called Ruskin
"the seer that guides his generation." More recently a prominent
philanthropist said: "All our social reform movements are largely the
influence of John Ruskin." How earned this man such meed of praise?
Upon John Ruskin fortune poured forth all her gifts. He was born the
child of supreme genius. He was heir to nearly a million dollars, and