in another personal reminiscence. I have just lost my dear and honored
contemporary of the last century. A hundred years ago this day, December
13, 1784, died the admirable and ever to be remembered Dr. Samuel
Johnson. The year 1709 was made ponderous and illustrious in English
biography by his birth. My own humble advent to the world of protoplasm
was in the year 1809 of the present century. Summer was just ending when
those four letters, "son b." were written under the date of my birth,
August 29th. Autumn had just begun when my great pre-contemporary
entered this un-Christian universe and was made a member of the Christian
church on the same day, for he was born and baptized on the 18th of
September.

Thus there was established a close bond of relationship between the great
English scholar and writer and myself. Year by year, and almost month by
month, my life has kept pace in this century with his life in the last
century. I had only to open my Boswell at any time, and I knew just what
Johnson at my age, twenty or fifty or seventy, was thinking and doing;
what were his feelings about life; what changes the years had wrought in
his body, his mind, his feelings, his companionships, his reputation. It
was for me a kind of unison between two instruments, both playing that
old familiar air, "Life,"--one a bassoon, if you will, and the other an
oaten pipe, if you care to find an image for it, but still keeping pace
with each other until the players both grew old and gray. At last the
thinner thread of sound is heard by itself, and its deep accompaniment
rolls out its thunder no more.

I feel lonely now that my great companion and friend of so many years has
left me. I felt more intimately acquainted with him than I do with many
of my living friends. I can hardly remember when I did not know him. I
can see him in his bushy wig, exactly like that of the Reverend Dr.