into his heart. His family life had not been without its tragedies of
bereavement, and the death of his oldest boy in Germany had drawn him
even nearer to the children who were growing up around him.

Much of his tenderest verse was inspired by affection for his family,
and as some great shock is often essential to the revolution in a
buoyant nature, so it seemed to require the oft-recurring tragedies of
life to draw from him all that was noblest and sweetest in his
sympathetic soul. Had the angel of death never hovered over the crib in
my brother's home, had he never known the pangs and the heart-hunger
which come when the little voice is stilled and the little chair is
empty, he could not have written the lines which voice the great cry of
humanity and the hope of reunion in immortality beyond the grave.

The flood of appeals for platform readings from cities and towns in all
parts of the United States came too late for his physical strength and
his ambition. Earlier in life he would have delighted in this form of
travel and entertainment, but his nature had wonderfully changed, and,
strong as were the financial inducements, he was loath to leave his
family and circle of intimate friends, and the home he had just
acquired. All of the time which he allotted for recreation he devoted
to working around his grounds, in arranging and rearranging his large
library, and in the disposition of his curios. For years he had been an
indefatigable collector, and he took a boyish pleasure not only in his
souvenirs of long journeys and distinguished men and women, but in the
queer toys and trinkets of children which seemed to give him inspiration
for much that was effective in childhood verse. To the careless observer
the immense array of weird dolls and absurd toys in his working-room
meant little more than an idiosyncratic passion for the anomalous, but
those who were near to him knew what a connecting link they were between