Not so with our human champion. He had
to bear the bitterness and agony of a long and doubtful struggle,
with common weapons and against terrible odds. He came out
of it with soiled garments and with a mortal wound, but without
a regret and without a memory of hate.
It was fortunate for Sumner and fortunate for the Commonwealth
and the country that he had Henry Wilson for his colleague.
Wilson supplied almost everything that Sumner lacked. I cannot
undertake to tell the story of his useful life in the space
at my command here. If I were to try I should do great injustice
to him and to myself.
He was a very impressive and interesting character, of many
virtues, of many faults. His faults he would have been the
first to acknowledge himself. Indeed, I do not know of any
fault he had that he would not have acknowledged and lamented
in a talk with his near friend, or that he would have sought
to hide from the people.
The motives which controlled his life from the time when
he snatched such moments as he could from this day's work
on a shoemaker's bench and studied far into the night to
fit himself for citizenship, down to the time when he died
in the Vice-President's chamber--the second officer in the
Government--and if his life and health had been spared, he
very likely would have been called to the highest place in
the Government--were public and patriotic, not personal.
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