You will be summoned
to important public service somewhere. It is quite likely
that your political friends will call you to one of these
important diplomatic places, where you will be in danger of
suffering the inconvenience yourself, if the present system
continue." Mr. Blount was pacified. And the measure which
I think would have been beaten by a pugnacious opposition
in either House of Congress, got through.
Among the most impressive recollections of my life is the
funeral of Tennyson in Westminster Abbey. I got a seat at
the request of the American Minister by the favor of Archdeacon
Farrar, who had charge of the arrangements. It was a most
impressive scene. I had a seat near the grave, which was
in the Poets' Corner, of which the pavement had been opened.
The wonderful music; the stately procession which followed
the coffin through the historic West entrance, in the most
venerable building in the world, to lay the poet to sleep
his last sleep with England's illustrious dead of more than
a thousand years,
In those precincts where the mighty rest,
With rows of statesmen and with walks of Kings,
to which
Ne'er since their foundation came a nobler guest,
was unspeakably touching and impressive.
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