He possesses the
two rarest of gifts, that to give history the fascination
of fiction, and that to give fiction the verisimilitude of
history. He has been the minister of comfort in sorrow and
of joy in common life to countless persons to whom his friendship
is among their most precious blessings, or by whose fireside
he sits, personally unknown, yet a perpetual and welcome guest.
"Still, the first duty of every man is to his own family.
He may be a warrior or a statesman, or reformer, or philanthropist,
or prophet or poet, if he careth not first for his own household,
he is worse than an infidel. So the first duty of a Christian
minister is still that of a pastor to his own flock. You
know better than I do how it has been here in Boston; but
every one of our little parish in Worcester, man or woman,
boy or girl, has felt from the first time he or she knew him,
ever afterward, that Dr. Hale has been taking hold of his
hand. That warmth and that pressure abide through all our
lives, and will abide to the end. There are countless persons
who never saw his face, who still deem themselves his obedient,
loving and perpetual parishioners.
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