Tranquil Thanatopsis Quiet Requiem

Death came quietly to President Eliot in the sea-washed rugged hills of Mt. Desert Island. There was no blaring of trumpets, no dramatics, only the calm courage which had characterized his life. A few days before the end he startled his nurse with the quiet remark that he would not live out the week. Once or twice the old urge to be up and doing came upon him, but in the main he lay quietly waiting.

The news of his death flashed out over the wires to all parts of the world. Columns were written, summing him up, pointing out his contributions to society, remarking on his greatness. There was some dissecting, much praising. But there was none of the soft sentimentality which so often surrounds the death of a man in the public eye. He had been too strong for that sort of emotion.

There were two funeral services. The first, in the little church at Northeast Harbor, where for two score summers he had attended Sunday service, was for the family and for the hardy Maine fishermen whom he had so beautifully memorialized in "The Life of John Gilley." Under shadow of the mountains, within hearing of the surf, his son, his nephew, and his brother-in-law spoke quietly of his life and offered prayer which was more thanksgiving for his work, than mourning for his passing.

Covered appropriately with sprays from the hardy trees of New England rather than with masses of the more exotic flowers and funeral wreaths the body was taken to Boston and at Appleton Chapel the next day the second service was held. This was for Harvard and for America.

From every corner of the land they came, Harvard men, from the banks, from corporation rooms, from industrial enterprises, from the building of bridges, from pulpits, from newspaper desks, from official seats in Washington, from laboratories and universities, from law offices, to give tribute to the man who had guided them by example or by advice during their formative years, who, more than any other, had prepared them for life. So they came in his death, silent witnesses that he still lived.

There was none of the barbarity which characterizes the ordinary funeral service, no hysterics. He was in the hands of friends who knew and understood the manner of his living, who therefore made the manner of his dying as he would have had it.

No one stood up in the pulpit to deliver long panagyrics. A close friend of long years standing, Dr. George A. Gordon '81, offered prayer, not for him who had departed, but for those who remained to carry on:

"Bless all his fellow citizens, east, west, north, and south, for whom he ever was wisdom, strength, victory, joy, and hope . . . Pour Thy spirit upon all Harvard men throughout the country, throughout the world, as they turn toward this place at this time in reverent, thoughtful, grateful, and lofty memory."

He quoted a few passages from scripture, like this. "Behold I have given him for a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander to the peoples." He closed with the words:

"And now we, in the light of his ideals in the splendor of his achievements in the high perpetual cheer of his example pledge the university whose calerglary he was, our best; and our best to the country whose greatest private citizen he has been for more than a generation of years; and with this, our pledge to what he loved best and most, we leave him."

Professor Peabody closed the service with a short player, "a prayer of thanks giving and praise." There was no choir. Dr. Davison played briefly on the organ. The Harvard men gathered there sang "The Character of a Happy Life," and "The King of Love my Shepherd is." That was all. President Eliot was never content to sit back and look over the past. He was almost to the very end concerned with the future. This was the spirit of the service.

Later he was buried in Mt. Auburn cemetery, again with the simplest kind of ceremony. And Harvard men returned once more to their work, carrying with them not tears and regrets, but President Eliot's spirit, a firm faith in progress and the future.