6th. I will finish this and get it off to you before Sunday. You have a great deal to do before vacation. Let me enjoin it upon you to have a vacation when the [345] time comes. Don't spend your strength and life too fast. Live to educate those fine boys. Thank you for sending us their picture. See what Furness does. That article on Immortality is as good as anything he ever wrote. Did you read the paper on the Radiometer in the last "Popular Science"? What a (not world merely) but universe do we live in! I am not willing to go out of the world without knowing all I can know of these wonders that fill alike the heavens above and every inch of space beneath. What a glorious future will it be, if we may spend uncounted years in the study of them! And, notwithstanding the weight of matter-of-fact that seems to lie against it, I think my hope of it increases. This blessed sense of what it is to be,—this sweetness of existence,-why should it be given us to be lost forever?
To the Same.
ST. DAVID'S, June 16, 1878.
. . . ONE point in your letter strikes very deep into my experience,—that in which you speak of my "standing so long upon the verge." To stand as I do, within easy reach of such stupendous possibilities,—that of being translated to another sphere of existence, or of being cut off from existence altogether and forever,—does indeed fill me with awe, and make me wonder that I am not depressed or overwhelmed by it. Habit is a stream which flows on the same, no matter how the scenery changes. It seems as if routine wore away the very sense of the words we use. We speak often of immortality; the word slides easily over our lips; but do we consider what it means? Do you ever ask yourself whether, after having lived a hundred thousands or [346] millions of years, you could still desire to go on for millions more?—whether a limited, conscious existence could bear it?
I read the foregoing, and said, "I don't see any need of considering matters so entirely out of our reach;" but the question is, can we help it? Fearfully and wonderfully are we made, but in nothing, perhaps, more than this,—that we are put upon considering questions concerning God, immortality, the mystery of life, which are so entirely beyond our reach to comprehend.
To the Same.
ST. DAVID'S, July 19, 1879.
DEAR FRIEND,—After our long silence, if it was the duty of the ghost to speak first, I think it should have been me, who am twenty years nearer to being one than you are; but it would be hardly becoming in a ghost to be as funny as you are about Henry and the hot weather. A change has come now, and the dear little fellow may put as many questions as he will. It is certainly a very extraordinary season. I remember nothing quite so remarkable.
Have you Professor Brown's "Life of Choate" by you? If you have, do read what he says of Walter Scott, in vol. i., from p. 204 on. I often turn to Scott's pages now, in preference to almost anything else, as I should to the old masters in painting.
Good-by. Cold morning,—cold fingers,—cold everything, but my love for you and yours.
[347] To the Same.
ST. DAVID'S, April 14, 1880.
—For three or four years I have thought your mind was having a new birth, and now it is more evident than ever. Everybody will tell you that your Newport word is not only finer than mine, but finer, I think, than anything else that has been said of Channing. The first part was grand and admirable; the last, more than admirable,—unequalled, I think. . . .
Take care of yourself. Don't write too much. Your long, pleasant letter to me shows how ready you are to do it. May you live to enjoy the budding life around you. . . .
My writing tells you that I shan't last much longer. Then keep fresh the memory of
Your loving friend,
To the Same.
June 15, 1880.
DEAR FRIEND,—To think of answering such a letter as yours of June 5th is too much for me, let alone the effort to do it. It seems absurd for me to have such a correspondent, and would be, if he were not of the dearest of friends. For its pith and keenness, I have read over this last letter two or three times. . . . I see that you won't come here in June. Don't try. That is, don't let my condition influence you. I shall probably, too probably, continue to live along for some time, as I have done. No pain, sound sleep, good [348] digestion,—what must follow from all this, I dread to think of. Only the weakness in my limbs—in the branches, so to say—admonishes me that the tree may fall sooner than I expect.
Love to all,
To his Sister, Miss J. Dewey.
ST. DAVID'S, Oct. 13, 1880.
DEAREST SISTER,—Why do you tell me such "tells," when I don't believe a bit in them? However, I do make a reservation for my preaching ten years in New Bedford and ten in New York. They could furnish about the only "tells" in my life worth telling, if there were anybody to tell 'em. Nobody seems to understand what preaching is. George Curtis does his best two or three times a year. The preacher has to do it every Sunday.
I agree with you about Bryant's "Forest Hymn." I enjoy it more than anything he ever wrote, except the "Waterfowl."
Yours always,
To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.
ST. DAVID'S, Dec. 24, 1880.
DEAR FRIEND,—My wife must write you about the parcel of books which came to hand yesterday and was opened in the midst of us with due admiration, and with pleasure at the prospect it held out for the winter. My wife, I say; for she is the great reader, while I am, in comparison, like the owl, which the showman said kept up-you remember what sort of a thinking. But, comparisons [349] apart, it is really interesting to see how much she reads; how she keeps acquainted with what is going on in the world, especially in its philanthropic and religious work.
Then, in the old Bible books she is the greatest reader that I know. I wish you could hear her expatiate on David and Isaiah; and she is in the right, too. They leave behind them, in a rude barbarism of religious ideas, Egypt and Greece. By the bye, is it not strange that the two great literatures of antiquity, the Hebrew and Grecian, should have appeared in territories not larger than Rhode Island? This is contrary to Buckle's view, who says, if I remember rightly, that the literature of genius naturally springs from a rich soil, from great wealth and leisure demanding intellectual entertainment.
To his Sister, Miss J. Dewey.
ST. DAVID'S, April 4, 1881.
DEAREST RUSHE,—. . . I am glad at what you are doing about the "Helps," and especially at your taking in the "Bugle Notes." Of course it gives you trouble, but don't be anxious about it; 't will all come out right. The book has met with great favor, whereat I am much pleased, as you must be.
Yes, Carlyle's "Reminiscences" must be admired; but it will take all the sweets about his wife to neutralize his
"Helps to Devout Living" is the name of a collection of beautiful and valuable passages, in prose and verse, compiled by Miss J. Dewey, in the second edition of which she included, at her brother's request, Mr. Wasson's "Bugle Notes," a poem which had been for years one of his peculiar favorites. [350] supreme care for himself, and careless disparagement of almost everybody else. Genius is said to be, in its very nature, loving and generous; it seems but the fit recognition of its own blessedness; was his so? I have been reading again "Adam Bede," and I think that the author is decidedly and unquestionably superior to all her contemporary novel-writers. One can forgive such a mind almost anything. But alas! for this one—. . . It is an almost unpardonable violation of one of the great laws on which social virtue rests. . . .
Ever yours,
To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.
ST. DAVID'S, June 30, 1881.
. . . SINCE reading Freeman Clarke's book, I have been thinking of the steps of the world's religious progress. The Aryan idea, so far as we know anything of it, was probably to worship nature. The Greek idolatry was a step beyond that, substituting intelligent beings for it. Far higher was the Hebrew spiritualism, and worship of One Supreme, and far higher is Isaiah than Homer, David than Sophocles; and no Hebrew prophet ever said, "Offer a cock to Esculapius." So is Christianity far beyond Buddhism; and far beyond Sakya Muni, dim and obscure as he is, are the concrete realities of the life of Jesus. Whether anything further is to come, I tremble to ask; and yet I do ask it.[351] To the Same.
July 23, 1881.
DEAR, NAY, DEAREST FRIEND,—What shall I say, in what language express the sense of comfort and satisfaction which, first your sermon years ago,' and now your letter of yesterday, have given me? Ah! there is a spot in every human soul, I guess, where approbation is the sweetest drop that can fall. I will not imbitter it with a word of doubt or debate. . . .
Come here when you can. With love to all, Ever yours,
To the Same.
ST. DAVID'S, Sept. 23, 1881.
DEAR FRIEND,—I am waiting with what patience I can, to hear whether you have been to Meadville or not. . . . In that lovely but just picture which you draw of my wife, and praise her patience at the expense of mine, I doubt whether you fairly take into account the difference between the sexes, not only in their nature, but in their functions. We men take a forward, leading, decisive part in affairs, the women an acquiescent part. The consequence is that they are more yielding, gentler under defeat, than we. When I said, yesterday, "It costs men more to be patient, to be virtuous, than it costs you,"—"Oh! oh!" they exclaimed. But it is true. . . .
Sept. 26. 1881
WHAT a day is this! A weeping nation [See p. 358], in all its thousand churches and million homes, participates in the [352] mournful solemnities at Cleveland. A great kindred nation takes part in our sorrow. Its queen, the Queen of England, sends her sympathy, deeper than words, to the mourning, queenly relict of our noble President. Never shall I, or my children to the fourth generation, probably, see such a day. Never was the whole world girdled in by one sentiment like this of to-day.
To the Same.
ST. DAVID'S, Jan. 1, 1882.
. . . FOR a month or two I have been feeling as if the year would never end. But it has come, and here is the beginning of a new. And of what year of the world? Who knows anything about it? Do you? does anybody? What is, or can be, known of a human race on this globe more than 4,000 years ago—or 4,000,000? Oh! this dreadful ignorance! Fain would I go to another world, if it would clear up the problems of this.
. . . .
All I can do is to fall upon the knees of my heart and say, "0 God, let the vision of Thy glory never be hidden from my eyes in this world or any other, but forever grow brighter and brighter!"
We have had some bad and some sad times here. M. must tell you about them.
Happy New Year to you all.
It was now nearly five years that my father had trod the weary path of invalidism, slowly weaning him from the familiar life and ties he loved so [353] well. The master's interest was as large, as keen as ever; friendship, patriotism, religion, were even dearer to him than when he was strong to work in their service; but the ready servants that had so long stood by him,—the ear, always open to each new word of hope and promise for humanity; the eye, that looked with eager pleasure on every noble work of man and on every natural object, seeing in all, manifestations of the Divine Goodness and Wisdom; the feet, that had carried him so often on errands of kindness; the hands, whose clasp had cheered many a sad heart, and whose hold upon the pen had sent strong and stirring words through the land,-these gradually resigned their functions, and the active but tired brain, which had held on so bravely, notwithstanding the injury it had received in early life, began to share in the general decline of the vital powers. There was no disease, no deflection of aim nor confusion of thought, but a gentle failure of faculties used up by near a century's wear and tear.
He was somewhat grieved and harassed by the spiritual problems which were always the chief occupation of his mind, and which he now perceived, without being able to grapple with them; and life, with such mental and physical limitations, became very weary to him. But his constitution was so sound, and his health so perfect, that he might have lingered yet a long time, but for his grief and disappointment in the unexpected death [354] of Dr. Bellows, Jan. 30, 1882. When that beloved friend, upon whose inspiring ministrations he had counted to soothe his own last hours, was called first, the shock perceptibly loosened his feeble hold on life; and truly it seemed as if the departing spirit did his last service of love by helping to set free the elder friend whom he could no longer comfort on earth. He "Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way;" nor was my father long in following him. For a few weeks there was little outward change in his habits; he ate as usual the few morsels we could induce him to taste; he slept several hours every night, and, supported by faithful arms, he came to the table for each meal till within four days of his death. But he grew visibly weaker, and would sit long silent, his head bent on his breast. We gathered together in those sad days, and read aloud the precious series of Dr. Bellows's letters to us all, but principally to him,-letters radiant with beauty, vigor, wit, and affection; we read them with thankfulness and with sorrow, with laughter and with tears, and he joined in it all, but grew too weary to listen, and never heard the whole. He was confined to his bed but three days. A slight indigestion, which yielded to remedies, left him too weak to rally. He was delirious most of the time when awake, and was soothed by anodynes; but though he knew us all, he was too sick and restless for talk, trying [355] sometimes to smile in answer to his wife's caresses, but hardly noticing anything. At one o'clock in the morning of March 21st, his sad moans suddenly ceased, and he opened his sunken eyes wide,—so wide that even in the dim light we saw their clear blue,—looked forward for a moment with an earnest gaze, as if seeing something afar off, then closed them, and with one or two quiet breaths left pain and suffering behind, and entered into life.
For a few days his body lay at rest in his pleasant study, surrounded by the flowers he loved, and the place was a sweet domestic shrine. A grand serenity had returned to the brow, and all the features wore a look of peace and happiness unspeakably beautiful and comforting. Then, with a quiet attendance of friends and neighbors, it was borne to the grave in the shadow of his native hills.
In those last weeks he wrote still a few letters, almost illegible, and written a few lines at a time, as his strength permitted.
To Rev. John W. Chadwick.
SHEFFIELD, Feb. 2, 1882.
—A few lines are all that I can write, though many would hardly suffice to express the feeling of what I owe you for your kind letter, and the sympathy it expresses for the loss of my friend. [356] You will better understand what that is, when I tell you that for the last two or three years he has written me every week.
I have also to thank you for the many sermons you have directed to be sent to me. Through others, I know their extraordinary merit, though my brain is too weak for them.
Do you remember a brief interview I had with you and Mrs. Chadwick at the "Messiah" on the evening of the [Semi-] Centennial? It gave me so much pleasure that it sticks in my memory, and emboldens me to send my love to you both.
Ever yours truly,
To his Sister, Miss J. Dewey.
ST. DAVID'S, Feb. 7, 1882.
DEAREST RUSHE,—Your precious, sweet little letter came in due time, and was all that a letter could be. I have not written a word since that came upon us which we so sorrow for, except a letter to his stricken partner, from whom we have a reply last evening, in which she says his resignation was marvellous; that he soon fell into a drowse from morphine, and said but little, but, being told there were letters from me, desired them to keep them carefully for him,—which, alas! he was never to see.
Dear, I can write no more. I am all the time about the same. Give my love to Pamela.
Ever your loving brother,
[357]To Rev. John Chadwick.
SHEFFIELD, Feb. 26, 1882.
MY DEAR CHADWICK,—When Mary wrote to you, expressing the feelings of us all concerning the Memorial Sermon,' I thought it unnecessary to write myself, especially as I could but so poorly say what I wanted to say. But I feel that I must tell you what satisfaction it gave me,—more than I have elsewhere seen or expect to see. I feel, for myself, that I most mourn the loss of the holy fidelity of his friendship. All speak rightly of his incessant activity in every good work, and I knew much of what he did to build up a grand School of Theology at Cleveland.
You ask what is my outlook from the summit of my years. This reminds me of that wonderful burst of his eloquence, at the formation of our National Conference, against the admission to it, by Constitution, of the extremest Radicalism. I wanted to get up and shortly reply,—"You may say what you will, but I tell you that the movement of this body for twenty years to come will be in the Radical direction." In fact, I find it to be so in myself. I rely more upon my own thought and reason, my own mind and being, for my convictions than upon anything else. Again warmly thanking you for your grand sermon, [on Dr. Bellows] I am,
Affectionately yours,
[358]I feel that I cannot close this memoir without reprinting the beautiful tribute paid to my father by Dr. Bellows, in his address at the fifty-fourth anniversary of the founding of the Church of the Messiah, in New York, in 1879. After comparing him with Dr. Channing, and describing the fragile appearance of the latter, he said:
"Dewey, reared in the country, among plain but not common people, squarely built, and in the enjoyment of what seemed robust health, had, when I first saw him, at forty years of age, a massive dignity of person; strong features, a magnificent height of head, a carriage almost royal; a voice deep and solemn; a face capable of the utmost expression, and an action which the greatest tragedian could not have much improved. These were not arts and attainments, but native gifts of person and temperament. An intellect of the first class had fallen upon a spiritual nature tenderly alive to the sense of divine realities. His awe and reverence were native, and they have proved indestructible. He did not so much seek religion as religion sought him. His nature was characterized from early youth by a union of massive intellectual power with an almost feminine sensibility; a poetic imagination with a rare dramatic faculty of representation. Diligent as a scholar, a careful thinker, accustomed to test his own impressions by patient meditation, a reasoner of the most cautious kind; capable of holding doubtful conclusions, however inviting, in suspense; devout and reverent by nature,—he had every qualification for a great preacher, in a time when the old foundations were broken up and men's minds were demanding guidance and support in the critical transition from the [359] days of pure authority to the days of personal conviction by rational evidence.
"Dewey has from the beginning been the most truly human of our preachers. Nobody has felt so fully the providential variety of mortal passions, exposures, the beauty and happiness of our earthly life, the lawfulness of our ordinary pursuits, the significance of home, of business, of pleasure, of society, of politics. He has made himself the attorney of human nature, defending and justifying it in all the hostile suits brought against it by imperfect sympathy, by theological acrimony, by false dogmas. Yet he never was for a moment the apologist of selfishness, vice, or folly; no stricter moralist than he is to be found; no worshipper of veracity more faithful; no wiser or more tender pleader of the claims of reverence and self-consecration! In fact, it was the richness of his reverence and the breadth of his religion that enabled him to throw the mantle of his sympathy over the whole of human life. He has accordingly, of all preachers in this country, been the one most approved by the few who may be called whole men,—men who rise above the prejudice of sect and the halfness of pietism,—lawyers and judges, statesmen and great merchants, and strong men of all professions. He could stir and awe and instruct the students of Cambridge, as no man I ever heard in that pulpit, not even Dr. Walker,—who satisfied conscience and intellect, but was not wholly fair either to passion or to sentiment, much less to the human body and the world. Of all religious men I have known, the broadest and most catholic is Dewey,—I say religious men, for it is easy to be broad and catholic, with indifference and apathy at the heart. Dewey has cared unspeakably for divine [360] things,-thirsted for God, and dwelt in daily reverence and aspiration before him; and out of his awe and his devotion he has looked with the tenderest eyes of sympathy, forbearance, and patience upon the world and the ways of men; slow to rebuke utterly, always finding the soul of goodness in things evil, and never assuming any sanctimonious ways, or thinking himself better than his brethren.
"Dewey is undoubtedly the founder and most conspicuous example of what is best in the modern school of preaching. The characteristic feature is the effort to carry the inspiration, the correction, and the riches of Christian faith into the whole sphere of human life; to make religion practical, without lowering its ideal; to proclaim our present world and our mortal life as the field of its influence and realization, trusting that what best fits men to live and employ and enjoy their spiritual nature here, is what best prepares them for the future life. Dewey, like Franklin, who trained the lightning of the sky to respect the safety, and finally to run the errands of men on earth, brought religion from its remote home and domesticated it in the immediate present. He first successfully taught its application to the business of the market and the street, to the offices of home and the pleasures of society. We are so familiar with this method, now prevalent in the best pulpits of all Christian bodies, that we forget the originality and boldness of the hand that first turned the current of religion into the ordinary channel of life, and upon the working wheels of daily business. The glory of the achievement is lost in the magnificence of its success. Practical preaching, when it means, as it often does, a mere prosaic recommendation of ordinary duties, a sort of Poor Richard's prudential [361] maxims, is a shallow and nearly useless thing. It is a kind of social and moral agriculture with the plough and the spade, but with little regard to the enrichment of the soil, or drainage from the depths or irrigation from the heights. The true, practical preaching is that which brings the celestial truths of our nature and our destiny, the powers of the world to come and the terrors and promises of our relationship to the Divine Being, to bear upon our present duties, to animate and elevate our daily life, to sanctify the secular, to redeem the common from its loss of wonder and praise, to make the familiar give up its superficial tameness, to awaken the sense of awe in those who have lost or never acquired the proper feeling of the spiritual mystery that envelops our ordinary life. This was Dewey's peculiar skill. Poets had already done it for poets, and in a sense neither strictly religious nor expected to be made practical. But for preachers to carry `the vision and faculty divine' of the poet into the pulpit, and with the authority of messengers of God, demand of men in their business and domestic service, their mechanical labors, their necessary tasks, to see God's spirit and feel God's laws everywhere touching, inspiring, and elevating their ordinary life and lot, was something new and glorious. Thus Dewey revitalized the doctrine of Retribution by bringing it from the realms a futurity down to the immediate bosoms of men; and nothing more solemn, affecting, and true is to be found in all literature than his famous two sermons on Retribution, in the first volume of his published works. Spirituality, in the same manner, he called away from its ghostly churchyard haunts, and made it a cheerful angel of God's presence in the house and the shop, where the sense and feeling of God's holiness [362] and love make every duty an act of worship, and every commonest experience an opportunity of divine service. Under the thoughtful, tender yet searching, rational but profoundly spiritual preaching of Dr. Dewey,—where men's souls found an holiest and powerful interpreter, and nature, business, pleasure, domestic ties, received a fresh consecration,-who can wonder that thousands of men and women, hitherto dissatisfied, hungry, but with no appetite for the bread' called of life,' furnished at the ordinary churches, were, for the first time, made to realize the beauty of holiness and the power of the gospel of salvation?
"The persuasiveness of Dewey was another of his greatest characteristics. His yearning to convince, his longing to impart his own convictions, gave a candor and patient and sweet reasonableness to his preaching, which has, I think, never been equalled in any preacher of his measure of intellect, height of imagination, and reverence of soul. For he could never lower his ideals to please or propitiate. He was working for no immediate and transitory effects. He could use no arts that entangled, dazzled, or frightened; nothing but truth, and truth cautiously discriminated. His sermons were born of the most painful labors of his spirit; they were careful and finished works, written and rewritten, revised, corrected, improved, almost as if they had been poems addressed to the deliberate judgment of posterity. They possess that claim upon coming generations, and will, one day, rediscovered by a deeper and better spiritual taste, take their place among the noblest and most exquisite of the intellectual and spiritual products of this century. There are thousands of the best minds in this country that owe whatever interest they have in religion [363] to Orville Dewey. The majesty of his manner, the dramatic power of his action, the poetic beauty of his illustrations, the logical clearness and fairness of his reasoning, the depth and grasp of his hold on all the facts, human and divine, material and spiritual, that belonged to the theme he treated, gave him a surpassing power and splendor, and an equal persuasiveness as a preacher. But what is most rare, his sermons, though they gained much by delivery, lose little in reading, for those who never heard them. They are admirably adapted to the pulpit, none more so; but just as wonderfully suited to the library and to solitary perusal. I am not extravagant or alone in this opinion. I know that so competent a critic as James Martineau holds them in equal admiration.
"I shall make no excuse for dwelling so long upon Orville Dewey's genius as a preacher. No plainer duty exists than to commend his example to the study and imitation of our own preachers; and no exaltation that the Church of the Messiah will ever attain can in any probability equal that which will always be given to it as the seat of Dr. Dewey's thirteen years' ministry in the city of New York. Of the tenderness, modesty, truthfulness, devotion, and spotless purity of his life and character, it is too soon to utter all that my heart and knowledge prompt me to say. But, when expression shall finally be allowed to the testimony which cannot very long be denied free utterance, it will fully appear that only a man whose soul was haunted by God's spirit from early youth to extreme old age could have produced the works that stand in his name. The man is greater than his works."
[364]In the August following my father's death, an appropriate service was held in his memory at the old Congregational Church in his native village. It was the church of his childhood, from whose galleries he had looked down with childish pity upon the sad-browed communicants; [see p. 16] it was the church to which he had joined himself in the religious fervor of his youth; from it he had been thrust out as a heretic, and for years was not permitted to speak within its walls, the first time being in 1876, when the town celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the Resolution that had marked its Revolutionary ardor, and called upon him, as one of its most distinguished citizens, to preach upon the occasion; and now the old church opened wide its doors in affectionate respect to his memory, and his mourning townspeople met to honor the man they had learned to love, if not to follow.
It was a lovely summer day, full of calm and sunny sweetness. The earlier harvests had been gathered in, and the beautiful valley lay in perfect rest,-"Like a full heart, having prayed."
Taghkonic brooded above it in gentle majesty, and the scarce seen river wound its quiet course among the meadows. No touch of drought or decay had yet passed upon the luxuriant foliage; but the autumnal flowers were already glowing [365] in the fields and on the waysides, and, mingled with ferns and ripened grain, were heaped in rich profusion by the loving hands of young girls to adorn the church. It was Sunday, and people and friends came from far and near, till the building was filled; and in the pervading atmosphere of tender respect and sympathy, the warm-hearted words spoken from the pulpit seemed like the utterance of the common feeling. The choir sang, with much expression, one of my father's favorite hymns,-"When, as returns this solemn day;" and the prayer, from Dr. Eddy, the pastor of the church, was a true uplifting of hearts to the Father of all. The fervent and touching discourse which followed, by Rev. Robert Collyer, minister of my father's old parish, the Church of the Messiah, in New York, recalled the early days of Dr. Dewey's life, and the influences from home and from nature that had borne upon his character, and described the man and his work in terms of warm and not indiscriminate eulogy. The speaker's brow lightened, and his cheek glowed with the strength of his own feeling, and among his listeners there was an answering thrill of gratitude and of aspiration.
Dr. Powers, an Episcopal clergyman, then read a short and graceful original poem, and some cordial and earnest words were said by the two Orthodox ministers present. Another hymn was sung by the whole congregation; and thus fitly closed the simple and reverent service, typical throughout of the kindly human brotherhood which, notwithstanding inevitable differences of opinion, binds together hearts that throb with one common need, that rest upon one Eternal Love and Wisdom.
So would my father have wished it. So may it be more and more!