The loss of the Rev. J. Hyatt Smith restored the symbol and triumph of self-sacrifice.  In the most exact sense of the word he was a genius.  He wasted no time in his study that he could devote to others, he was always busy raising money to pay house rent for some poor woman, exhausting his energies in trying to keep people out of trouble, answering the call of every school, of every reformatory, every philanthropic institution.  Had he given more time to study, he would hardly have had an equal in the American pulpit.  He depended always upon the inspiration of the moment.  Sometimes he failed on this account.  I have heard him when he had the pathos of a Summerfield, the wit of a Sidney Smith, and the wondrous thundering phraseology of a Thomas Carlyle.  He had been everywhere, seen everything, experienced great variety of gladness, grief, and betrayal.  If you had lost a child, he was the first man at your side to console you.  If you had a great joy, his was the first telegram to congratulate you.  For two years he was in Congress.  His Sundays in Washington were spent preaching in pulpits of all denominations.  The first time I ever saw him was when he came to my house in Philadelphia, ringing the door bell, that he might assuage a great sorrow that had come to me.  He was always in the shadowed home.  How much the world owes to such a nature is beyond the world’s gift to return.  His wit was of the kind that, like the dew, refreshes.  He never laughed at anything but that which ought to be laughed at.  He never dealt in innuendoes that tipped both ways.  We were old friends of many vicissitudes.  Together we wept and laughed and planned.  He had such subtle ways of encouragement—­as when he told me that he had read a lecture of mine to his dying daughter, and described how it had comforted her.  His was a life of profound self-sacrifice, but “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

The new year of 1887 began with a controversy that filled the air with unpleasant confusion.  A small river of ink was poured upon it, a vast amount of talk was made about it.  A priest in the Roman Catholic Church, Father McGlynn, was arraigned by Archbishop Corrigan for putting his hand in the hot water of politics.  In various ways I was asked my opinion of it all.  My most decided opinion was that outsiders had better keep their hands out of the trouble.  The interference of people outside of a church with its internal affairs only makes things worse.  The policy of any church is best known by its own members.  The controversy was not a matter into which I could consistently enter.

The earth began its new year in hard luck.  The earthquake in Constantinople, in February, was only one of a series of similar shakes elsewhere.  The scientists were always giving us a lot of trouble.  Electric showers in the sun disturbed our climate.  Comets had been shooting about the sky with enough fire in their tails to obliterate us.  Caracas was shaken, Lisbon buried, Java very badly cracked.  It is a shaky, rheumatic, epileptic old world, and in one of its stupendous convulsions it will die.  It’s a poor place in which to make permanent investments.  It was quite as insecure in its human standards as in its scientific incompetence.