Death of Col. Ingersoll

DEATH OF COL. INGERSOLL.

Death claimed the well-known lawyer, lecturer, politician and agnostic, Robert Green Ingersoll, at his country home, Walston,* Dabbs Ferry, New York, on July 21st, 1899, at 11:45 a. m. The elo- quent orator suffered from troubles of the heart for more than three years, but had never thought his affliction serious enough to cause him to quit work. He was busy to the last, and the summons, contrary to his desires, came to him unawares; he was stricken in the twinkling of an eye, so suddenly that he could scarcely have tasted the sensations of death. It is said that he expressed him- self as wishing to die gradually. "I want to die slowly," he had said to a friend. "I want to be conscious to the last. I hope to know the sensations of approaching death. I have some things I want to say." But the privilege of parleying with death was denied him. In many respects Robert Green Ingersoll was a remarkable character, born the son of a clergyman, in Dresden, N. Y., on Aug. 11, 1833. His father, a preacher of the Grahamite Church —an offshoot of the Presbyterian—sought to bring up his boy according to the strict rules of that sect. But Robert rebelled

• Walston is ideal. Set high on the Hudson hills, the great stone- turretted house, surrounded by lawns, trees and flowers, with a sweep of

the great river for twenty miles, is a place that Col. Ingersoll, who loved the beautiful, gave up his heart to. Walston belongs to his daughter, Mrs Walston H. Brown, but all the family lived there in summer with her, and with the Colonel in New York in winter.

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against the narrow bounds of such sectarianism. His boyhood days were spent in Ohio, Wisconsin and Illinois, whither the fath- er's calling took him. The boy received most of his early educa- tion in Ashtabula, Ohio. In the public schools of that town in the Western Reserve he became noted not only as a close student but as a mischievous youth. In Peoria, 111., whither the family removed, and where Robert attained manhood and distinction, the wonderful oratorical powers with which he was gifted made him known. Robert G. Ingersoll took an active interest in politics as a leader of the Democratic party in Peoria. In 1860 he was nomi- nated for Congress as a Democrat and was defeated. In 1862 he went to the war as Colonel of the Eleventh Illinois Cavalry. He made a splendid record, most of his service being along the Mississippi. At Corinth his forces were driven back by the Con- federate cavalry under Forrest. Col. IngersoH's horse fell and he was captured, but was parolled soon after and returned to his com- mand. He changed his politics during the war, and when he returned to Peoria, in 1864, he joined the Republican party. Two years later he was Attorney-General of Illinois, under Governor Richard Oglesby. His fame as an orator grew, and when, in 1876, he nominated James G. IBlaine in an impassioned speech as the "Plumed Knight" the country rang with his eloquence. The next year he was offered the post of Minister to Germany, but much opposition was raised by the religious people of the United States, as Col. Ingersoll was outspoken as an agnostic. He declined the honor. In 1878 he removed from Peoria to Washing- ton, his connection with the iStar Route cases as counsel for the defense making such action necessary. After the acquittal of his clients he came to New York, where he has since lived and prac- ticed law, making a large income. His chief fame, however, was made by his books and lectures attacking the Christian religion. As far back as his residency in Peoria he had delivered the first of his lectures. Among the books of Ingersoll were "The Gods and Other Lectures," 1876; "Ghosts," 1879; "Some Mistakes of Moses," 1879; "Prose, Poems and Selections," 1879, and many volumes of lectures.

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His home life was one of remarkable happiness. He married, in 1862, Miss Eva Parker, the daughter of a farmer of Groveland, Tazewell County, Illinois, and was the father of three daughters. Two of them are married, but all three made their home with their father in New York City. He was happiest at home. He had a wide acquaintance with musicians and actors. He was generous and quick to aid in any movement for the betterment of his fellow- men. His body was incinerated at the creamatory in Fresh Pond, New York, on July 27th. Col. Ingersoll was witty and brilliant but not a profound thinker; he gained his fame more from what others said of him than from what he himself did. He attacked the creeds of Chris- tendom with incessant and savage fury, but these attacks were circulated more by the replies of his opponents than by their own circulation through his efforts, for he had a comparatively narrow hearing. He was a poet but not a philosopher; an orator but not a logician; gifted, eloquent, witty, but lacking profundity and deep learning. His one ^reat fault was his flippant treatment of sacred things. But he had many good qualities. He is noted as a strictly virtuous man— one who loved liberty, family, home and his fellowmen, qualities that all Christians may well emulate. These virtues however were greatly nullified in his life and in the influence he left behind, by his unbelief, or rather lack of belief in God, thus separating the attributes from their author. He used his gifts and abilities to "drape the skeleton of unbelief with the drapery of exquisite rhetoric, and to preach the gospel of gloom," He was the greatest American agnostic of recent years ahd stood at the head of that school of thought whose sole claim to recognition appears to be "an eloquent interrogation point." Dressing the infidel ideas of Voltaire and Paine in catching, epi- grammatic language, with a jocose air, he labored to impale the most sacred faith of Christianity, and set its spiritual ideals up as targets for ridicule. But while he was the most aggressive enemy of religion of his time, he gave to men nothing better than they had. What cold comfort there is in his creed may be gathered from the following closing verses of his "Declaration of the Free," the latest composition of the agnostic, taken from the " Truth

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Seeker" of June 3, 1899, and which may be said to contain the sum and substance of all his teachings:

We do not pray, or weep, or wail; We have no dread. No fear to pass beyond the veil That hides the dead. And yet we question, dream and guess, But knowledge we do not possess.

We ask, yet nothing seems to know; We cry in vain. There is no "master of the show" Who will explain. Or from the future tear the mask; And yet we dream and still we ask.

Is there beyond the silent night

An endless day? Is death a door that leads to light?

We cannot say. The tongueless secret locked in fate We do not know. We hope and wait.

All that is good in his writings is found in the Gospel; it goes still further and promises a knowledge concerning the great questions of life and death by entrance through its door of faith, while his creed ends in the darkness of despair. What a mockery of grief is such a creed We are told to "hope and wait," but !

what is hope without faith? A rope of sand. Faith is the key- stone of the trinity, Faith, Hope and Love. Take away faith and there is no consolation in hope and love. His published words of doubt will live to catch the unthinking, and serve as excuses for men, who, unable to live on his plane of morality, will seek by them to defend and justify their immoral propensities. The weeds and tares which he sowed with the wheat of his better thoughts will soon overwhelm the latter. His name will be obliterated from the list of the great, and the flood of religious progress emanating

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from the restored religion of Jesus Christ, will in a few short years efface his doctrines and name completely.