E.P. Roe: Reminiscences of his Life Part 13

"Now Mr. Roe's fiction has been very severely criticised, but it has been universally read. For myself I would rather minister to the higher life of ten thousand people than win the plaudits of one self-appointed critic. And his novels have been universally read because they have uniformly ministered to the higher life of the readers. He has ministered to the life not of ten thousand, or of one hundred thousand, but of thousands of thousands, for his readers in this country alone are numbered by the millions. And I venture to say that no man, woman, or child ever read through one of Mr. Roe's books and arose without being bettered by the reading, without having a clearer faith, a brighter hope, and a deeper and richer love for his fellow man. In one sense he was a realist. He made careful and painstaking study of all the events which he attempted to describe.... He was not a mere photographer. He saw the grandeur that there is in life. He felt the heart that beats in a woman's bosom and the heart that beats in a soldier's breast. He felt it because his own heart had known the purity of womanhood and the courage of manhood. He portrayed something of that purity, something of that courage, something of that divine manhood, because he possessed the qualities that made him a hero on the battlefield, and so made him a preacher of heroism in human life.

This is the man we have come here to honor to-day; the man who by his imagination linked the real and the ideal together; the man who has enabled thousands of men and women of more prosaic nature than himself to see the beauty and the truth--in one word, the divinity--that there is in human life.

"It is fitting that you should have chosen a rural scene like this as a monument to his name; for he may be described by the t.i.tle of one of his books, as the one who lived near to nature's heart. He loved these rocks, these hills. It is fitting that you should have left these woods as nature made them. He cared more for the wild bird of the grove than for the caged bird of the parlor, more for the wild flowers than for those of the greenhouse, more for nature wild and rugged than for nature clean and shaven and dressed in the latest fas.h.i.+on of the landscape gardener.

"It is gratifying to see so many of all ages, of all sects, of all cla.s.ses in this community gather to do honor to the memory of Mr.

Roe. But we, many as we are, are not all who are truly here. We stand as the representatives of the many thousands in this country whose hours he has beguiled, whose labors he has lightened, whose lives he has inspired, and in his name and in theirs we dedicate to the memory of Mr. Roe these rocks and trees and this rugged park and this memorial tablet now unveiled. Time with its busy hand will by and by obscure the writing; time will by and by fell these trees and gnaw away these rocks. Time may even obliterate the name of E.

P. Roe from the memory of men; but not eternity itself shall obliterate from the kingdom of G.o.d the inspiration to the higher, n.o.bler and diviner life which he--preacher, writer, soldier, pastor and citizen--has left in human life."