req)onailn]ity incident to foreign traveL In 1908, however,
and again in 1910 and 1911, each time in company with one
or more of his sons Jto conduct the party, he spent the three
summer months in Eim^.
Especially in his middle life, he was a voracious novd
reader, and every summer would supply himsdf with a
large number of tke latest publications. He was also for at
least forty-five years before his death a subscriber to LiiteWs
Lmng AgCy and a constant reader of the articles and stories
there reprinted from fordgn periodicals. He stodced his
library with bodLS on biblical archaeology and criticism, and
kept abreast of the latest discoveries and theories in that
branch of research ot speculation. He also read extensivdy
in the most recent books of history. For instance, he pur-
chased, and actually read throu^, most of the volumes of
the Cambridge Modem History.
Shortly after his marriage, he filled a gap in the library
which he had inherited from his fekther by purchasing a num-
ber of sets of modem authors in well bound and well printed
editions; but althougih he had succeeded to his father's fond-
ness for early printing, he made few additions to the collec-
tion of incunabula imtil after the year 1900. At about
that time, he attended an auction in New York at which a
very fine collection of early printed books and fine editions
were sold, and became the purchaser of many at bargain
prices. Stimulated by this success, he made in the next few
years large additions to his collection, although generally he
was oblis^ to pay much hi^^ber prices.
His only brother, Mr. James P. Machen, lived at Walney
alone, after the death of his wife in 1895, and the removal
and marriage of his children. In 1908, he suffered a severe
attadc of pneumonia, and only by his iron constitution was
his life saved. Never afterwards, however, was he really
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DEAN LANGDELL 345
himself again. His eyesight was all but' gone, and on Octo-
ber 6, 1913, he died in a hospital at Washington. He is
buried in the churchyard at CentreviUe.
My Either thus became the last survivor of his family.
He also outlived all his friends of approximately his own
age. The death of any of them was always a grief, though
he never outwardly showed depression.
The longest livers of his Law School friends he saw but
seldom. With one of the closest, C. C. Langdell, his ac-
quaintance was renewed at the time of my own studies at
the Harvard Law School. The tie between them had always
been strong, although they corresponded but seldom. In
1887, Mr. Langdell wrote:
C. C. Langdetl to A. W. Machm.
Cambridge, June 22, 1887.
My last lecture has been delivered, my last eiamination has
been held, and to-day I have read and marked my last ezamina-
tioQ book. In short, my year's woik is finished. And now I
am going to write to you.
It may strike you as odd that I should not have been able to
answer a letter (written last Thanksgiving Day) till my year's
work was done; but you must not onnmit the injustice of compar-
ing me with yourself; you must not (in judging me) think of one
who cannot write a poor letter if he tries; you must consider the
case of one who cannot write a good letter if he tries ever so much,
and to whom it is a great burden to write at all; to whom, more-
ow, the fact of having an excellent letter to answer operates
not as an inspiration, but as a discouragement Of this you may
be sure, namely, that my long silence has not been because of
forgetfuhiess, nor because I did not value your letter hi^y. If
I had written to you one tenth as often as I have thouj^t about
you and talked about you, you would have been tired of receiving
letters long before this.
How like a dream that celebration seems! Nothing has hap-
pened since I can remember that so stirred me up. For days
after you left, we felt more than the londiness of Sunday (you
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346 THE LAST FIFTY YEARS
know that the idea idiich a New Ei^^d boy associates with
Sunday is chiefly that of loneliness).
I was much grieved to hear of the death of your sister. I do
not know whether you had more than one sister; but I cannot
doubt that this was the one of whom you spoke so often, and who
read Co. Litt. to you. You must fed her loss very keenly. You
have my warmest sympathy.
Yoius a£Fectionately,
C. C. LangdeD.
Again, after the celebration of the twenty-fifth 3^ear of hb
connection with the Law School, upon the occasion of hb
resignation as dean, Mr. Langd^ wrote:
C. C. Langdetl to A. W. Machen.
Cambridge, June 28, 1895.
My dear Machen:
It was a great pleasure to me, on Tuesday last, as I could not
see you personally, to receive your very kind and sympathetic
letter.
I find that the older I grow the keener is the interest I fed
in friends of early days; and lAaSt the proceedings of last Tuesday
had more special reference to my relations with those who have
been in the Law School during the last twenty-five years, yet
(ouf^t I to say, ''to my shame be it spoken'?) I must omfess
that my interest in those who were in the school in my own time
is much keener.
With yourself in particular, all the earlier and more interesting
part of my stay in the Law Sdiod is most intimatdy associated;
and I do not in the least resent the feelings which I know you
entertain, that the Law Sdiool was a much nicer place in those
old days, and that too in spite of (doubtless you would say ''be-
cause of') my boast)Ml labours of the last twenty-five years.
Very truly yoius,
C. C. Langddl.
In thesummerof 1915, the last survivor of the Mends of his
boyhood days in Washington, Judge A. B. Hagner, departed
this life. Each had a deep affection for the other. In 1910,
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JUDGE HAGNER 347
as a preface to a cordial invitation to visit at his house in
Washington, Judge Hagner wrote:
A. B. Hagner to A. W. Machen.
Waahingtoii, October 26, 1910.
Dear Machen:
Your delightful letter of the 22nd inst. gave me great pleasure.
You express exactly my own feelings about our long Mendship,
and our present feelings toward each other, which have been un-
changed since the days of our boyhood.
By all means let me strive to {^reserve these kind relations as
long as we live; and see that they are strengthened year by year
instead of allowing them to become relaxed by age and non-user.
FaithfuUy, with regards to your wife,
Your friend,
A. B. Hagner.
From few of my father's characteristic letters written in
the last twenty or thirty years of his life is it possible to
quote. Many of those written to members of his immediate
family were devoted exclusively to matters of routine house-
hold arrangements, and those that would most truly repre-
sent himsdf are of two intimate a character to print. A
series of letters, however, written in the fifteen years preced-
ing his death to one between whom and himself friendship
was raised to the third power—^the daughter of one of his
closest friends among the women of his own generation —
beautifully illustrate some traits and sides of his mmd and
character, and prove that his ability as a letter-writer has
not diminished with the coming of old-age. Some extracts
from this correspondence follow:
A. W. Machen to Mrs. E-
Cmwford Houie, N. H., September 15, 1901.
I wish with all my heart I could give you some comfort in this
time of the greatest sorrow that has ever visited you. You know.
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348 THE LAST FIFTY YEARS
at least, that I too grieve and have good cause for grief and sad-
ness in the same calamity, and must be scMTOwful on my own
account even if I weie not moved with 8ynq)athy for you. Hie
last time I saw your mother, and her hand da^ed mine in rec-
ognition, she said to me, in caUing to mind the many friends we had
had in common who had left this earth before us, "How strange
that you and I should be still here, and all those gone.'' Now
she is gone, and I am left to bear alone the memories we shared
of a w<M:ld of shadows, of fonns and voices so living to us, yet so
forgotten generally. But if I had never known them, and there
had been nothing real in those dq)arted times but her own gra-
cious presence, what a charm those times must have hadl And
now all that loveliness only lives in the memory of those who had
the good fortune to be admitted within the dide of its influence.
What a privilq;e I have enjoyed to have had such a friendl And
for you, what a blessing to have had such a motherl
In theappointed course of nature, parents must die before their
children. Terrible it would have been — ^the fate of your mother
— ^if you had been taken, and she left. The ineviiaNe sorrow is
hard to bear, yet when all meet in Heaven it will be recognized
that God's ordering was best. You remain, to be to your chil-
dren what she was to you. Your loving care, concentrated upon
them, will have its reward; and, in process of years, when they
attain matiuity, and you see your hopes realised in their advance-
ment, you will remember your dear mother as tenderly as now,
but the bitter pang of sq>aration will have passed away. And
we do not grieve as those who are without hopt. We kmm that
Christ has risen, and that in hhn we have the true life, that never
can be taken away from those who come to the Father throu^
him.
A. W. Machen to Mrs. En
Seal Harbor, Me., July 16, 19Q2.
This is a good world after all. What if now and then disagree-
able events turn up in an unpleasantly sudden manner; on the
other hand, how many delightful surprises meet us when least
espected. The coming of your letter was such an incident.
When we learned in Baltimore of the arrival of your steamer at
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LETTERS TO A FRIEND 349
its British port and thought and talked of you, I remarked to
Minnie — sadly having in mind your austere disinclination to
indulge your friends with sig^t of your handwriting — ''Well we
may be sure we shall get no kUers from E 1" And now,
lol to reproach me, comes your letters-considering what Dr.
Johnson, if he were alive, might call the usual 'exiguity' of your
notes, a good long letter at that. Long or short, a most dear
letter it is, and giving me assurance of a place in your heart which
I would not give up upon any consideration. Minniesa}^ the date
shows it was written about the time I uttered that hard saying
about you, and insists that a m3^sterious line of mental or spirit-
ual telegn^hy exists between us. I am not so sure as to the date,
but I am glad to believe that our souls may be in company, in-
dependently of the accidents of space and time.
I have dreamt of Norway for many a year — ever since the time
when in my Cambridge days I read in my German book of selec-
tions a tale, written I think by an old fdDiow whose name is pro-
nounced "Shocky" — or something like that, — ^the scenje of which
was laid in a wdrd tract of land on the far Norwegian coast. I
have forgotten the stories, but the landscape picture remains in
my memory. I have that confidence in you now, that I believe
you will write to me some more, and Ifet me see the reflections
made upon your heart by those glorious visions of Nature in her
wildness and majesty and londiness. We do not know-<:ould
not understand if it were told to us-— what we shall see in the
future world, but I am confident that God, who makes nothing
in vain, would not have bestowed upon us the sense of beauty, if
its hi^iest exercise were not to be found in our future home, where
all that is joyful here will be garnered up tar those who love him
and come to Him throuf^ our Lord.
A. W. Machen to Mrs. E-
Seaakleliin,
Seal Harbor, Me.
August 29, 1905.
Your letter went direct to my heart. What if Tune and Tide
flow unfeelingly on, if one can get such letters? The Dolomites
must be worth loving, if you take to them so. I am swe I could
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350 THE LAST FIFTY YEARS
find joy in their campany, too. I agree that to dimb a grand
mountain is an undue familiarity, and how can any one so become
really acquainted with it? It is like an attempt of an ant to
study the Apollo Belvedere by climbing to the tip <rf his nose,
or to the top of one of the uppermost curls on his head. Now,
to climb a mountain of the second dass in order to get a betto*
view of the great mountains, that is different. The Eggishom,
the G<Miiergrat and the Rigi are given us for such a purpose.
But you and I are not members of the Alpine Club, and / humbly
fed that the lUuminati would smile at the conceit of the igno-
ramus who assumes to claim to know and appreciate a mountain
peak by looking at it from the plain.
Dear E , the past is wUh us with the present, if we will
only take life so. Events and persons once dosdy associated
wiUi our lives and affection remain ever in our real world
<d thought and consdousness. And yet, present things also
bdong to us— present in time, or according to the calendar — ^to
be enjoyed none the less because of the co-furesence cl those mem-
ories which have become part <^ the fibre of our being. It is
part of the privilege of the immortality with which we are en*
dowed to hold on ix> all that are dear to us. And there is less
sadness in the companionship of those who are no longer with us
in the body, than of the living; for we have to share the sorrows
and pains of the living friend, while the other walks upon the
douds of heaven, forever exempt from earthly suffering.
I went to Baltimore last week upon a business (professional)
end, and found it very londy. I slq>t at home, and had the
books around me there, to be sure. And they cheered me con-
siderably each evening, dear faithful creatures that they are —
as faithful as any dog, and so much more inteUigent, if making
less display of sympathy. I took my meals at the University
Club — ^but even the dub-rooms seemed uninhabited, only an
occasional member showing here and there as if inspectors of the
solitude. As I sat alone the first day, to take my dinner, at a
window commanding a good view of the statue of John Eager
Howard, the twilight gave a picturesque sobriety to the scene.
I watched the bronze horse, and thought how tired he must be
holding up that left foreleg so steadily, and my pity was awak-
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APPROACH OF THE END 351
enecL And what do you siiiqx)se occurred? I distinctly saw the
poor beast straighten the limb and put the hoof down solidly,
and an expression of satisfaction came over his face. This hap-
pened before I had touched my half-bottle of California, I assure
you. Some might think the movement did not take place; bui
my eyes saw U, R^retfully I found, a little later, that the f orel^
was again uphoisted in the same old, and uncomfortably monot-
onous, posture.
A. W. Machen to Mrs. E-
Pme Forest Tun, Summerville, S. C.
March 21, 1914.
How do you find Plato, in the Republic, on fuU experience?
Dreamy, vague, less satisfying than St. Pa\il and St. John, in the
Epistles, I apprehend. When we have the solid revelation and
wisdom of the New Testament to rest upon, giving all the light
which our Adamic visions are capable of using, it dways appears
to me vain, unprofitable and delusive to grope after the human-
istic philosophers— the great andents or the little modems, to
say nothing of unhealthy and unnatural psychic experimentation
which never has led, and never can lead, to any real scientific
knowledge.
In December, 1915, he seemed to be enjoying his usual
health. On Thursday the sixteenth of the month, he felt
slightly unwell, and, Friday being a very snowy day, he
kept within doors; but on Saturday he was at his office as
usual, drew a number of cheques in payment of bills, dictated
and signed some business letters, and returned to his home
without any visible indication of illness. He spent the even-
ing in his library, reading, as was his wont. The books
which he was reading and which were left on his table in-
cluded, besides the Bible, the Works of Plautus, a volume
of Macaulay's History of Eng^d, and Scott's Fortunes of
Nigel.
On Sunday morning, he was much interested in the news-
paper reports of the wedding of President lA^Uson, defended
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3t52 THE LAST FIFTY YEARS
faim from the charge of manying too soon after the death of
his first wife, saying that if he had been a younger man he
could have afforded to wait, but that at the age of fifty-nine
it behoved him to marry quickly if at all. He walked to
Chturch in company with my mother and myself, sat in his
accustomed seat, and listened with dose attention to a ser-
mon by his pastor. Dr. Kirk, from the text, ^'The Word was
made flesh smd dwelt amongst us, and we beheld his glcny,
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace
and truth.''
At the conclusion of service, as he was leaving the Church,
a member of his family asked him whether he had heard the
sermon — ^for he had become a little hard of hearing. He
replied, "I heard most of it."
He then walked home, and probably overexerted himself
in order to keep pace with a Mend with whom he was en-
gaged in conversation. Immediately upon reaching his resi-
dence, he sank down on the chair which stood nearest the
front door; and a few moments afterwards was assisted by
his brother-in-law and yotmgest son to a sofa in the parlour.
Here, quietly, without a word or groan, surrounded by his
family, and with the great words of the text yet ringing in
his ears, his strong, self-reliant spirit, securely trusting in
his Saviour, left his outworn body.
Sad, indeed, and broken, was the household which re-
mained. The vacant place in every heart was such as no
one else could fill, and each survivor knew that throughout
life the sorrow, changmg indeed in character with the passage
of time, would yet always be present. Nevertheless, in the
midst of grief, none— not even the one upon whom the blow
fell with most annihilating force — ^foiled to rejoice in the
memories and associations over which, even in this world,
death has no power.
His children love to remember with what raptt attention in
the days of their childhood they would listen while he told
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CHARACTERISTICS 353
them tales ftom dassic mytbology— the story of Ulysses and
Polyphemus, or of Romulus and Remus; with what never
flag^ng delight they would hear hun read aloud, with a
gusto which none, at least to them, can ever equal, and with
a pleasure scarcely less than their own, Southeys's ''How the
Water Comes Down at Lodore;'' and what mutual pleasure
they and he would derive from his readings of tales of rah-
jahs and ranees and rakshas in ''Old Deccan Days/'
All who survived looked back with pride over the notable
life which had just closed. Not one of the remaining mem-
bers of the family could remember a day in which, though he
lived to the age of eighty-eight, he had ever from illness kept
his bed. Though using his eyes incessantly throughout his
life— save only in the intervals in his young manhood when
he perforce spared them for a season — ^though he would
almost invariably read until twelve o'clock, frequently till
one o'clock, at night, or still later, — ^yet never till the day of
his death did he use glasses. "His eye was not dimmed,
nor his natural force abated." The merry twinkle with
which he would hear or tell a good joke was, like the keen
sense of humour which it evidenced, one of his most promi-
nent characteristics.
One distinctive form which this humour took was a
quaint, semi-humorous xise of long or unusual words to ex-
press everyday thought& - always without the slightest touch
of pedantry. For instnce, in one of his early letters he speaks
of "personal efforts in the eradication of mulleins." A day
of two before his death, he asked at the dinner table for a
"moiety" of a turnover. Foreigners were sometimes puz-
zled by this xise of language. For example, at the Grand
Cafion of Arizona, he asked a Frenchman who had just re-
turned from the bottom of the cafion whether he had been
"remunerated." The bewildered traveller thought the in-
quiry was whether he had been paid for making the descenti
On another occasion, he told a Swiss hotel-keeper that the
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354 THE LAST FIFTY YEARS
dectric li^ts in his estabUshmeBt were ^'indifferent" — much
to the poor man's perplexity.
To the very end, his energy and optimbm were marvellous.
If Cato learned Greek at eighty, my father did not hesitate
to plunge into a new language when he was even older. On
his summer vacations, during the last two or three years of
his life, he was accompaned by an Italian grammar, ^wbidk he
studied with such effect as to be able to read ItaUan prose
wdl enough to gather the sense. Nor was he lacking in
mere physical energy. On March 4, 1913, he surprised all
his family by slipping over, alone, to Washington, in the
midst of the crowd and confusion, in order to witness the
inauguration of President Wilson. At eighty-eight years of
age, his heart was more youthful than that of most men
at forty.
He had come to the bar when the three guuits, Reverdy
Johnson, John Nelson and John V. L. McMahon, still held
undisputed sway, and when the seoond rank was held by
such men as Thomas S. Alexander, William Sdtley and L
Nevitt Steele, each of whom my father used to say was like
Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, — ^^ Behold, he was honouraUe
among the thirty, but he attained not to the first three."
He lived to see those who at the commencement of his career
had held second or third rank succeed to leadership. He
survived not only all of them but also all his own contempor-
aries—Bernard Carter, John P. Poe, Charles Marshall, Wil-
liam A. Fisher, and others scarcely less deserving of reputa-
tion. He even saw men like Edgar H. Gans, v^ were bom
when he was in middle life, come to the bar, rise to eminence,
and pass away.
With this long and intimate acquaintance with the bar, he
gave as his judgment that the greatest Maryland lawyer in
all his time was I. Nevitt Steele.
Of judges, too, he had seen a succession of generations.
The best proof of the ability of a practising lawyer is to win
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SUMMARY OF PROFESSIONAL CAREER 355
the oonfidence and the oansideTation of the judges before
whom he practises, be they weak or strong; for to persuade
them to accept his contentions is the very object of his pro-
fessional labours. But it is a still higher proof of a lawyer's
ability when the judges whose attention and regard he wins
are themselves great lawyers. It was no mediocre . court
with which Arthur W. Machen prevailed mightily; it was the
Court of Appeals of Maryland, and the Court of Appeals at
a time when it was perhaps stronger than it has ever been
before or since— when it included such judges as Alvey,
Miller, Bryan, Stone and McSherry.
The mere number of causes argued in the higher courts or
tried in the lower coi^ is of course a very imperfect index
of the extent of a lawyer's practice. Particularly as a law-
yer grows older, the number of his causes is apt to Himinlf iVi
even if their importance increases. Yet even the mere num-
ber of causes, counted rather than weighed, is interesting.
The accompanying table shows the number of cases argued by
leading members of the bar, now deceased, in each volume
of Maryland Reports from 10th Maryland, in which my
father's first case in the Court of Appeals was reported, down
to 110th Maryland, which contains the report of the last
case he argued before that tribunal.
The funeral took place on Tuesday, December 21, the serv-
ices being conducted by Rev. Harris E. Eirk in the Frank-
lin Street Presbyterian Church. The body is buried in
Greenmount Cemetery in the same lot with those of his
father, his mother, and his sister.
On the next morning, the Baltimore ^^Sun" reviewed his
career in the following editorial:
{Prom the Baltimore "Sun,*' December 22, 1917)
The Repkesentative of an Old Regdie
In the death of Arthur W. Machen Baltimore loses one of the