Chapter XI. To the Last, 1895-1909

EXCEPT for the brief period near the be ginning of Bishop Hare's missionary work, when its very continuance was threatened by the state of his health, it has not seemed worth while to lay special emphasis upon the physical handicaps he was obliged to overcome. Many intimations of their presence have been recorded. In fact they introduced an element into his life with which he had constantly to reckon; but from 1875 to 1895 they were not so pronounced as to work any serious impairment of his activities. In 1895 came an illness which called forth the following directions from his friend and physician, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell: "It is imperative that you have six months of rest away from Dakota. It is probably not too late. It is none too soon--as to this matter I am absolutely decided. No middle course will answer. At present I must forbid speeches, sermons, addresses. . . . Do not put off your time of holiday any longer than you can avoid doing." This illness kept him for the only time in his whole Episcopate from the General Convention, meeting in 1895 at Minneapolis. The representatives of the Women's Auxiliary assembled there, sent him by telegraph a pledge of $1,700 for the work of All Saints School. It came, as he said, "when my physical energies were very much prostrated, and when the outstretched hand of sympathy and power was particularly opportune." In his Convocation Address of 1896 he said further: "When my health was in its most uncertain condition a pledge of $7,000 came to me from a long-tried friend, who gave me to understand that I could not have his money unless I took it with his advice and sought rest." Accordingly he was absent from South Dakota from October of 1895 till April of 1896, and--needing further rest after three months of active service--sailed for Europe in July, reaching South Dakota again in September.

From the steamer on which he returned he wrote (September 7, 1896) to his sister Mary: "The passengers have fixed upon me to represent them in making a speech this evening at dinner expressive of the courtesy and care the Captain has shown us. I demurred and asked that some other person be chosen, urging that my ecclesiastical character might detract from my acceptableness with some," but a prominent agnostic on board declared him acceptable, a Jew spoke out for the minority which he represented, and "I was cornered," said Bishop Hare, "and have been incubating." The barrier of "ecclesiastical character" had indeed long been broken down, though there was still much work for him to do in his official capacity, with a store of the strength of determination for its performance. In November of 1896 he was writing to his sister Mary from points in a visitation to the Indian country, rendered nearly impassable by terrific snow storms. "A nine-hours' continuous drive in heavy snow Friday," he wrote November 11, "tired me considerably, but on the whole I stand the journeys well." On November 29, he wrote: "I stood the exposure well, though I had to go to bed for two days while at Pine Ridge." At Christmas his sisters sent him a head-rest--"which," he wrote in gratitude for it, "I am sure I shall enjoy. The longer one's head is on his shoulders, the more he begins to wish it were somewhere else."

Through the immediately ensuing years, whatever he may have wished for his head and his body, he spent of his powers with a generous spirit. His interest in passing events was clearly shown at the outbreak of the Spanish war. On May 1, 1898, he wrote to his sister Mary: "I admired the wisdom, strength and forbearance of the President during all the trying weeks which preceded the declaration of war, and hoped that that resource might be avoided. . . . Here every one is at a fever heat of patriotism, fanned even hotter in Sioux Falls by the arrival of volunteers of the State who are encamped and drilling in full sight of All Saints School." Six days later he wrote: "I found a hundred soldiers who had not so much as a single blanket--this at 4 P. M. So I set a movement on foot to see what our church people could spare, sending All Saints 'bus' around at 7:30 p. M., and by 9:30 had seventy-five comfortables collected and at the quartermaster's tent at camp."

Of his physical activities a few passages from letters to his sister Mary provide typical illustrations. On November 22, 1897, he wrote from Aberdeen, South Dakota: "I have in twenty days preached twenty times, held sixteen confirmations in which I confirmed seventy candidates, have driven two hundred miles by wagon and traveled eight hundred and sixty-seven miles by rail, and slept in thirteen different beds. No danger, you see, of ennui." On March 27,1899, he wrote from Groton, South Dakota: "I am off on a tour of two weeks, at a different town almost every day, all sorts of houses and all sorts of conveyances. This morning I started at 6:30 in a caboose attached to a freight." A few months later he wrote as follows:

"DEPOT, MADISON, July 10, 1899.

"Yesterday, Sunday, was a genuine Missionary day. At 8 A. M. the Holy Communion and at 10:30 Morning Prayer, baptism of a mother and child, sermon and confirmation; at 12:15 address to the Sunday School, and after that conference with the Mission officers about securing a supply for their church; then lunch; at 2 P. M. started in a buggy for a schoolhouse eight miles out from town, where country people assemble for a service. Here I baptized two infants and preached, then drove on twelve miles to Howard. Here at night I held service, preached and confirmed; at 7:30 A. M. to-day had a celebration of the Holy Communion, breakfast at eight and took the train at nine." . . .

In September of the same year he wrote of his decision to undertake episcopal duties for three weeks in New York at the request of Bishop Potter: "I take the work partly because it gives me a chance to serve a friend, partly to keep myself and my work before the people of the New York Diocese, and partly because I am to receive $250 for my services, which will educate one of my clergy daughters for a year [at All Saints School], and leave $50 over for other like purposes."

Bishop Hare's devotion to the interests of All Saints School and the part which it came to play in his own life have already been touched upon. His daily life in the school is more fully set forth by Miss Helen S. Peabody, the principal:

"From the first he made the school his home, choosing for his own the two least desirable rooms in the building, taking his meals in the school dining-room, always paying for his board more than any pupil paid for board and tuition as well. Although it was evident to others that he needed more rest and care than the exacting routine of school life offered when he came back, always weary, often exhausted, sometimes ill, at the end of a long missionary journey, he insisted for years upon conforming to the habits of the school family; and when he was finally persuaded to breakfast in his room, it was with the express understanding that the breakfast served him should be the same as that served the school family. 'What is good enough for the rest, is good enough for me,' was the principle from which we were not allowed to depart. Only two or three years ago, after some sick days, he remarked, 'I notice that for several days I have had grape fruit for breakfast. I am very grateful if this is the gift of some kind friend, but oranges are good enough for me; and then, I think it not suitable for a Missionary Bishop to allow himself what his clergy cannot have.'

"He so loved to be one with the family in all their activities that parties, entertainments, etc., were planned to come, so far as possible, when the Bishop could be at home: and he was never too busy, too weary, or too burdened to join in their fun. When winter came, the Bishop was the first one out to help make a 'slide,' and many a frosty evening did he spend on the tennis court trying to coax from a garden hose enough water to make a skating pond.

"Some years ago the Bishop's eastern friends made themselves happy, the Bishop comfortable, and the school thankful, by building for him warm, sunny rooms on the first floor. Here the Bishop was really comfortable as he could not possibly have been before; but what seemed to give him the most real pleasure in the new quarters was that they were next the girls' playground. Again and again he would leave his busy desk to watch them for a few minutes in their happy play. 'They never disturb me. I love to hear their voices,' he replied when some one suggested that the basket ball games next his windows might make too much noise.

"The Bishop was always the school chaplain. Of course, when he was well, he was much away; but when at home, he always took the chapel services. Except on Monday mornings he gave short, simple talks on Christian living. So suited were these talks to school-girls' life that his hearers among the pupils often supposed he had been told of their questions, their difficulties, their shortcomings, and the older people wondered how the Bishop knew just what needed to be said to them as well as to the girls. On the rare Sunday evenings when he \vas at home, the family gathered about him in the parlors to sing hymns, and to hear his stories of 'The Early Days'--stories told with an exquisite blending of pathos and humor, seriousness and fun. Then came candy and their happy good nights.

"Always cheerful, tender, thoughtful for others, forgetful of self, only those who lived closest to him realized what a tremendous financial burden he steadily and patiently carried. Determined to keep the school accessible to those of moderate means, he knew that the expenses must often exceed the income. Reports and bills were paid monthly. Sometimes there was money on hand to meet the reported deficit. Sometimes, when there was none, he would receive the report in silence, with blanched cheek and tightened lips; then, summoning a smile, he would say to the unwilling messenger, 'Don't worry about this. You have enough besides to think about. It can be managed some way, and the school is doing a blessed work.' And he turned to the task of 'managing,' with a patient, hopeful courage, sure that the Master had given him this work to do. Of his success in managing, it might be said that the school has never been in debt. Before he went away from this world some friends raised a partial endowment, the income from Avhich was an unspeakable relief in these last years of brave suffering and physical weakness.

"The more he suffered, the more anxious he seemed that the girls should look on the bright side of things, and we older people sometimes wondered if the children really knew there was any pain; but to those who did know, there was no other part of his wonderful, helpful life so wonderful, so helpful, so rich in blessing, as the last years of intense suffering and great physical weakness, but unclouded faith."

An article printed in the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader immediately after his death fills in certain details: "The two small rooms reserved in the school for Bishop Hare are, in their simple appointments, in marked contrast to the cozy luxury in other parts of the institution. . , . In his library stands the desk where, when weak and suffering he labored on, surrounded by his favorite books and pictures. . . . Confronting him on this desk was a copy of a portion of the frieze by Fra Angelico in San Marco, Florence. The title of the picture is 'Il Silenzio,' and it represents San Pietro Martire, in one of whose hands are scroll and quill, while the other is raised, with the forefinger pressed tightly against lips. What an eloquent sermon is there, and how absolutely the Bishop ever regarded its teaching! No matter how bitterly wronged, how cruelly misjudged, Bishop Hare was never known to cry out, either in complaint or in retaliation.

"The inner room, his bedroom, speaks of family ties. On the walls are pictures of wife and mother--women whose lives, we are told, helped to establish the Bishop's beautiful ideals of womanhood, and his life work for women seems a most pathetic tribute to their memory. . . . Over his narrow bed hangs a copy of a prayer by Robert Louis Stevenson--another hero who toiled incessantly and smiled bravely in the face of approaching death. At the head of the bed are these words: 'The Eternal is thy refuge, and underneath are the Everlasting Arms.'"

It was indeed well for him that in his final years he could turn for rest and retirement to two such homes as he found in All Saints School and with his sisters in Philadelphia or Atlantic City, for otherwise, throughout these years, toiling incessantly and smiling bravely at approaching death were his portion. In 1903 a malignant growth on his face became a subject of frequent allusion in his family letters. In one of them he wrote of his nose--"always you know, a prominent part of me, and for some time an exacting part as well." In 1904 there was added to the painful facial trouble a condition which could not be conquered by mere courage in the endurance of physical suffering. The two afflictions placed him definitely for the remaining five years of his life in the hands of physicians and surgeons. On March 16, 1904, he issued a letter to the Clergy and Congregation of South Dakota: "Defective blood circulation, a malady from which I have suffered for many years, and have again and again recovered, took a new form March 7th. I have just returned from St. Paul, where I consulted a specialist who concurs in the advice--which I was unwilling to follow--given me by my physician in Sioux Falls and by Dr. H. A. Hare of Philadelphia, that I should immediately break away from all work, seek complete rest and change of scene, at least for some weeks, and put myself under a course of special medical treatment. I therefore cancel all my appointments. I leave in a day or two for Philadelphia and then for some other place. ... I wish to dismiss all anxious thought (which is depressing), and bend all my strength to getting well, and trust, therefore, that my illness may not be referred to in conversation or correspondence with me."

The next day, March 17, he wrote to the Presiding Bishop about the possibility of resigning his work. Bishop Tuttle deferred action in the matter, and said in his reply: "For more than thirty-one years, and for the longest term of any American Missionary Bishop, you have done difficult frontier missionary work faithfully and lovingly. Never a whimper has been heard from you, God bless you! The days of self-denying heroism are not over."

In a family letter from Atlantic City, April 10, 1904, Bishop Hare wrote: "I am getting along as well as I could expect--try to manufacture some fun when there is none to be had in any other way to keep the blues away. Self-indulgent self-pity is the danger which I most fear." Four days later, in a letter to Sioux Falls, he described an amusing colloquy with a negro who was rolling his chair along the Board-Walk: "Yes," said Bishop Hare, in answer to a question, "I have come here to get straightened out."

"This is the place for that, suh."

"Well, Bishops are pretty hard to straighten out--not very limber."

"Well, I don't wonder you need rest--all those big thoughts in your brain all these years. You are superannuated, I guess."

"I don't know."

"Oh, I don't mean you can't do anything. You might sit on a church jury. Many of the boys (young ministers) can't stand quite plumb, you know, and you might quietly show them how--you're good for that yet."

"So our conversation ended," Bishop Hare went on, "letting much daylight into my future. I thought, 'I'll go back to All Saints School and stay there. Perhaps some of my girls can't stand plumb yet, and I'll quietly show them how.' "

From Atlantic City, on May 5, 1904, he wrote a "personal and confidential" note to Dr. Lloyd, Secretary of the Board of Missions, as follows:

"It is quite manifest that I shall need relief before long in South Dakota either by a division of the field or by the appointment of a coadjutor, supposing that relief to be made canonical by the next General Convention. . . .

"Pardon me if I add in pencil, the easiest way of writing, that I have been troubled with my present malady, mitral stenosis, since 1875, when, after my return to Philadelphia badly used up in consequence of severe strains, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell discovered it and put me immediately in bed and later (December, 1875) sent me abroad. He prognosed then that as I was young my heart would meet the defect by increasing its size and muscular capacity, provided I was careful and gave it a chance. Some years later he examined me and told me his expectations had been fulfilled. The difficulty has recurred, however, again and again. I know now that I cannot keep up the struggle and that my only chance of any degree of usefulness, and even of life itself, depends upon my decreasing my expenditure of strength and using the greatest care. How I can carry out this plan and yet be of real use to the work is now my study, and therefore I have written the note in ink which precedes this. In the past I have been a general missionary, often supplying vacant places, as well as Bishop. It may be that I can confine myself to the most essential work of a Bishop and get along without assistance whether by division of the field or by a coadjutor."

It was evident that something must be done. Dr. Mitchell wrote him in August: "My thorough knowledge of your condition through many years induces me to urge upon you the absolute necessity for some assistance in your difficult and laborious work. . . . Either you must have a coadjutor or you must entirely give up your work." From other trusted sources came the same professional advice. His Convocation Address in September told his people frankly of his condition. He said that he had been allowed to return to South Dakota "not as being a well man, but as a convalescent," and further: "I must admit that the work in South Dakota has reached proportions which puts its proper oversight and direction quite beyond my strength. Of course, relief must be had for me, and, what is more important, for this Missionary District. Of what nature that relief shall be, it is the prerogative of the House of Bishops to determine." From South Dakota he wrote to his sister at this time: "I am standing being in harness better than I had dared to expect, and I am behaving as well as I can in the matter of saving myself." The General Convention met in Boston, in October. There was no canonical provision for the appointment of a coadjutor to a Missionary Bishop. But when Bishop Hare's needs were made known a new law designed to meet them--and them only--was passed, and in the following June, the Rev. Frederick Foote Johnson, general missionary of Western Massachusetts, was chosen "Bishop Assistant to the Bishop of South Dakota." The relief thus accorded came in the most acceptable form it could have taken. The sympathy and harmony in which the younger and the older Bishop worked together found expression in many ways. In private and in public, Bishop Hare summed up his personal feelings concerning Bishop Johnson in the words: "I have found a man like-minded who will naturally care for your state." Writing to his sister, soon after the coming of his assistant, he expressed himself more intimately: "Perhaps I have not said it, but Bishop J. proves all that I could wish, both personally and officially." The duties assigned to the younger man of greater physical strength were performed so well that Bishop Hare could devote himself all the more effectively to those which he retained. The wonder is that he could retain and perform so many through the few remaining years of physical torture.

Even before Bishop Johnson could first join him in South Dakota, he was obliged to inform his people (November 11, 1905) that the condition of his face forbade his deferring a visit to Philadelphia for treatment long enough to welcome the new Bishop and explain on the ground the local conditions. In December he was back again in Sioux Falls, and writing to his sisters: "For a good while now I have frequently suffered so much pain that I had to think up a good story and tell it and laugh to keep myself from crying. ... I am very much hindered in all my writing, for my right eye has been practically closed for some little while."

If the full tale of Bishop Hare's final sufferings were to be told there would be many instances of the kind of heroism which is suggested in his telling a good story and laughing to keep himself from crying. Even in the summary, which must be sufficient here the quality of his courage will often reveal itself through words of his own which were not intended to reveal anything of the sort. They will speak for him sometimes at the East, enduring much, sometimes at the West, both enduring and accomplishing.

In February of 1906, his Philadelphia physicians overturned a plan he had made to pay his sisters a long visit in Atlantic City by urging him to accept the invitation of his friend, Mr. W. W. Frazier, to join him in a five-weeks' cruise on a steam yacht to Porto Rico and its neighborhood. "Well," he wrote to his sisters, "if I can't have my own way, I am thankful that the other way throws me with such dear friends as the Fraziers, and the yacht is one of the finest afloat." In spite of the pain which was now his constant companion, there was much to enjoy in this experience. When it was finished he returned to South Dakota, whence, on May 17, 1906, he wrote to Dr. Abbe of New York, making an appointment for an examination at St. Luke's Hospital. "I shall not ask for a room there," he said, "unless I find on meeting you that you think it is necessary, as my taking a room might exclude others. There are many sufferers, I am sure, who need such privileges very much more than I do, and I shall just report to you at the Hospital for treatment as you may desire." In June he was back in Sioux Falls, where he preached the baccalaureate sermon at All Saints School. At the end of August an operation on his face was performed at Bar Harbor, and within a few days Bishop Hare was planning to return to South Dakota. The wound became infected, erysipelas followed, and he was detained at Mount Desert. Before the end of October, however, he was again making visitations in his missionary district. In the course of his Convocation Address of 1906, he reported: "My visitations have been not a little interfered with and curtailed by the state of my health, but I have, notwithstanding, preached and made addresses one hundred and twenty-five times, confirmed on twenty-six occasions, and celebrated the Holy Communion twenty-six times."

At the Convocation of 1907 Bishop Hare could place himself thus on record: "Despite all hindrances, I have done a large amount of office work and have been in the field whenever it was within my power. I have preached and made addresses ninety-seven times; have held sixteen confirmations, and celebrated the Holy Communion twenty-one times." In the summer of 1907 also he did what he was incapable of doing in 1906--attended the Indian Convocation. What his hindrances were the Annual Address did not tell. It was not like him to enlarge upon them, nor need they be described in this place at greater length than he used in making them known to the few who had to be informed of them. Writing on April 14, 1907, from Atlantic City to his sisters, whom he "had not the heart to tell," otherwise, he said: "I wish you to know that the surgical operation which will cost me the loss of my right eye-ball and then probably bring relief from pain and more power to work, or?--has my full approval." From St. Luke's Hospital, New York, on May 4, 1907, he sent this brief bulletin to his friends: "The surgeon found the condition of my face on my return to New York, April 13, such as to require a radical surgical operation, and on April 17th, in this hospital, he removed successfully the right eye-ball and contiguous flesh. He promises me speedy convalescence, a clean and healthy scar, freedom from pain, and a better time than I have had for years; and no probable recurrence of the malady." A visitor to the Hospital, inquiring for Bishop Hare's condition, was told by his nurse, "He is the best patient I ever had." For all that is implied in this surgical experience "hindrances" is a mild term.

The private communication from Bishop Tut-tle already drawn upon throws a light of its own upon these final years of silent heroism: "In all my acquaintanceship," writes the Presiding Bishop, "I know of no more marked instance of the brave soldier. And my admiration of him and my affectionate memory of him and my reverent and grateful respect for his life and services are anything but lessened when I think of the heroic fortitude with which he bore the cruel pain and dire distress physical of his later years. No complaining. No letting up of work. No failure of interest in the Church. No banishing of smiles. No pitying of self. No reproach upon others. No relaxing of duty or devotion. But simply a gentle, yet firm and firmer and firmest grip upon the faith and hope and love in the Lord Jesus which had permeated all the days of all the years of all his earthly life."

A small incident of these later years illustrates well the constant fact that through all of Bishop Hare's enforced absences from South Dakota his heart and thoughts were with his people. One day on a train from Atlantic City to Philadelphia, one of his brothers-in-law saw him across the aisle trying with great difficulty to read a newspaper. He joined Bishop Hare, and after a little talk asked him if there was not something in the paper which he would like to have read aloud. The Bishop demurred at the trouble it would cause, and then admitted that there was one thing he would like to hear--the weather report from South Dakota. When the state of his eyes and general health would permit, he made the long journey to the West, and performed the duties which, in the division of labor with his assistant, he had reserved for himself. The two previous chapters have accounted for some of his activities, especially in the Divorce Reform Campaign, through this period of suffering. On June 15,1908, he wrote from Rapid City to his sister: "These visitations are a test of one's strength, and I am much cheered to find how much more I can stand than I could a year or two ago." In June of 1908, after delivering his Convocation Address at Sioux Falls he was cheered by encouragement of another sort in receiving a fervid expression of gratitude and appreciation, framed in recognition of his seventieth birthday, May 17, and signed by over a thousand of the clergy and laity of South Dakota, both white and Indian.

In the following year, the last of his life, a testimonial perhaps even more noteworthy came to him from the Mayor and Aldermen of Sioux Falls. It explains itself, and touched Bishop Hare the more closely because he had felt that his persistent fight against the foreign divorce traffic had alienated many of Ms fellow citizens:

"To the Rt. Rev. William Hobart Hare, Bishop of South Dakota:

"As the last official act of the Mayor and City Council (the Commission plan of municipal government taking effect to-morrow), we wish to extend to you our deepest sympathy in your great affliction and to indicate the universal love, respect and admiration with which you are regarded, not only by your personal friends and neighbors, but also by every citizen of Sioux Falls and South Dakota, and to express to you our sincerest congratulations upon your approaching 71st birthday (May 17), and the earnest hope that your health may be restored and that you may long be spared to continue the great work in this state to which you have given your life. The work which you have done will live long after you have passed away. The civilization of our western Indians is due more largely to you than to any other man. Your life and labors have made the world better. You are one of the great missionaries of America, and it is a source of pride to every citizen of Sioux Falls and South Dakota that you decided to cast your life among us. You have built schools and churches throughout the state, and no history of this commonwealth will be complete without giving an important place to the great work in which you have beeli engaged and the magnificent results you have accomplished."

Even in this final year he continued to give what he could of his strength to his work. The last of all his letters to be quoted in this record was addressed to the Rev. Dr. Reginald H. Howe. It is dated Atlantic City, March 21, 1909, and ends, "My suffering is intense and constant; but the doctor (H. A. H.) has given me a sleeping powder which has admirable power by day and by night. The doctors advise entire change of scene and air, and the specialist thinks that suspension of the X-ray treatment for three weeks will be wise. So I am venturing to start West, Wednesday, March 24.

"Affectionately your brother,

"W. H. HARE."

It was in Atlantic City, on October 23, 1909, that he died, suffering and courageous to the conscious end. Almost his last words were: "I have lived in South Dakota and have been one of its people for thirty-six years. I wish to rest in its soil, and in their midst." Arrangements were accordingly made for his burial beside Calvary Cathedral in Sioux Falls. When the train bearing his body arrived at the station it was met by the clergy of the state, many local churchmen, the ministers of different denominations in the city, the dean of the Roman Catholic Cathedral, the mayor, and city officials and hundreds of citizens from all walks of life. A procession headed by the mayor accompanied the body to the Cathedral, where the clergy of the district became a guard of honor until the hour of the funeral. This was four o'clock in the afternoon. At that hour all business in the city was suspended, the street cars stopped running for ten minutes; the doors of the business houses remained closed until five. Bishop Johnson, Bishop Edsall of Minnesota, Dean Biller of Calvary Cathedral and the Rev. Dr. Doherty of Yankton, President of the Council of Advice for the missionary district, conducted the service. In the procession from the church to the grave there were also eleven Indian and twenty-two white clergymen. The girls' choir of All Saints School took part in the singing. "After the committal office had been said, the most touching scenes"--to quote from a correspondent of The Living Church--"were enacted by those who had been brought into most intimate and loving relationship with the Bishop. Beginning with the youngest girl in All Saints School, each pupil and alumna of the school, members of the faculty, Indian clergymen, and clergymen who had labored with the Bishop from the earliest years of his episcopate, and the members of the Bishop's family who were present, passed around the grave and dropped a white chrysanthemum upon the casket, until it was literally buried in flowers. While this was being done the choir of the Cathedral and the clergy joined in singing hymn after hymn. . . . The men of Calvary Cathedral and some of the clergy took up spades and filled the grave. When the last shovelful was thrown and the grave banked with flowers, the people moved out of the churchyard, singing, 'Breast the wave, Christian.' Only loving hearts and hands performed for this great Apostle of the West the last sad offices. Even the man who drove the hearse asked that he be allowed to do it without pay, as a tribute of affection. The mayor of the city acted as funeral director."

On the 20th of the following April, 1910, a special Memorial Day was celebrated in Sioux Falls. The life and example of Bishop Hare were the objects which the leaders of secular and religious activities united again--this time with more deliberation--in honoring. In the afternoon, business was virtually suspended, and the largest theatre in the city was crowded with those who came to hear Governor Vessey of South Dakota speak of Bishop Hare in his relation to the development of the state; the Hon. E. A. Sherman on "Bishop Hare and the City of Sioux Falls"; the Rev. W. H. Thrall, D. D., Superintendent of the South Dakota Congregational Conference, on "Bishop Hare, the Missionary;" and the Right Rev. Dr. Thomas O'Gorman, Roman Catholic Bishop of Sioux Falls, on "Bishop Hare and the Home"--a generous utterance bearing witness to the fineness of both the Roman and the Anglican Bishop. In the evening, Bishop Tuttle, in Calvary Cathedral, preached a memorial sermon on the text, "He shall feed his flock like a shepherd," showing, with deep feeling and affection, how truly Bishop Hare throughout his life had practiced the shepherd's virtues of thoughtfulness, tenderness, care and protection.

Bishop Johnson, in his Annual Address for 1910, interpreted admirably the meaning of this Memorial Day--"the like of which has not been seen on this portion of the map since civilized people first began to have their habitation here. When men asked what the man in whose memory the day was set apart had done for South Dakota the answer was, He did not irrigate the desert; he did not get hard wheat planted instead of soft; he did not run the corn yield up from thirty to fifty bushels to the acre; he did not increase a man's capacity for production a hundred fold by the invention of machinery; he did not build a railroad. What he did was to spend a space of years, in what Socrates described as the greatest work a man could give himself to when, before his judges, he made this his Apology: 'I neglected the things which most men value, such as wealth and family interests, and military commands, and popular oratory, and political appointments, and clubs, and factions that there are in Athens. I went about persuading old and young alike not to think of his affairs, until he had thought of himself; not to think of the affairs of Athens until he had thought of Athens herself; persuading you all, old and young alike, not to care chiefly for your persons, or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul.'"

These noble words apply as truly to the man with whose life this book has dealt as the definitions with which it began. In all his capacities, the saint, the knight, the apostle, the pioneer persuaded men first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. The means by which he achieved this end were implied in the saying of Bishop Tuttle, already repeated, that the sponsors of William Hobart Hare if asked to name him in early manhood would have given the clear and unhesitating answer--a Missionary Bishop. At the very beginning of his days on earth there were spoken over him in baptism words which his youth, his manhood and his old age abundantly fulfilled--"Christ's faithful soldier and servant unto his life's end."

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