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MARSHALL P. WILDER 1799-1887

MEMORIAL

From Proceedings, Page 1887-91:

"M.W. Grand Master: — The duty you have imposed upon me to present to this Grand Body a memorial Of the full, varied, and alwaj*s useful, life of our deceased Brother, Marshall P. Wilder, is one of exceeding difficulty. That life was too full of incident, and honor, and purpose, to be easily or lightly told, and it deserves time for careful and detailed study.

"The life of our Brother Wilder was of unusual length; covering parts of two centuries, and reaching almost to fourscore years and ten, and in it all we find no idle hour, no moment gone to waste ; but, full as it was of solid work and sober care, still there were times when

"Fancy chequered settled sense
Like alteration of the clouds
On noon-day's azure permanence."

"His breaking into manhood was a struggle for larger activity - not narrow and selfish, but for such action as, while it might enrich and ennoble himself, should also enlarge the world of benign experience for others, and fill the horizon of human life with beauty and with fragrance. Not only in the dull routine of business, but in the subtler manipulations of fruit and flower, he had

— " the patient brain
To track shy truth,"

till she became his friend and ally in the development of an honorable reputation, a wise studentship, an upright manhood, a devoted piety, and in the mastery of floral growths till they appeared in many new and gorgeous blooms, and in richer and more succulent pulps of berry, and apple, and pear.

"The details of his busy life have been collected with great accuracy and much completeness, and are on permanent record in the Report of the Massachusetts Council of Deliberation for the. present year, and need not be repeated for this Body. To draw the lessons of his busy life out of its multitudinous details, and give them prominence in our hearts, will be the highest tribute we can pay to his memory, and the most precious legacy we can receive, whether from his active life or his peaceful death.

"He was a man of virtuous principles and impulses. We sometimes think, or seem to think, that a virtuous life must be one of denial, cut off from the full enjoyment of God's best blessings, and that it foretokens an austere and unsympathetic disposition, a hard judgment, and a black and dismal earth. But this is a diseased opinion. Human nature is never at its fullest receptivity till all its faculties are open to receive the ministries of nature and providence, which are the unpolluted sources of its happiness. Our Brother Wilder was a felicitous instance of a spirit that held itself lovingly and joyously "to all these ministrations. He was by natural gift, and by culture, sunny in temperament, broad in sympathy, charitable in purpose, and beneficent in act.

"Look through his eighty-eight years of earth, and you will not discover a single deflection from open virtue. His youth was confiding and resolute; his manhood active and dutiful; his age cheerful and serene. In the crises of commerce, when others foundered and went down, he stood upright and firm, meeting every obligation to the full, despite all losses. This was, perhaps, in part his good fortune; it was in part, certainly, his good principles. In the ordinary courses of commercial dealing his word was a reliance; there was in it no subterfuge or speculation; it was uttered to be fulfilled in the act.

"In the relations of family and friendship he was true and trusted; no faintest cloud obscured the purity of his reputation. In public life he was the revered citizen, sought after for the place of responsibility and honor, and amply did he serve his day and generation in these executive duties. In every relation of his busy life, we may say of him in the words of the poet: —

" He seemed expressly sent below
To teach our erring minds to see
The rhythmic change of time's soft flow-
As part of still eternity."

"Closely akin to this quality of his nature was his loyalty to precise truth, and his habit of dealing with the extremest exactitude of facts. To this vigorous adherence is due in no small measure his symmetry of character, his success in enterprise, and his romantic triumphs in the modulations of natural life. Does any one believe that the wonderful results obtained by him, in the hybridization of flowers and .the amelioration of fruits, were the effects of loose speculation or careless manipulation? On the contrary, accuracy of knowledge was supplemented, by delicacy and precision of handling, and both were exercised under the inspiration of enthusiastic love and fidelity. Truth is indispensable for a self-reliant man; for. a strong or a broad man; for a stable and a safe man. But, among all the excellences of our deceased Brother, we pause to mention only his frank and comprehensive manliness. He was. open to address from every side and upon every subject. The interests of humanity were his interests. He was more than cooperative; he pursued individual lines of thought and activity, and it resulted that he was not only proficient in the achievements of material affairs, but he was -deeply versed in the matters of the intellect and the soul.

"He was an affluent writer, and gifted with the power to speak with eloquence what he had thought or written. The eloquent words of a distinguished Brother are worthy to be repeated here, as they allude to a scene which took place at one of our annual feasts of St. John, and will revive and brighten a memory that is very dear to many of us. They are these: 'A few years before his death it was our fortune to hear him make a most eloquent and feeling address to the Fraternity, warning them that his advanced age made it doubtful whether he should ever again grasp the fraternal hands around him, and giving parting words of comfort to the Brethren, and of wise advice for the Craft which he loved. Natural orator as he was, never, we think, did he rise to a higher flight of eloquence, and never did an assembly sit more spell-bound under the inspiration of one they loved as a man and revered as a Nestor of the Craft. We felt, indeed, that he was going from us; that the love, faith and will of the Craft could not detain him. We realized that the bonds of affection and fraternity which held us together .with adamantine strength would shortly become a memory, and the Grand Lodge sat hushed in the silence of the deep sorrow lying like a pall over the heart. Fortunately, the health of our Brother rallied, and he sat with us on several succeeding quarterly meetings; but we knew he was an old man, made a Mason before most of us were born, and those eloquent words lingered in our hearts, for they spoke of a doom inevitable and near.'

"But he was more than an eloquent writer and speaker; much more than this had nature and education done for him. The sensibilities of his spirit, by the pursuit , of truth, had gathered the potencies of inspiration, and he not seldom 'voiced this thought in the fulness of poetic verbiage.

"I close this memoir by presenting, for permanent keeping in the archives of this Grand Lodge, a poem, which, in his own bold and strong handwriting, he a few years since presented to me, and which is treasured as a precious keepsake. It seems to me, over and above its language, beautifully to picture some of the aspirations of his noble soul: —

"O Nature, in thy secret bowers,
Where thou dost make the fruit and flowers,
Oh, teach me how to make a rose,
And give the tints with which it blows.

"Tell me, thou source of every art,
How to the fruit I may impart
That sweetness, perfume and delight,
Which please the eye and charm the sight.

" Then hand in hand, and side by side,
I'll take thee, Nature, as a bride;
. Our loves and labors we will join
To make thy glories brighter shine.

" With thee, O queen of grace! I'll bide,
In Spring's first blush, and Summer's pride,
In golden Autumn, — all the year,
Thou fount of life, my life to cheer."

Fraternally submitted,
EDWIN WRIGHT,
Committee.

Distinguished Brothers