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 MEMORIAL ADDRESS 
 
 GoL. Thomas Wallace Knox 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF 
 
 THE LOTOS CLUB 
 
 APRIL 6, 1896. 1 
 
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 DAVID BANKS SICKELS 
 
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 MEMORIAL ADDRESS 
 
 Col. Thomas Wallace Knox 
 
 DHLIVERHD AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OT 
 
 THE LOTOS CLUB 
 
 APRIL 6, 1806. 
 
 DAVID BANKS SICKELS 
 
^^' 
 
 MEMORIAL ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED AT 
 
 THE LOTOS CLUB, 
 
 APRIL 6, 1896. 
 
 In the ceaseless struggle of mankind for the 
 life of others there can be no loftier aspiration 
 than that which is created by a desire to con- 
 tribute to their intellectual profit or pleasure, 
 and there is no nobler pursuit than that of an 
 author whose works continue to bring sunshine 
 to our households long after he has passed 
 away. This was the ambition and hope that 
 impelled and guided the tireless pen of our 
 late, lamented friend and fellow member. 
 Colonel Thomas "Wallace Knox. 
 
 Only a few days before he died he said to 
 me, ' ' I know that after I am dead and for- 
 gotten my books will live. ' ' And here is the 
 key-note — sadly sounding down the avenues of 
 time — of every grand endeavor. Conscious 
 genius lifts her laureled brow and, unmindful 
 of her chaplets, thinks only of her darling 
 gifts to the world, wondering whether they 
 will be treasured as blessed legacies. And 
 
how many who have toiled and struggled and 
 hoped, not alone for recognition while living, 
 but for the assurance of something imper- 
 ishable '' when life's fitful fever is over," have 
 been forgotten and their books buried in the 
 sands of oblivion. 
 
 But if in this age the principles of altruism 
 shall ultimately predominate over that spirit 
 of avarice which Tennyson describes as ' ^ Each 
 hand lusting for all that is not its own, ' ' then 
 the man who adds one item to the fund of 
 human knowledge will rise to the highest 
 dignity that can be attained in the great scale 
 of being. Then the names of men who seemed 
 to be illustrious while living may be forgotten, 
 the splendid temples reared and adorned by 
 human hands may perish, the monuments 
 erected to perpetuate the memory of those 
 who achieved renown may crumble into dust ; 
 but the magic forms of beauty created out of 
 the airy fabric of the brain and the ' ' thoughts 
 that breathe and words that burn ' ' will sur- 
 vive the wreck of time. 
 
 The life and personality of Colonel Knox 
 were altogether unique, and were the outgrowth 
 of those phenomenal opportunities afforded by 
 American civilization and American institu- 
 tions. Born in a little village of New Hamp- 
 shire, of parents who were the descendants of 
 stalwart, old John Knox, the Scottish Keformer, 
 and noted for their rigid conservatism, in 
 
early life he found his way to Boston, where 
 the trammels of Puritanism which had fettered 
 his early childhood were broken and a larger 
 liberty of thought and action secured. There' 
 he studied with all the ardor of the most- 
 ambitious student, until he was enabled tO' 
 impart to others the attainments of his 
 unwearied scholarship ; so that when he was 
 only eighteen years of age he became the 
 teacher of others who were older than himself^ 
 Before he was twenty-two years of age he- 
 established an academy at Kingston, N. H., 
 but adverse circumstances forced him to relin- 
 quish the enterprise, and when the alluring 
 rumors of newly-discovered fields of fabulous 
 wealth in Colorado reached him, he gathered 
 up the few dollars he had saved and counting 
 the cost decided to journey thither. On his 
 arrival at Denver he discovered that his 
 exchequer was sadly depleted and it became 
 necessary to seek employment, which he soon 
 obtained, as a special reporter of the Denver 
 Daily JVews, and subsequently, while thus 
 engaged, he also became the western corres- 
 pondent of a number of eastern journals. 
 
 At the outbreak of the war he was amongst 
 the first in the field, and served in the Army 
 of the Southwest as a volunteer aide. Subse- 
 quently he was appointed Lieutenant- Colonel 
 and Aide- de- Camp on the staff of the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief of the National Guard of 
 
California by Governor Frederick F. Lane. 
 When not on duty lie was busy with his 
 facile pen, and his graphic accounts of long 
 and weary marches, skirmishes and battle- 
 scenes, won for him the high regard of news- 
 paper men in this and other eastern cities. 
 At the close of the war he came to New York 
 and soon after made his first journey around 
 the world, writing vivid descriptions for the 
 press of his visit to eastern lands. Subse- 
 quently he made frequent trips to other 
 foreign countries and traversed nearly every 
 known region of the earth. He had travelled 
 many thousands of miles more than Bayard 
 Taylor, and, with the single exception of 
 Frank Yincent, more than any other noted 
 American. 
 
 It was during one of his periodical tours 
 (in 1877) that he reached the shores of Siam, 
 and in that unfrequented and far-off corner of 
 the world he was my guest for several weeks, 
 visiting the palaces of royalty and the bunga- 
 lows of the lowly, the gorgeous temples of 
 the Buddhists and the humble chapels of the 
 missionaries. We travelled together through 
 the jungles many miles in the interior of the 
 country by elephants and bullock-carts and 
 native boats. 
 
 Just before his departure for Singapore I 
 had the pleasure of presenting him to the 
 King, and as he was the only American His 
 
Majesty had seen for several years, except the 
 official representatives of our Government, 
 and the Presbyterian missionaries, he invited 
 us to his summer palace at Bang-pa-in, where 
 we remained nearly an entire day and fully 
 half a night together, enjoying all the luxuries 
 that an Oriental sovereign could furnish to his 
 guests, and conversing in a familiar manner 
 upon subjects of general interest. On this 
 occasion Colonel Knox explained with great 
 care and in detail the methods and operations 
 of our educational institutions, which greatly 
 interested the King, and two years later it 
 was a source of more than ordmary gratifica- 
 tion to me to be permitted to inform the 
 Department of State that His Majesty had 
 inaugurated a system of public instruction 
 predicated largely on the lines which Colonel 
 Knox had suggested. A few weeks after my 
 good friend's departure. His Majesty remarked 
 to me : * ^ If all Americans were like Colonel 
 Knox what a splendid race you would have in 
 your country." 
 
 The works that Colonel Knox has left us, 
 especially his series of ' ' Boy Travellers, ' ' are 
 monuments of his industrious research and wide 
 experience. His pen was not skilled in the art 
 of portraying the plastic imagery of fancy's 
 enchanted landscape. He saw things as they 
 were, and painted them as he saw them, and 
 made, as Kobert Louis Stevenson said, '*the 
 7 
 
right kind of thing fall out in the right Mnd 
 of place ; the right kind of thing follow, and 
 not only the characters talk aptly and think 
 naturally, but all the circumstances answer 
 one to another like the notes in music." If 
 he appeared at times to indulge at all in exag- 
 geration it was because the scene he depicted 
 was made up of a multiplication of anomalous 
 and incongruous forms and figures, but not 
 less faithfully portrayed because so seemingly 
 unreal, as things often seem to those who are 
 unfamiliar with untraveled countries. 
 
 It may be said of his writings that they are 
 characterised by a fascinating simpKcity of 
 style, a purity of diction, and an unaffected 
 tenderness of thought; and he might have 
 truthfully said of himself, as did the author of 
 the ' ' Pleasures of Hope, ' ' during his last days 
 on earth : * ' When I am gone, justice will be 
 done to me in this way : it will be said 
 that I was a pure writer, and now it is an 
 inexpressible comfort to me to be able to look 
 back and feel that I have not written one line 
 against religion or virtue. ' ' 
 
 His sterling traits of character and predilec- 
 tions have been accurately and admirably por- 
 trayed by his old and intimate friend, Junius 
 Henri Browne, who says : 
 
 << He was a true son of New England, and 
 American through and through; in the best 
 sense of the word a Democrat, a man without 
 8 
 
the least pretense or affectation, a believer in 
 hard work and honest purpose. No man has 
 ever been more strictly, more absolutely just. 
 It is not too much to say that he was the 
 embodiment of justice in every act of his 
 checkered career. He had often said that if 
 all men were just, there would be no need of 
 generosity, which is only made necessary in 
 order to supply the deficiencies of what 
 assumes to be justice, and is exactly the 
 opposite. 
 
 ^' He was an unflinching believer in law and 
 order. 
 
 ^ ' Exceedingly conservative and practical, he 
 had no love of theory, no fondness for specu- 
 lation, no care to solve problems of any sort. 
 He revered facts, and of them he was always 
 an ardent supporter. Very patient with the 
 existing order of things, for whose original 
 existence he thought there must have been 
 entirely sound reason, he could have lived in 
 a despotism with a certain degree of content- 
 ment, fervid lover of liberty though he was. 
 If he had not been able to endure the despot- 
 ism, he would have gone elsewhere, rather 
 than plot against it, or attempt its overthrow. 
 
 **Many of Colonel Knox's acquaintances 
 failed to understand him, he was so invariably 
 upright, so uncompromising as to what he con- 
 sidered to be right. He sometimes gave offence, 
 no doubt, by saying precisely what he be- 
 
lieved ; and yet he was uniformly polite when 
 politeness did not involve falsehood or 3ome 
 other form of insincerity. He would never 
 ask any person to do anything for him that he 
 would not gladly do for that person. He 
 never paid idle compliments; he never flat- 
 tered ; he never had ulterior motives ; he was 
 ever frank, direct, trustworthy. He was 
 never known to borrow money, though he 
 would frequently lend to anyone he esteemed 
 to be honest. But he detested, from the bot- 
 tom of his soul, any man who could in any 
 manner be suspected of ' dead-beatism. ' Of 
 his charities he seldom spoke, and they were 
 many and constant. He would always give, 
 according to his means, to any person or cause 
 that was needy and deserving. 
 
 <'His books were like himself, wholly honest 
 and painstaking, simple and straightforward. 
 In a literary way, he had made the most of 
 himself, and he was quietly proud of what he 
 had accomplished by untiring industry, patient 
 research, extreme conscientiousness and unques- 
 tionable talent. Character, however, was his 
 sovereign distinction. He was a model Ameri- 
 can, a pattern for the rising generation. 
 
 ' ' If every citizen of the country were all that 
 he was, this would be an ideal Eepublic." 
 
 Colonel Knox was a true Lotosian in all that 
 the word implies. His club was his castle 
 that he was always ready to protect and 
 10 
 
defend. He was a member of other clubs, 
 but the Lotos was his favorite abiding place, 
 to which he clung with a feeling of fondness 
 somewhat akin to that which home alone 
 inspires. He was one of its constituent mem- 
 bers, and for several years at different periods 
 performed the duties of vice-president and 
 secretary, devoting considerable time to its 
 interests. And now, as we no longer behold 
 his kindly face in the old familiar places, our 
 thoughts instinctively turn towards the mys- 
 terious, unknown realms of the departed, and 
 we are led to exclaim in the language of 
 Longfellow : 
 
 ** Traveller! in what realms afar, 
 In what planet, in what star, 
 In what vast, aerial space 
 Shines the light upon thy face? 
 In what gardens of delight, 
 Kest thy weary feet to-night? '* 
 
 11 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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