Thoughts Suggested by Mr. Foude's "Progress‪"‬

Charles Dudley Warner was distinctively a man of his own day. He was enlisted for the men and women who made his world. He knew the past, for he was a man of letters; the future he did not know; he was content to leave that to the Father of us all; the present was his field. Warner's acceptation of the present and the way he lived for it was a peculiar and distinguishing gift. Planting his feet firmly on the knowledge he never ceased to acquire, he was ready to speak at call before any assembly when he was invited, or to hold his part in any conversation. Never dull, never insistent, but gracefully, helpfully, joyously furthering the ends of any interesting occasion whatever it might be. The generosity of his nature and a certain self-possession enabled him to be profoundly social. There was no day, no hour, no moment, no thing which he would not give, if he could, to a fellow-mortal who needed his presence or his help. That the demand was important to some one else made it important enough for him to consider. This wide sympathy fitted him to be what he became -- a newspaper editor of distinction, a writer of many books, primarily for his contemporaries, but so well done that some of his published work will live beyond his time.