Many were the birthday cards he did for me, original in design,
beautiful in execution. Whatever he did he put the best of himself into
it. I wrote to my daughter soon after his death:--
"I heard on Saturday that our dear Joe Evans is dangerously ill.
Yesterday came the worst news. Joe was not happy, but he was just
heroic, and this world wasn't half good enough for him. I keep on
getting letters about him. He seems to have been so glad to die. It
was like a child's funeral, I am told, and all his American friends
seem to have been there--Saint-Gaudens, Taber, etc. A poem about
the dear fellow by Mr. Gilder has one very good line in which he
says the grave 'might snatch a brightness from his presence there.'
I thought that was very happy, the love of light and gladness being
the most remarkable thing about him, the dear sad Joe."
Robert Taber, dear, and rather sad too, was a great friend of Joe's.
They both came to me first in the shape of a little book in which was
inscribed, "Never anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender
it." "Upon this hint I spake," the book began. It was all the work of a
few boys and girls who from the gallery of the Star Theater, New York,
had watched Irving's productions and learned to love him and me.
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