WILLIAM STEINWAY[1]
Honored friends and mourners, mourners are we all. I can say but a few words to you, but they come from a troubled heart. It is a great sorrow that gathers us about this coffin. We stand here bowed by a sense of loss that touches this city, the Nation, the world, not in a general way, but one that goes straight to the heart of each individual personally. Whoever knew him cannot but have the feeling that in this dead man he has lost a brother. Certain it is that to many who watched his fruitful career from afar off, it has had a great meaning.
As a simple workman William Steinway began his life's activity. Through unwearying labor, honest, daring, many-sided, thoughtful, he climbed round by round till the name of the great master-manufacturer resounded through all the civilized nations of the earth, and the noblest societies of art and the mightiest princes of the world decorated him with their distinguished honors. But with all the greatness of his success he remained always the simple, honest, restless workman—the true, the ideal knight of labor in the broadest, noblest sense. As a patron of art and of the uplifting pleasures art satisfies, he was a power. Who can measure the gratitude our country owes to him for his furtherance of the true love of art and the ennobled æsthetic taste which it was his searching constant care to serve by securing the best of talent, by holding out help to struggling genius, and by exciting our living interest in such things? He was a pattern of American citizenship, the embodiment of unselfish, efficient public spirit. With what force of word and deed has he come forward when the life of the Republic needed a defense, or the honor of the Government or the
- ↑ Remarks at his funeral in Liederkranz Hall, New York City, Dec. 2, 1896.
