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"Bob" Ingersoll
A Sketch of the Life of
America's Most Noted Agnostic
by
The Elmira Telegram, Sunday, March 16, 1890
His Family and Home Life and Views Upon Religion.
— A Remarkable Man.
Colonel Ingersoll is devoted to his family. He married young, and has
been one of the most devoted of husbands and considerate and affectionate
of fathers. The Ingersoll household—Eva, the elder of the colonel's
two daughters, though married to W. H. Brown, a Wall street banker, still
resides with her parents—is a model for any Christian family in
the land. The home life of the Ingersolls is truly delightful. One of
her friends says that Mrs. Ingersoll "looks like a much loved woman and
radiates happiness and contentment." The colonel's daughters, though they
have never attended religious services, have never heard a sermon preached
and never attended school, have, under their parents' wise and thoughful
direction, grown into noble and accomplished specimens of womanhood. When
he goes to his home at night, Colonel Ingersoll flings business and business
cares to the wind and thinks no more of them until morning. An amusing
incident is told of him in illustration of this characteristic. Not long
ago a railroad president had an appointment to meet the great lawyer in
the evening at a leading New York hotel. The colonel had taken the papers
in a pending suit to his house in the afternoon, promising to examine
them before dinner and report upon them at his meeting with his client
in the evening. The railroad president was at the hotel at the appointed
hour, and waited for some time for the colonel, but the latter did not
come. At last he called a cab and anxiously drove to the Ingersoll residence.
The servant who answered his ring showed him at once to the library, where
he found the jovial colonel and his family. Was the colonel all right?
Yes, Had he looked over those papers yet. No, he hadn't. To tell the truth,
he had not as yet had time, for he had been playing cards with his wife
and daughters all the evening. The colonel's friends, when they heard
of the incident and the railroad magnate's discomfiture, laughed and said,
"it was just like Ingersoll." The Ingersolls usually spend their summers
at Marblehead, Mass. Their New York home is on lower Fifth avenue, and
is the favorite resort of many of the brightest and choicest spirits in
the metropolis. Colonel Ingersoll is not given to talking shop at his
own hearthstone, one might visit him at his home many times and never
hear the subject of religion mentioned. He leaves its discussion for other
times and places.
For this reason, it is as a brilliant and hopeless agnostic that Colonel
Ingersoll is best known to the great majority of people. His views upon
religion have not, I think changed materially since he first began to
give them public utterance a quarter of a century ago, but he has of late
grown more moderate and dispassionate in the statement of them. What is
his creed? Such as he has best finds expression, I think, in the tender
and touching letter which he wrote not so very long ago to a San Francisco
lady, who had lost by death a young and only son. "I have heard," he wrote,
"the sad story of your almost infinite sorrow, I am not foolish enough
to suppose that I can say or do anything to lessen your great grief, your
anguish for his loss; but may be I can say something to drive from your
poor heart the fiend of fear—fear for him. If there is a God let
us believe that he is good; and if he is good, the good have nothing to
fear. I have been told that your son was kind and generous; that he was
filled with charity and sympathy. Now, we know in this world like begets
like, kindness produces kindness, and all good bears the fruit of joy.
Belief is nothing, deeds are everything; and if your son was kind, he
will naturally find kindness wherever he may be. No human being knows
anything of what is beyond the grave. If nothing is known then we can
hope only for the good. If there be a God, your boy is no more in his
power now than he was before his death—no more than you are at this
moment. I beg of you to throw away all fear. Take counsel of your own
heart. If God exists your heart is the best revelation of him and your
heart could never send your boy to endless pain. After all, no one knows.
The ministers know nothing. All the churches in the world know no more
on this subject than the ants upon the anthills. Creeds are good for nothing
except to break the hearts of the loving. Let us have courage. Under the
seven-hued arch of hope let the dead sleep. I do not pretend to know,
but I do know that others do not know. I wish I could say something that
would put a star in your night of grief—a little flower in your
lonely path—and if an unbeliever has such a wish, surely an infinite
good being has never made a soul to be the food of pain through countless
years."
Of a certainty, the man who could write such words as these has a heart
that beats warm and true. Granted that Robert Ingersoll's influence on
his generation has been on the whole harmful, the fact remains that he
has done a Titan's work in broadening narrow creeds, softening cruel dogmas
and dulling the edge of the bigot's sword.
For this, and for his manhood, his morality, his benevolence, his broad
and unfailing humanity, let none refuse to do him honor.
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