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Show THE REV. R. M. KIRBY. The news of the death of the Rev. R. M. Kirby is very sad news to a great company of old residents in this city. He possessed every manly trait. He was a devout Christian gentleman and gave his life to the intelligent service of his Master. He built the first Rowland Hallhe was a stay and inspiration to St. Mark's hospital, in its infancy and when it needed help. He was alert and earnest and never-tiring never-tiring in every good work, and his record will be a sufficient certificate of character in the world to which his soul has gone. But the charm of the man was in his character, his clear common sense, his ever-human instincts, his utter absence of anything like false pride, and the clear belief which was inborn, that if all men are not brothers, they should be, that for one who had the power to help a fellow man in distress, and did help him, the favor was not so much to the receiver re-ceiver as to the giver. In the old days when there were no street cars, no messenger boys, no telephones here," he was one day at St. Mark's hospital, nearly a mile from Main street, when he heard a surgeon say to a nurse that a certain patient must be given whisky every hour until further orders. Seeing a troubled look on the face of the nurse Mr. Kirby asked her what was worrying her. She replied that whisky had been prescribed for a patient and there" was not a drop in the hospital. Mr. Kirby picked up his hat, and saying he would be back in a few minutes,- walked down to a prominent saloon, ordered a gallon of whisky and receiving it returned on foot with it to the hospital. He was always doing such things, tnd, say what we may, the ordained rector of an Episcopal church, who can do such things, is a pretty big man. As a friend said of him yesterday: 'There may be better men in the world than Mr. Kirby was, but they are very few." No other educated edu-cated clergyman who has ever come from the East, has ever, by nature, been so perfectly qualified to unconsciously ingratiate himself into the affection and good wishes of all classes of people. The secret was that he was absolutely devoted to duty and was ready to accept and acknowledge any good that any man possessed, no matter what his condition or beliefs be-liefs might be. On the other hand so broad was his charity and so warm his sympathies, that a bad man to him was one, not naturally depraved, but the vic-time vic-time of some misfortune or of years of misfortunes. As Mr. Browning once expressed- it: "How you must have sufferedlo have become so wicked." He was altogether manly. A world filled with Ruch men would make a heaven above unnecessary, for heaven would be here. |