Three Great Things

In our packing to move to Greensboro in June, I ran across an old book that we've had for quite some time entitled "Elbert Hubbard's Scrapbook".  I had seen this book for years in Mom and Dad Grimm's house and always  admired it.   A few years ago, when we were sorting through their stuff (as Dad is gone and Mom is living in assisted living), I ran across it again and kept it.

This morning, I read inside the cover that it was a gift to Mom (Mary Lois) Grimm at Christmas in 1944.  I was curious who Elbert Hubbard was, so I look him up in Wikipedia and saw that he was a writer and thinker in Buffalo, NY, who started the Roycroft Press and the Roycrofter Arts and Crafts movement during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Later on the article I ran across the following, which is pretty amazing:

In 1912, the famed passenger liner the Titanic was sunk after hitting an iceberg. Hubbard subsequently wrote of the disaster, singling out the story of Ida Straus, who as a woman was supposed to be placed on a lifeboat in precedence to the men, but she refused to board the boat: "Not I—I will not leave my husband. All these years we've traveled together, and shall we part now? No, our fate is one."

Hubbard then added his own stirring commentary:

"Mr. and Mrs. Straus, I envy you that legacy of love and loyalty left to your children and grandchildren. The calm courage that was yours all your long and useful career was your possession in death. You knew how to do three great things—you knew how to live, how to love and how to die. One thing is sure, there are just two respectable ways to die. One is of old age, and the other is by accident. All disease is indecent. Suicide is atrocious. But to pass out as did Mr. and Mrs. Isador Straus is glorious. Few have such a privilege. Happy lovers, both. In life they were never separated and in death they are not divided."

On May 1, 1915, little more than three years after the sinking of the Titanic, the Hubbards boarded Lusitania in New York City. On May 7, 1915, while at sea, it was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine Unterseeboot 20.