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The sudden death of
Edmund Clarence Stedman at New York on January 18, 1908, came with a strange pathos upon the readers of his many writings, especially as following so soon upon that of his life-long friend and compeer,
Aldrich.
Stedman had been for some years an invalid, and had received, in his own phrase, his “three calls,” that life would soon be ended.
He was born at
Hartford, Connecticut, on October 8, 1833, and was the second son of
Colonel Edmund Burke Stedman and his wife
Elizabeth Clement (
Dodge)
Stedman.
His great-grandfather was
the Reverend Aaron Cleveland, Jr., a Harvard graduate of 1735, and a man of great influence in his day, who died in middle life under the hospitable roof of
Benjamin Franklin.
Stedman's mother was a woman of much literary talent, and had great ultimate influence in the training of her son, although she was early married again to the
Honorable William B. Kinney, who was afterwards the
United States Minister to
Turin.
Her son, being placed in charge of a great-uncle, spent his childhood in
Norwich, Connecticut, and entered Yale at sixteen, but did not complete his course there,
