The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1878-01-12
Your FIRST resolution SUGGESTS consolatory

| Your first resolution suggests consolatory
| truth that we shall do well to regard.
| In the home of his childhood, surroun ded
| by objects and scenes made dear to his sight
| by the memories of his early days, towar
| nightfall of day of rational and tranquil en-
| joyment,
Gods finger touched him, and he slept.
When the life has been made to conform to
| the Makers grand design, there are surely no
| terrors in such painless and peaceful close.
| The story of his life has been fifty told in
! your resolutions and the remarks which have
| accompanied them there is little for me to
add beyond the expression of my concur
renee in what has been already well said
His tenure of judicial Office was brief-hard-
ly long enough to test his capacity for it. Not
more than one or two who were his asso-
ciates on the bench, and so best knew his real
worth, survive him, and neither of them is
here to-day, to bear witness to his services.
Of one thing feel sure; and that is that
his duties were never made more difficult by
any needless collision between court and
counsel, and that his own unwavering
courtesy was never ruffled, seldom tested, by
any exhibition of peevish disrespect on the
part of those who differed from him. Herein,
his own kindly temper was a perfect protec-
ton.
The wind that beats the mountain, blows
More softly round the open void,
And gentlz comes the world to those
That are cast in gentle mould.
Much of the asperity, bad blood and posi-
tive discomfort growing out of litigation,
might be saved, with results quite as favor
able to substantial justice, if the example of
urbanity which he set during his long pro-
fessional career, were well followed. There
was nothing in his nature akin to the human
bramble, nor to the "wild beast that trode
down the bramble.'
His name first appears, as counsel in the
fifth volume of Maine Reports, and thence
forward, as counsel or judge, in nearly all of
the series, to the sixty-seventh.
Let his own works praise him. As senior
member of the we'll known firms of Howard
and Osgood, Howard and Strout, and How
ard and Cleayes, he enjoyed, and never for
feited to his latest day, the confidence and
respect of host of clients, fact which of
itself furnishes ample proof of his fidelity
and ability.
Eminently fortunate in his domestic rela.
tions death spared his household for many
years, apparently only to remind him at last
by repeated blows, that he and his, though
highly favored, were not exempt from the
common lott and in his latest years, the once
happy family circle entirely broken up, he
stood almost alone, his surviving children
living at distance in other States. Yet to
one of his refined character and ver-failing
courtesy and lively social instincts, the doors
of congenial friends were always open, and
had his life been still prolonged for many
years, it is safe to say that he never would
have occupied the forlorn position of soli-
tary old man. He carried in his breast an
inexhaustible fountain of pleasure and con-
tent, in his love for nature and all that ia
beautiful in her works. His last hours were
passed in the pursuits that for years had
been his favorite recreation. He had all the
fondness for flowers, and for botany as sci
ence, that characterized distinguished Chief
Justice of the Kings bench, half century
ago, and with him he would say.
Sit mihi forihus