The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-04-03
W..H... MOODY
NEW MEMBER OF RoosEvELTs
 OFFICIAL HOUSEHOLD.
Rise of an Aggressive. Nan from the Presidency of a Baseball r League to . Bee
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 Haverhil (Mass) correspondencs Y. r. World.
 A Yankee lawyer has jumped in few years from the Presidency of the New England Baseball League to a position. in the Cabinet of his country. WilIism H. Moody, who. only a few years ago, was nothing more than . country lawyer | of unusual brtliiancy. fs to take his seat
 at the official table Of the President of the land.
 |. He is only another example of the I strenuous life which the man who has appointed him recognizes as his own pre- | dominant trait and he is heading as surely toward the goal of his ambitions
 as did he who made the Rough Riders possible and afterward became Governor of New York.
 At home, Moody is still Billy, Moody,
 and though a score of receptions are be- ing planned for him next week. he will probably be just the same genial fellow he was when he had no aspirations ex- cept to get out of Congress and earn tlH | money that hts legal ability entitled him Ito earn. N Primarily the man Is lawyer. with a lawyers training and lawyers instinct | the instinct of fighting. Secondarily, | he is a baseball crank who would 90 as | far to see eighteen men and an umpire Light it out on the diamond as most men
 would to see their sweethearts. Moody, | by the way, is a bachelor, and those
 who have known him longest say that he
 Is yet to have his romance. He is 4s. | When he was young he was every | thing but a gay Lothario. and he sur
 rounded himself with friends who would
 work and study hard all day and get l together at night and laugh and joke l with one another till the wee, sma' hours l go to bed. get few hours sleep and | then hurry to police court to fight over some case that was of such small im- l portance that it really never ought to have been in court. It was the fighting of l such cases, however that made the new | Secretary. x 1 Ben Brickett, as good soul as ever l lived, was Moody's chum. He is dead
 now. but he would have been the happi- | est man in the world If he had lived to | sec this day. l They used to get about all the assault cases that came up in court, and it was
 in telling old Judge Carter how Smith had 1 become so yexed that Brown had dec
 orated his eye. and how Jones had made that rag necessary to. keep Smiths head | together that Moody became an orator. l The courtroom was too small for the crowd when Moody and Brickett were l telling these things to see which side
 should avoid paying 5 fine. but it was these contests in the old courtroom, when | Moody met and defeated the brains of this
 section-brains that have since directed the policy of the county and State--that 1 developed the aggressiveness, the ability, | the far -sikhtedness, that President Roose | welt has recognized, under the name of l strenuousness. in the country lawyer and decided to take to his own use
 | In the old days. Moody and Brickett, and former United States District At l torney E. B. Jones and Clerk of the Court E. B. George, used to be up. to l about all the pranks that were going, from serenading the girls over at Brad | ford Academy to making things uncom- | fortable for their friends and comforta- l ble for themselves. And that spirit to- | day still lives, and Moody Is never hap 1 pier than when he is dining with his l friends or smoking with them and swap ping yarns about what they used to do l when Brickett was alive. | Then he went from city solicitor to 1 district attorney then to Congress. And
 he had some hesitancy about doing that | when Congressman Coggswell died, as | he wanted to make some money at law, ! and he was several times about to give | up Congress to get back into law when | he was urged to stay in and take what
 was coming to him politically. and now he Is forced in by being rendered an honor
 
 young man of New England can de- cline.
 Moody has been aggressive in every thing he ever did. He has literally forced himself forward. but till now his goal had been the law rather than politics. He was aggressive at Andover. where he led his class. He was the same at Harvard. | where he could take ball off the bat, l break through a rush line or win case ir- the moot courts.
 In trying the poodle aldermen of Law 1 renee. he fought till he was beaten by ] iuries that could not agree, and finally | sent severa! men to jail. Later he sent | more aldermen from this city. In his | murder cases, he always got what he asked for. even when in a clear case, | when the jury said that young man | who had killed a farmer while robbing | his house was guilty only of mansla ugh I ter. in which the virile young District | Attorney fought so hard that the court | gave the maximum penalty of twenty years, and then added twelve more on the