The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-04-29


by Dr.. e. A. Alderman, delivered at the
Educational Conference at Richmond on
Sunday night:
DR. ALDERMAN'S EULOGY.
1t is altogether proper and beautiful
that this great conference, after a Sos
sion of singular interest and meaning,
should come togethe.' to do honor to the
memory OF a man who helped to form
and direct it's life, and who stood for its
highest ideals; and. likewise, to gain
from study of his purposetul life, fresh
strength and will for the work that lies
before us, and will lie before those who
Gene after US Jabez Lamar Monroe
Curry, who passed out Of this life on
Feb. II, 1908. lived a long, full, varied
life of service, of devotion, of struggle
and achievement. We mourn, therefore,
no young Lycidas, dead ere his prime,
but we come rather to take to heart the
lesson of the life of a splendid Ulysses,
who had never known rest from travel
and work, and who had drunk honorable
life to its lees. and whose spirit at the
last still yearIed in desire Ito strive, to
seek, to find, and not to yield" J. l.. NJ
Curry had been a soldier, a maker of
laws a teacher, writer of useful books
twice representative of his governme Mt
at the Court of Spain, and statesman of
that truest sort whose faith in men was
unfailing, and whose ambition was to
give them a chance to inherit the beau
ty, the richness and the power of life
The intense, rich life of our leader and
friend covered an equally intense and
rich period of his country's history. Born
in 1925 in the rural, agricultural, isolated
lower South. his thoughtful boyhood
locked out upon a crude, healthy, boast
full nation, drunk with a kind of demo-
cratic passion and getting used, in rough
ways, to the shrewd air of popular gov
eminent, and yet clinging to the con-
cept Of orderly nationality. His young
manhood was passed amid the storm of
a great argument, made necessary by
the silence and indecision of the consti-
tuition, as to the nature of this Union.
To our minds, cleared Of the hot temper
of the time, that age seems an unhappy.
cropping age, but it was a good age in
which to be born. for men were in earn
est about deep, vital things. 1t was in
deed an age of passion, but of passion
deep lovalties The cynic, the political
idler, the self-seeker, fed before these
fery-eyed men, who were probing into
governmental theories and constitutional
interpretations, and who counted their
ideas as Of more value than their lives.
The time had its obvious faults, and was
doomed to fall before the avatar of pro-
gress; but there lived in it beauty and
force and great central note of exalta-
ton of personality above social progress.
Around the fireside the talk did not fall
so much upon the kind OF man who forms
the syndicate or corners the stock mar
ket or who wages the warfare of trade
around the world, but rather simple, old
questions were asked which might have
been asked in the Homeric age: Is he
free from sordiness or stain? Has he
borne himself bravely in battle? Has he
suffered somewhere with courage and
dignity? Has he kept faith with ideals?
The best and most lasting bequest of
the time to the nation was the conception
of politics as a lofty profession to be
entered upon by the best men for I'M
selfish purposes. DR.. Curry~na reached
his prime when the great drama, fate
determined and fate driven, passed from
argument into war and he himself
caught in the grip Of that same fate,
with all his gentlenoss and tenderness
became of those whose faith and truth
on wars red tombstone rang true
metal" In the strength OF middle life
and in the serene wisdom of old age,
this fortunate man found himself living
in another world, and with sufficient
ctr Of
live in it and of it and for it with
spirit unspoiied by hate or bitter mem
cries. with a heart unfretted with re-
grets and with a purpose mistaken by
any doubt For the first time he had
sight of the possibility of an undivided
country, rid Of sectionalism and provin-
cialism, conscious of its destiny assur-
ed of nationality, striving TO fit himself
for the work of great nation in civili-
cation. He had sight, too, of mis- sec
ton, idealized, to him. by fortitude and
woe adjusting itself in silence and dig
nifty and suffering and power to the
spirit of the modern world. What was
there for a strong man TO do? we may
fancy himself asking himself in the
silence Of his soul. There could be no
chickering's for such men as he no US
ing of his great powers to find place for
himself by nursing the feeling of hatred
and revenge in the breasts of proud and
passionate races. There could be no
racial scorn, no Theatrical pettiness, no
vain, fastuous blindness or puerlle OBJ
stinacy. Not painlessly had God re-
nodded and cast anew the nation" The
pain has indeed smitten his soul, but
his eyes were clear enough to see God :
great hand in the movements of society
and to realize the glory of new birth out
of pain. and his desire was aflame to
be about the work that recreates and
eets in order. Like al sincere, unselfish