The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-09-01
BY SAVOYARD.

StTue0 his Office 20 mean 10 Iedu, anu
he has led in the main. sS5No doubt he
has made mistakes, butt he is the
ablest man in the house and the best
debater on Capitol hill. The envy II
excites is the best test of superiority.
The home of the ''old south" was
rich in a few books that were regu-
larly read and BEAUTIFULLY digested-
the Bible, Pilgrims Progress,
Herodotus. Rolin. Plutarch, Gibbon,
Hume. Robertson. Swift, Defoe, Field
ing, Smollett. Shakespeare, Milton,
Pope. Burns and Scott. Dickens and
Thackeray were read in the periodicals
of the day. Macaulay. too, came by
4ecemeal. In such a home John Sharp
Williams was reared.
Born at Memphis, Tenn, IN 1854. his
mother died when he was child, and
his father fell at the head Of his regi-
ment, the Twenty-seventh Tennessee,
at Shiloh, before his gifted son had
told his eighth year. Then IL was that
his family sought refuge from the ad-
Vancing Union arms and took up their
abode at his mothers family home
stead, in the Yazoo delta, in Missis-
sippi. He received better education
than most youths Of family and for
tune at the south of his generation.
He attended the Kentucky Military in
University of the South at Sewanee;
ne was at the University of Charlotts-
vile and at the University Of Heidel-
berg in Germany. Subsequently he
studied law at the University of Vir-
ginia, and in the office of a leading
law firm of his native town. Memphis.
In 1878, having been admitted to the
bar, he returned to Mississippi and
opened an office at Yazoo.
Young Williams spent several years
in Europe, part of the time at Dijon,
In Burgundy, where Bonaparte fixed
the headquarters of that phantom
army with which he mystified his ad-
versaries Just before Marengo, and
there Williams was a student Of a
branch of the College de France, but
his purpose was more to perfect HIM
self in the language Of the French
tongue and familiarize himself with
the literature of the French people
than to take the regular course. He
travelled much on the continent, and
generally OF foot. which is the best
way to see a country and study a
people. He is what Bailey is not. a
man of rich imagination, and the his
tOric lands on both sides of the Rhine
were more to him than the mere story
Of their history has told. Such a man
as John Sharp Williams could not
have fingered in the vicinity of the
classic river without rejecting of the
time when Julian in those very pre-
cincts mediated a reform of the bloat-
ed and cancerous Roman empire. and
asked himself the question if our re-
public shall go the way Of the Roman
commonwealth. No doubt IT was re-
Election on ancient and modern story
/ in nrf4 0rla nd - I
that was the germ Of that magnifi-
cent philosophic grafton williams de-
livered on the Philippine question in
the F1fty-seventh congress and that
was surpassed by no other speech on
that subject in congress or out of
congress, not even by the great effort
of George F. Hoar in the senate.
Upon Williams return home he
found there was considerable confu-
sion and some embarrassment in the
condition of his patrimonial estate. He
instantly developed into a business
man, and for about eight years his
eye was constantly on his plantations.
Under like conditions many men.
reared as he was, would have let
things drift, hoping for something to
turn up. Not so with this Young
southerner. He practiced law. but he
was also a planter. He brought BUSH
ness methods to the plantation. Econ
ony and thrift resulted. There was
discipline and order everywhere. He
bought supplies with Judgment and
saw TO IT that there was no waste. He
made his plantations profitable at a
time when there was small profit in
planting even under the most favor
able conditions, and disaster was the
rule rather than the exception in the
cotton states. After a time he lifted
the debt from his estate. He was now
in independent circumstances, a lead
ing lawyer, successful planter and a
prosperous man.
And thereby hangs a tale, all too
uncommon, and a fOretaste of Utopia
Mr.. Williams has a younger brother
CO-heir with him in the estate they
inherited from their parents. The con-
fidence and fellowship between these
two are beautiful and ideal. There
was never division of their heritage,
never a settlement of their accounts