The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-09-07

the breakfast table, and the uttered
grace of a nation arose through tears.
sobbing its way up the celestial stair :?
These high, heroic episodes were as
much part of Mr.. Williams, as
habits OF life or cast of countenance.
He who has once been touched by
immortal fires can never again be
human. 1t dominated him all his
days, in private life, in his infrequent
place on the hastings, and in his busy
life at the bar. A fee was powerless
to chill 1t: and no empty, ephemeral
bauble of forensic success or political
elevation could throttle or silence it.
It's influence widened with him as he
grew in wisdom and gray with years.
1t took in the undeservfng as well as
the deserving. His human sympathy
was speeded without a brake; and
the expected and earned honorarium
of an attorney, never urged his pow
ers beyond that of his unpaid efforts,
for some person in distress, some Or
phan or widow, or soldier, who could
only give a tear or a blessing; or for
some helplessly undeserving person
age who gave him his gratitude only
so long as the jeopardy lasted. Com
ing with his father to the new state of
Kansas, he found 1t a desert; tor
rental streams, treeless rivers,
parched earth, sky of brass, a
meager population, and when he died,
nearly a lifetime after, We covered
his corpse with roses plucked from its
lilies, cluster and wreath and heart
and cross and anchor. and we wove
him laurel of its very sweetest flow
ers. His was fit tutelage for the
strenuous days that were to come. In
the great march that Kansas made
from desolation to empire, from desert
to orchards, cultivated fields, wooded
streams, beautiful rivers, planted
groves. splendid homes and a mag
nificent people, Mr.. Williams was part
Of oil
ment. There has never been a time
when Kansas had before it a Twin
issue, but what the right of it, had his
voluntary and vigorous support; many
OF our good people rightfully thought
the road less rocky after he had
openly espoused their cause.
1t may be said of him. that no eye
has seen paragraph from his pen,
nor ear heard him deliver a sentence
that was not of the highest and best
thought, of the soundest wisdom and
the highest citizenship; could his dead
hand have the power to erase an
equivocal word or thought in all his
public speech. the pencil would fall
from his hand unused. His influence
was toward the enactment of good
laws and the enforcement of all. To
him and his sturdy fellows, Kansas is
indebted for having the wisest, the
best. the most Christian. the most
civilized laws that ever were enacted
In all the tide of time. To the sinister
citizen, the story of Mr.. Williams
rigid honor, high spirit and devotion
ought to be the severest censure and
condemnation: above ALL our boys
should learn that there is nothing on
earth for which they. should exchange
their patriotism, duty and honor; if
they do, downward turn in the mar
ket in their last days will leave them
penniless here and bankrupt there.
Mr.. Williams had keen predilic-
ton for constitutional questions and
engaged in many great causes where
such controversies arose: among them,
a case in the supreme court of the
United States, involving the constitu-
tionality of the Kansas prohibitory
law, answering in his argument there,
as special counsel for Kansas, an ap-
parently unassailable position by a
higher view of the constitution. in
clear. terse words. that won the case.
He was long an attorney of the Kansas
Pacific and became and was for years
the general attorney to its successor,
the Union Pacific. in which positions
he achieved a national reputation as
a lawyer of the first rank. He was at
tornev general of Kansas and gave the
state high service. Somewhere on the
race OF the eartn are early adventur-
ers In Kansas. who robbed 1t, and who
bear on their persons today the
cicatrix of his blade as he made them
stand and surrender their plumber. He
was, in a very great degree, successful
in his legal encounters before court
or jury; and no associate, antagonist, |
court or bystander but felt and knew
that Mr. Williams. all the way through, |
was lawyer. He gave them of his
intelligence. his reason and his con- |
science. but there was something in |
his spinal column that would not let |
him bend or swerve for a verdict, to |
be untrue to himself or to gain ap-
plause. He was driven from the active |
duties of his profession by maladies |
that chung to him until he died.
In his younger days. with Judge Gill |
christ, he published a book on Elk Post |
Facto Laws; he has written essays and |
poems. many of which were never |
published.
A man of the brightest wit, in which |
there was but little flavor of attic salt |
The man who ate his meat soon tast- |
ed its spice. He was at times some |
thing of cynic; when disease loosen |
ed its hold on him so that he felt a |
touch of sun, he was genial as some |
day of June when 1t opened the buds |
and cast to the morning the dewy |
fragrance from all the granden's beau |
tiful flowers. He had been likened in |
many ways to CARLYLE: that which was
natural to the one could only be at |
tributed to the other from ill health. |
He hated the conventional as much as |
he did the pretending or hypocritical |
and this led him to extremes that he |
might emphasize his contempt for the |
unconsidered trifies that play such inn |
portant roles in the behavior of people |
who assume demand that more than |
equals the supply.
He was an omniverous reader and |
he knew a gem If he found it in a |
sty. He especially sought out the rare
and unusual He became attached to
Swinburne because he was fascinated |
with one of his involved tangles of
song and Story's Cleopatra he thought |
the apotheosis of passion.
He belonged to no order or society |
other than the Grand Army of the Re
public, and it was glamor of his earlier !
DAYS, the bugle and drum of long ago |
that made him eager to join it. He had |
served a private in Burns battery and |
captain of Company I, Sixteenth regi- |