The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1911-11-10
HENRY WATTERSoN'S MAGNIFi
CENT TRIBUTE TO JOSEPH
PULITZER

together in the south of France.
had sincere affection for him.
After the shock and stress of the
bereaved loved ones shall yield to the
consolation of time, his death will Re
taken as the blessed release of an i'm
prisoned soul. He was a woful suf-
ferer. Whilst yet in the vigor of his
| amazing manhood it had been his
hapless lot to be Overtaken
by the diresr Of aftlIctions,
semi-total and then total blindness.
He was man of action and affairs,
non philosopher.
He had achieved all that can make
life glorious. His capacity for enjoy
ment was prodigious-almost equal to
his capacity for work-and he pos
sessed tie gifts of many-sidedness
| and keen appreciation, which mag
Nifty pleasure and give it color and Vi
riety. Ee had scarce begun to shed
his bCyhood.
In the elements of romance and
adventure the career of Joseph Pu-
liter was never surpassed by that of
any OF SCOTS or Dumas's heroes. It's
extremes touched the deepest abys-
ses of squalor and want and the high
est attitudes of opulence and power.
No one of foreign birth ever so
identified himself with the land of
his adoption, so absorbed it's spirit,
SO caught and held at once it's step
| and tone. He became an American
before he grew to be a cosmopolitan.
The merest lad when amid the roar
of battle he arrived on these shores,
he had little to unlearn and got his
baptism of fire, to issue thence with
mind alert and open to impressions.
No man could see quicker or clear
er. Intrepid, indefatigable, the hui
man embodiment of perpetual motion,
his onset was resistless and his rise
meteoric
From the first he compelled the
| recognition of strangers. Out of moth
| ing he created properties. His rest
| less energy and prompt decision
sometimes carried the idea of lack
of reflection. Yet he was a wary man
of business and, though a daring, not
an imprudent or unjudging journalist.
The notion that he owed the max
ing of the World to- anybody except
himself had no foundation of fact to
it. Nobody had helped him to make
the Post-Dispatch. When he took
the World it was moribund. Even it's
mechanical equipment was worn and
out of date. He bought of Jay Gould
nothing but an Associated Press fran
chise and a bad character. Within an
incredibly short space of time he had
put it in the running abreast with the
foremost.
He was a man of opinions and his
opinions were his own. Circumstances
had thrown him into early association
with the democrats. He began what
promised to be a brilliant political
career as liberal member of the Mis-
souri, legislature; then as secretary
to the liberal convention which NOM
mated Horace Greeley, and in 1876.
taking opposite sides from Schurz, he
gained distinction as a democratic
campaign orator. Later along he rep
resented Missouri in the national
democratic convention of 1880, and
democratic district of the city of New
York in congress.
He was a strong speaker and writer
and the way to preferment was open
to him. Office, however, was not to
his liking. Yet he held to the end
consuming interest in political ques-
tons, political men and measures,
the course of conduct and parties.
His intellectual vitality was ire
pressible. He was a most omniver-
Gus lover of music and books. His
yacht, the Liberty, was a floating Ii
brary and orchestra, affording him his
last and sole pleasures. shut in from
the world without, sightless, beating
the golden bars of his splendid cell.
The husband of beautiful wife.
the father of children he adored, mas
ter not only of millions, but of CON-
handing vehicle for his aspirations,
his ambitions and his abilities-still
young in the love of life and the zest
of living-overflowing with mental
and spiritual resources, destiny had
made him poor indeed; Prometheus
bound to the rock, Samson blind and
helpless, craving companionship, yet
rejecting and resenting pity. One
shuts the book aghast. One turns
from the scene with the single
thought, "He is free at last!"
There were those that loved him.
He was generous to a fault and liti-
gious to a fault Very amiable and
h. Gnhf or tho