The commonwealth. (Scotland Neck, N.C.) 1896-1929, 1915-01-14
SCOTLAND NECK, n C., THURSDAY, JANUARY II, 1915

portunity died unknown among their
fellows and who are so well apostro-
phized bv Gray in his 'Elegy of a
Country Churchyard':
" Full many a gem of purest ray
serene
The dark unfathomed caves of
ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush
unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the
desert air.
''Not every man born is granted
an opportunity to display his talents
or to distinguish himself in the age
or country in which he lives. All #
the great men of the world became
great mostly through favorable cir
cumstances that developed in their
life, seizing their food tide of op-
portunity to carry them on to fame |
or for une. If the French revolu-
ton had not broken out in 1889 there |
would have been no Napoleon. If /
the present war had not been waged |
no one would have known of the
military geuius of General Joffre, or
voa Hindenberg or Of Won Kluck.
Their names would have gone down
to posterity unwritten in the scroll
of fame. And so it was with David
Stern. Here in this cramped en-
vironmsnt where he could only ex-
ercise his peculiar gift Of eloquence
and reasoning in cases Of small and
petit, character what could he do to
raise himself to any deserved or
crowning position? And yet he was
very remarkable man, not in vir-
tue of what he accomplished, but in
virtue Of a striking personality, in
virtue of a rare, tense, magnetic
spirit which he possessed. The con-
venentionai biography records what
man did; the true biography re-
veals what the man was. After all
he fine gold of man is more than
his incidental acts, although the two
| are undoubtedly correlated.
Il can touch tonight upon but
| very few points in David Stern's
! personality and career. l wish to
speak of him as a scholar, as a law
yer and orator, and as man. AS a
student at the university his record
speaks for itself but few facts in
connection with it are worth men-
tioning. He graduated in his class
with high honors and was one of the
| few men who gained the highest
rank of distinction in the snbject of
Philosophy. He was also made a
member of the Beta Kappa fraterni-
ty, select and exclusive body in
which only the noblest and most
prominent graduates were admitted.
He must have shown early evidence
his powers of oratory for on two oc-
casions he represented the Universe
ty in debates, once with the Johns
Hopkins University and once with
the University of Georgia. But
he uas more than successful
student He had a versatile taste in
srholarship and his reading covered
a vide range of subjects, history,
philosophy: science, political econo-
my, all of these he deeply studied
de was also a great lover of poetry
and a coouoisseur of style; all the
) subtler forms of verse appealed to
him. This wide and diverse scholar
ship, together with his keen analyti'
cal mind stamped him at once as a
man of broad culture and enabled
him to deal with all intricate ques
tions of law and life in an illuminat
ing and comprehensive spirit.
Il am not going to say much about
him as a lawyer. l am going tt
leave to the Guilford county bar as
] sociation the duty of estimating BIZ
professional reputation which. be
, lieve, stands very high among hi
brethren of the bar. In few shor
Q years he won a position as success
r full lawyer. Whenever he was con
t. vinced of the justice of case he de
Tended it strenuously and very ofte1
e carried it to the court of appeal. HI
: was, moreover, possessed of an elo
r quence of his own. | do not thin
d that it was merely the usual kind o
= forensic oratory in which he indulg
+ ed-the professional kind of orator
:. which is patterned upon stereotype
e models. He had undoubtedly q
n eloquence of his own. He first O
8 all marshalled his facts in an orderl
e precision of statement and roun
e these he wove the warp and woof 9
!. his argument. He was keen. alert
s. lively, carefully balancing facts an
., weighing opposing factors in h;
le efforts to untangle a comp!icate
le problem Here it was that his phi