Richmond times-dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1914-current, 1918-07-19
A Span OF Ninety Years

| A ages are counted ninety years is but 4
| a heeting instant; as mankind. with mar
rowed vision. is constrained to number its
| hours and its days. it is span of time seldom
! rouchsafed to man by the Creator. who has
, appointed his bounds that he cannot pass.
Threescore and ten is the biblical allotment
of years wherein man shall live and serve
and die. When privilege Of additional
score is added, fortunate indeed Is the re-
cipent if he can in his twilight hours enjoy
the happy reflections consequent upon we'll
spent life.
Ninety years ago to-day a boy was born
in Dinwiddie County. 1t was then written
in the book OF fate that he was to become a
leader among his people in Virginia that he
was TO face the fires Of civil war. taste the
bitterness OF prison horrors finally emerge
poverty-stricken but strengthened, seek and
obtain hon9rs and fortune in the land of his
former enemies. and survive practically all
those men and women with whom he had
helped in the making of history
That child's name was Roger Atkinson
Pryor. To-day Judge Pryor. at his home in
New lork-his home since the War Between
the States and the beginning of RECONSTRUCT
tion--will celebrate the ninetieth anniversary
OF his birth. Perhaps none OF the younger
generation here in Virginia, and few others
except those who knew him in the days prior
TO and during Nirginia's struggle will re-
member this significance of the day. but
there are those who will. and they will con-
graduate Judge Pryor on the attainment of
his honorable age and envy him the oppor-
tunity that has been his to witness such a vast
chapter of the worlds history in the unfold
ing and himself to have assisted in the turn-
ing OF the pages.
Think what it means to have lived
through the years that fill the measure Of
Roger Pryors life. When he first saw light
the United States had hardly COMPLETED the
shaking off OF its swaddling clothes and the
days OF the War OF 1872 were still as fresh
IN mlnd as are those of the Spanish American
War to-day. John Quincy Adams was sery-
ing as its sixth President. since whose time
twenty-one other Presidents have taken their
places i'll the White House, and on Judge
Pryor's wedding day Zachary Taylor was
elected. 1t was Judge Pryors privilege to
live through those stirring years which cul-
minated in the War Between the States. and
in the making OF this stormy period he had
his full share. Since the war in which his
service is a matter OF history, he has seen
the country reconstructed and welded into
an indissoluble whole; he has seen it find its
SOUL 1orsake Its Isolation and, with other free
nations. take up its burden that liberty NAV
not perish from the earth. During his wears
he has seen the nation grow from infancy
"ilt' lHt stature Oh Tnl manhood, and he has
witnessed the progress Of science and the
strides Of civilization in measure accorded
TO no other nincty-year period since time be-
gan Surely the privilege of that experience
is one for which he must be thankful But
win TINS long vista Of years back of him.
inns write American is not looking to the
past for he has lived to see democracy
threatened with extinction, and now he is
looking forward to that day when the Ameri-
can armies come home victorious from for
cign fields.
But it is not because Judge Pryor has
attained the dignity OF nonagenarian that
ms career is worthy OF comment All his
lie he has been doer Of deeds, and to-day,
il product Of the North and the South. both
OF which he has honored and at whose hands
he has had honors, he receives Fluctuations
from country in which he has lived to sec
both North and South obiterated n happv
contamination which he has helped to bring
about.