conventional sense of the term; he seems neither to demand nor expect gratitude. Not the anticipation of return here or hereafter, but an unconscious, spontaneous kindliness and good fellowship, prompt his giving and his lending. He gives with the air of paying a debt, and the obligation involved is smoothed over and covered up. To help with advice, with sympathy, with encouragement and with good words here and there is his instinct. He is kind to the young man always, and especially to the young lawyer who has anything to commend him. He opens opportunities to him, commends his good work and heralds his achievements. He is generous to juniors associated with him, affording them opportunity to show their powers and permitting credit to fall where credit. is due. He is independent and uncompromising in his judgments. He is no respecter of persons. He never bends the knee to the essentially small and mean, however much of momentary power the small and the mean may represent. His sympathy for the common man, especially for the unlucky, the fallen, the broken-down is quick and sincere. The following anecdote illustrates not only this, but his inexhaustible humor: Mr. Peck was once returning with a friend to his hotel in Boston, from a late public dinner, with a coterie of distinguished financiers, scholars and statesmen. It was, of course, a full dress affair, and Mr. Peck no doubt looked like a lordor at least like one of the most prosperous and complacent of men. His mind, however, was full of business troubles and he doubtless felt, as he often does, how hollow is the rotund body of worldly success. Just as his hotel was in sight, a poor ragged devil put out a supplicating hand and asked for a quarter. Mr. Peck "gave him twain," and then added a dollar or two with the suggestion that food and lodging, added to the probable liquid refreshment about to be enjoyed, would be very beneficial to health and longevity. The tramp was touched by Mr. Peck's

generosity, and running after him said: "Sir, I can't help saying God bless you, and also that I am not what I seem." "That's all right," said Mr. Peck, "say nothing about it, but, neither am I."

If Mr. Peck is generous sometimes to the point of extravagance in the administration of his private affairs, it does not follow that he is so in the administration of the affairs of his clients. No lawyer was ever more careful of the interests intrusted to him than he. The Law Department of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Company is a model, not only of efficiency, but of rigid economy. On the subject of unnecessary expenses, of extravagant salaries, and of wastefulness in any direction, he is inflexible. He is liberal only with what is his own.

Mr. Peck has all that openness and frankness which goes with real strength. Brave, generous, strong,simple, impulsive, sympathetic, faithful to his friends, magnanimous to his enemies, large hearted and intensely human in every relation, ever young in his joys, his sorrows and his sympathies, he is a splendid specimen of the best type of the American lawyer and the American citizen.

At this writing, July 1891, Mr. Peck is the recipient of thousands of hearty congratulations on his last and undoubtedly greatest legal victory. It will be re-. membered that the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Company purchased nearly the entire capital stock of the St. Louis & San Francisco Company. This purchase was assaulted furiously under a Missouri statute forbidding the purchase of one railway by another, under certain circumstances. The success of the assault would have ruined the entire Atchison Company. The case seemed a desperate one. Those best informed had the least hope. Mr. Peck made a magnificent fight, and won a complete victory. That he may continue to win to the end, is the wish of every man who knows him.

SAMUEL RITTER PETERS.

HE ancestors of this distinguished Kansan, on both sides were Germans. The family were among the earliest residents of Baltimore, and at one period in the history of the State of Maryland, were the proprietors of extensive tracts upon which portions of the great city are built. When Ohio was admitted into the Union as a State, the family removed to the Central portion of the new Commonwealth, and settled in what is now Fairfield county. In that county, on the 23d of March, 1816, the father of this sketch was born. The old gentleman still lives, residing on a farm in Pickaway county, not many miles removed from the scene of his birth, which he purchased some forty years ago. He is one of a family of twelve children, five of whom are still living, the youngest now seventy-five years of age. Lewis S. Peters married Margaret Ritter, the only daughter of Henry Ritter, who emigrated from Pennsylvania to Ohio in the early days of the settlement of the latter State, and was one of the first to locate in Pickaway county.

His son, Samuel Ritter Peters, whose middle name is that of his mother's, was born on the paternal farm in Walnut township, Pickaway county, on the 16th day of August, 1842. As was the fortune of hundreds of other boys of his era in that relatively new country, he worked on a farm during the Summers and attended the country district school until he had arrived at the age of seventeen, when he was sent to the University of Dela