Speech to the Indiana Bar Association at the Funeral of Ex-President Benjamin Harrison, March Seventeenth, Nineteen Hundred and One.

HE lateness of the hour forbids

that I say more than a few words and that brief time shall not be employed in an attempt to add anything in praise of the distinguished man whose death we here mourn. Since the hour he passed away press, pulpit and bar throughout the nation have extolled and eulogized this first citizen of Indiana until the vocabulary of praise would seem to be exhausted. For my part I prefer rather to speak briefly to my professional brethren upon two thoughts which have occurred to me as I sat here, one suggested by something Judge Woods said on taking the chair and another by the memorial address read in your hearing.

Judge Woods said that the life and work of every eminent lawyer entered into and influenced the affairs of men for good. The memorial address notes the fact that the pageantry and mourning here is for the dead General, the dead Senator and the dead President, and that this meeting of ours alone is for the departed lawyer. These things are true. As I sat here I thought that if one of us should go out among the multitude

that surge about and through the state house, and single out any one not a lawyer and ask him what were General Harrison's triumphs at the bar, what were the cases in which he wrought good and wherein he established the purity and strength of truth, that man would be unable to answer.

Yet General Harrison spent the greater portion of his manhood in the practice of law, and was during much of that time easily the first lawyer of Indiana by the highest test, in that he was the greatest trial lawyer in the State. What is the thought that this brings to us? Surely some truth should be brought home to us here for our information and encouragement. To be profited by this service we must gain from General Harrison's life and death something for our own future guidance and strength. The death of any man, no matter how appalling its loss to humanity and his country, the simple fact of his death is of no value or importance to those who live except as cumulative evidence of the great fact that all men must die, and further proof of the value of right living. Though few of us perhaps now realize it, the hard and unpalatable truth of the matter is, that a lawyer lives only during his career as a lawyer. Not for him but for others is the applause and the memory of posterity. For the highest proof of this statement realize that this great citizen and brother of ours whose remains lie here in highest honor, is remembered and beloved by ninety-nine hundredths of all the people of the State and in connection with matters and things entirely apart from the practice of his chosen profession.

Mr. Carnegie wrote a letter the other day, lightly

bestowing a sum of money that once would have been a kingdom's ransom, in which he used an expression that struck me with great force. It was a letter in which he made public his purpose to dedicate to certain benevolent uses at Carnegie and Homestead, five millions of dollars. He spoke of the difficulty that men of wealth experience at giving up business and their disinclination to do so. He explained this thing so far as men of wealth are concerned by what seemed to me a terse and capital statement, that the trouble with men of wealth is that when they have enough to retire on, they have nothing to retire to. Even men who have held the highest position in the nation have had difficulty in finding congenial, dignified, suitable and happy occupations and relations after retirement from public life. History records several more or less unwelcome spectacles of the latter days of presidents. But happily General Harrison had something to retire to. And what was that? The practice of the noblest of all intellectual professions! And so back to Indianapolis he came and retired to the work of that profession. He realized the truth of the assertion that it is perseverance that keeps honor bright. So he returned to the law and became the first president of our Bar Association. There he exemplified by his life the truth that I have asked you to consider in connection with this solemn occasion, for it will profit us little if out of such an event comes nothing more than mere eulogy. The mighty and noble dead whose remains lie below needs nothing from us. His fame is secure in the hearts of his countrymen and in the archives of undying history. As I have said, he came back to us, my brethren, and became the first presi

Ident of this association. I well remember when we held our second meeting. It was time to elect a successor to General Harrison and several worthy gentlemen were anxious to be chosen, a most deserving ambition. It occurred to me that General Harrison ought always to be president of this association while he lived and was willing to serve, and when I suggested his re-election it was taken without question. You remember how he presided that night at the Grand Hotel banquet. That man who in the sight of all the world. had stood for American honor and institutions and had been concerned in the successful solution of great international problems told me as we left the hall he had never known a more enjoyable evening in his life than he had spent with we Hoosier lawyers there. It was because of this wholesome love for his own people, this devotion to the duties that came to his hand, that Benjamin Harrison will forever abide in our recollections a fragrant and gracious memory of a noble man.