Excerpt from Annual Address Delivered Before the Maryland State Bar Association

Mr. President, and gentleman of the Maryland State Bar Association:

In complying with the request to read one of the minor papers upon this occasion, I shall not venture upon the treatment of any purely legal topic, and shall only seek to make a modest contribution to the Legal Biography of our State, in recognition of the duty which rests upon our profession to pay just tribute to the memory of its departed leaders.

In selecting from the long list of those who might thus be fitly honored, but whose praise is yet unsung, I have chosen one who "dwelt beside untrodden ways, " who sought no notoriety in life, and who, judged by the standards ordinarily accepted, attained no great pre-eminence among his cotemporaries, yet one who was recognized by all who knew him well, as a man of real intellectual power, a lawyer of unquestioned ability, and a learned and just judge, who, in his great office, illustrated the highest virtues of citizenship and the most exalted courage in the discharge of public duty.

Those whose lot has been cast among the great ones of earth, whose faculties and talents have been developed, and whose ambition has been stimulated in the strife which large fields and arduous competition render inevitable, fill a large space in the public gaze while living, and suffer no eclipse when their sun goes down in death. These need no biographer. Tradition, with its thousand voices, trumpets their fame to posterity, and their shadow grows larger and larger upon the horizon as time recedes. But it is not thus with those, however fitted by nature for great things, whose lives are passed in the seclusion of rural communities.

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