Page:History of Adelaide and vicinity.djvu/631

 The Advertiser ADELAIDE AND VICINITY 605 with the Press as an able and powerful writer. He had a well-stored mind, a ^enial humor, and a wonderfully ready pen. Then he was a man of broad views in politics, and of warm sympathies in private life. He was patient and industrious, conscientiously working out for himself those social and political problems which rise to the surface of our daily life. There was a time when Mr. Barrow's name was a tower of strength and a name to conjure with. But he was not only a facile writer, but a powerful and an eloquent speaker. In a public meeting he was supreme. Wit, humor, playful banter, combined with a hard and irresistible logic, were all prominent in his best speeches. He was incomparably the best public speaker in South Australia, and in his palmy days his reign was almost omnipotent in a great gathering." Oi him politically a contemporary writer said: — "Mr. Barrow's influence on public thought and political action in the Colony has been very great. He is one of the few public men of South Australia whom it is most difificult to replace. When in the Ministry his colleagues bore willing testimony to his great capacity and large industry. His power of grasping a subject in all its bearings, discriminating between its weakness and its strength, was very marked ; and the lucidity of his exposition was equal to the keenness of his grasp. He not only saw around a question, but into it. He was never satisfied until he had 'bottomed' it; and having made it his own, he had no difficulty in showing it in the clearest light to others. He has left his mark on the page of our colonial history, and his name will go down to posterity as that of one who did something to build up the political life of .South Australia on the broad foundations which others had wisely laid. They who were brought into close relations with him had a high respect, nut only for his ability, but for his kindness of heart." .Such a man was the founder and director of the paper. He passed quietly away in his sleep one August morning. .Strange to say the same month was fatal to his successor, a still further co-incidence being the fact that he also was a Congregational minister and pastor of Clayton Church. Mr. William Harcus became editor in March, 1872, when Mr. Barrow accepted office as Minister of the Crown. He was born in Northumberland in 1823, and was trained for the Congregational ministry. He continued in charge of Clayton Church until 1865, and when he died on August 10, 1876, his remains were buried in the pretty little cemetery clustering about its walls. He became attached to the Adelaide Press as a. leader writer in 1862, and five years later Mr. Barrow attracted him to The Advertiser. He was a poet of no mean ability, while he won a high reputation as a lecturer on literary, religious, and historical subjects. His name is also associated with a very complete and interesting handbook of South Australia, which was published with the authority of the Government. As a newspaper writer he was facile, vigorous, and outspoken. His tendency was to see the good in men, and he commonly took a charitable view of politicians even when he disagreed with their opinions, but still, when he conceived it to be his duty to speak, mere personal considerations were set aside, and the arrow shot to its mark without any nervousness or hesitation in the aim. There was a healthy tone in all Mr- Harcus wrote, and he carried Christianity into the feverish activity of daily journalism, without emasculating the latter or giving a worldly taint to the former. So it came about that when he died business men spoke of his religi<jn without a sneer, and preachers delivered eulogies in which there was no reservation because of suspected backsliding. A good, upright, cultured, generous man was Mr. Harcus.