Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/239

Rh, he returned to his home in Oregon, where, these past 30 years, he has been an active participant in all affairs of a public, and semi-public nature, winning and holding the esteem and affection of all, by his qualities of mind and heart. He became mayor of Portland, not for the reason that it could add anything to his dignity or to his fame—for he thought as little of false dignity and mere fame as any man who ever lived.

His greatness, like all true greatness, was rooted in his unconsciousness of it. All the mistakes he ever made were due to the simplicity and trustfulness of his nature. Himself without guile, he never imagined it—even to his latest day—in others. If this was a limitation, it was a fault that leaned to virtue's side.

George H. Williams is beyond praise or blame of men. In him there was intellectual ability the rarest, on one side, and there was unselfishness the rarest on the other. The life of such a man is a heritage of the world and an inspiration to it. Every great career must be estimated by the conditions in which its work is done. They are carpers only—shallow carpers—who say, on review of events, that a great man has made mistakes, and should have done something else—this or that. The something else he should have done—to what would it have led? Great men, though, in a way, they direct events, yet must accommodate their efforts to the situations in which they find themselves. All are subdued, in a general way, to the element they work in. Upstarts now and again will pretend to say in what ways and for what reasons great men have failed. The fact is, if this narrow criticism is to get attention, every great man has failed. Yet his work remains. Great actions, in great crises, decide everything. For great actions, in great crises, great abilities are necessary, large comprehension of affairs, and powers of mind fit for the momentous occasion. Our first statesman of Oregon had abilities that rose to every one of these requirements. Yet he was the least self-assertive and most unselfish of men. Nothing he did had any reference to his own fortunes. This quality was a