Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/51

 EULOGY OF DANIEL M. CHRISTIE.

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��mind, and cleanness of speech and imagi- nation. The inevitable contact with vice and depravity which came to him through the varied experiences of a long life, passed in attending to the concerns of others, had left him pure, and inno- cent, and uncoutaminated. He was like " the sun. which passeth through pollu- tions and itself remains as pure as be- fore.'' In this respect he was fortunate beyond most men. Suspicion never as- sailed his private life, and slander tied abashed from his presence.

I am not here to say that "Mr. Christie was without faults. To say that would be to think and ask others to believe him more than human. But they were fewer than ordinarily fall to the lot of men, and bore the impress of his great facul- ties, and his life of arduous labor and self-dependence. It is a singular fact that while his foibles were such as to be apparant to the casual observer, some of his virtues were known only to those who knew intimately the tenor of his daily life. Those who knew him best most unreservedly respected and ad- mired him. He took no pains to conceal himself. He never courted or flattered the people. He cared not for applause — and if he loved and sought wealth, he sought it by no unworthy means, and lived and died with clean hands.

As I recall his last days I cannot fail to recognize how fitting and satisfactory Avas the manner of his death. He had laid off the harness of his busy profes- sional life, and sat down in the evening of his days by his own fireside in the sacred seclusion of that family circle of whose social affections he was the en- deared and venerated centre. But the great mind could not be inactive, and he turned with delight from "the gladsome light of jurisprudence" to some, of the enchanting English authors whose en- joyments had been denied him by the cares and exactions of a busy career. I am told that Scott, and Dickens, and Thackeray, and our other English clas- sics were the charm and consolation of his last years, and were enjoyed with the keen relish of that untainted and re- ceptive mind. In the midst of these be- coming diversions, not unmingled with

��studies in the domain of the august pro- fession which he so much loved, he was called away from these scenes.

"O fallen at length, that tower of strength, Which stood four-square to all the winds that blowl"

The Nestor of our bar is dead — " Clarum et venerabile nomenl" and, now that he is gone, we feel and see what a large space he filled in the ranks of the profession. Certainly it may ap- propriately be said of him, as was said of Jeremiah Mason by his great compeer, Eufus Choate: " He is dead; and al- though here and there a kindred mind — here and there, rarer still, a cceval mind — survives, he has left no one, beyond his immediate blood and race, who in the least degree resembles him."

I rejoice with his friends, as all must, that until the last hour of his long and useful life, until disease struck him, as it were in a moment, from the list of the liv- ing, his eye was undimmed and his won- derful faculties wholly unimpaired. En- dowed by nature with a vigorous consti- tution, and temperate, upright and ab- stemious in his habits ever, he had suf- fered scarcely an hour of sickness during his entire life, and up to almost the very momemt of its fall there were no signs of dilapidation in that stately edifice. His majestic presence was in our streets, the venerable object of all men's respect and regard.

" The monumental pomp of age Was with this goodly Personage; A statue undepressed in size, Unbent, which rather seemed to rise, In open victory o'er the weight Of eighty years, to loftier height."

And so, at last, after a life of honor, of integrity, of purity, of strenuous exer- tion, all crowned by a renown sufficient to fill and which did fill and satisfy a reasonable ambition, he has fallen on sleep. Folding his arms upon his breast, his change came to him as calmly and serenely as a summer sunset mellows the scene and gilds the close of a brave and beautiful day.

"Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair, And what may quiet us in a death so noble."

To speak the truth of Mr. Christie, in such fashion as I can, is to me a labor of love. Although in earlier years I was an

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