Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/15

Rh was born in Milford, January 19, 1835. On his father's farm he spent his early years, improving a naturally good constitution, gaining strength of muscle and habits of industry and endurance. His desire for an education was fostered, and he took advantage of all the scholastic facilities afforded by the common schools of his native town. These were of a high order. His academic education was acquired at the Appleton Academy, in the neighboring town of New Ipswich, of which at the time Professor E. T. Quimby was principal. From this institution Mr. Burns graduated in 1854. He read law with Col. O. W. Lull, in Milford, and graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1858. In May of the same year he was admitted to the Suffolk bar, and in the following October he was admitted to the practice of law in the New Hampshire courts.

In January, 1859, he commenced the practice of his chosen profession in the town of Wilton, where he has ever since resided, although his extensive and steadily increasing business has necessitated his opening an office of late years in the city of Nashua.

"He commenced his professional labors, as every young man must who has no one to rely upon but himself, with the smaller and more ordinary kinds of legal work, but by slow degrees he has risen, until to-day he is one of the most successful lawyers in New Hampshire, and his practice includes the highest order of cases. Mr. Burns, although a good lawyer in all the branches of his profession, especially excels as an advocate. His advocacy is of a high order. He is what most of our lawyers, and public speakers even, are not, a natural orator. The whole bent and inclination of his mind has, from his earliest years, always been in this direction. He has given himself a thorough training and practice at the bar, on the stump, and on all those varied occasions when a public speaker is called upon to address the people. This natural talent, thus trained, has made him a clear-cut, incisive, and polished orator, who never fails to hold and impress his audience.

"It can be said of him, what can be said of very few men, he excels in advocacy and general oratory. His arguments before juries best illustrate his power as a speaker, while his public addresses exhibit his peculiar charm as an orator. As an advocate he ranks among the first in the New Hampshire bar. As an orator he compares favorably with our best public speakers."

Mr. Burns has been a Republican since the formation of the party. His father was an active and prominent worker in that little band of anti-slavery agitators which existed in Milford before the great Rebellion, and as a boy young Burns was deeply impressed with the teachings of Parker Pillsbury, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, and Fred Douglass. When quite young his interest in the Republican cause, together with his aptitude for public speaking, led him to take the stump for his party. For years he has performed in this way the most efficient service for the Republican party, and, to-day, is one of its ablest and most eloquent stump speakers. In 1864 and 1865 he was elected county treasurer of Hillsborough County. In 1873, and again in 1879, he was a member of the New Hampshire State Senate, serving during both terms as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and taking a prominent part in directing and shaping the legislation of those years.

In 1876 he was appointed by Governor Cheney county solicitor for Hillsborough County, and subsequently was twice re-elected to that office by the