Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/310

 The Court of Appeals of Maryland. never become reconciled to the loss which your retirement brings upon us nor cease to deplore your withdrawal. We feel that we ought to say this to you face to face, with all the emphasis that the highest respect for your intellectual powers, grateful admiration of your judicial work, just pride in the resolute independence of your char acter and warm appreciation of your unfailing personal kindliness and courtesy to us all can inspire.

"We know, too, that these utterances of ours find full and hearty re sponse in the hearts and minds of your col leagues, and that they deeply share with us in the sense of irreparable loss in the realization that they and we are no more to have the benefit of your wise counsel, ripe experi ence and vigorous fac ulties. "Called from us, as you have been, by Pres ident Cleveland in the exercise of that admir able discrimination and judgment that charac terize his performance of public duty, under circumstances naturally so gratifying to your self and to the people william of our State, we cannot let you leave us and go among strangers without these earnest expressions of our affectionate re gard and this public recognition of your wellearned right to the fullest measure of eulogy for the rare vigor and excellence and absolute uprightness of your judicial career. Ever without fear, it always was without reproach." Mr. Poe read a letter from Mr. S. Teackle Wallis, in which, after regretting that his health prevented him from being present, Mr. Wallis spoke of Judge Alvey as fol lows •

281

"The conspicuous position to which the Chief Judge has been called is, of course, of no more than equal rank with that which he resigns. It nevertheless enlarges so much the scope of his usefulness and opens to him a career of much broader national opportunity that no friend could desire or expect him to make the sacrifice of de clining it, even if it had not in other regards the attraction of greater permanency and more tran quil independence. It is difficult, at the same • time, to measure the loss which his removal entails upon the citi zens of his native State, whose well - founded confidence in his abil ity and learning and his tried impartiality and courage entered so largely into their re spect for the tribunal over which he presides. By none will that loss be felt more sincerely than by the learned judges whose responsi bilities he has shared for so many years. "But it would be im possible on the present occasion to say with propriety what we all feel and shall continue to feel and what the universal opinion of the . BRYAN.

people would so amply

justify us in expressing. We can only give voice to our own and the pub lic regret and follow our distinguished friend and brother in his new career with the affectionate pride and gratitude which have accompanied him in the place that he leaves vacant."

At the close of the' speeches of the mem bers of the Bar, Judge Alvey made an ap propriate response, after which he shook hands with all present, which concluded the interesting ceremony, which will be long remembered by all who took part in it.