Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 17.pdf/540

 GEORGE R. PECK picture may speak the universal language. It shapes ideals into form, as Phidias carved in the rude marble those dreams of beauty that haunted him when he thought of Marathon. Its noblest conceptions rise from events which have moral grandeur in them; from illumined moments, when some soul has. reached its highest exaltation. Seeing that they are beautiful, it keeps them so forevermore." "The real proof of genius is the manner in which high responsibilities are met. Abraham Lincoln, in the school of Sangamon, was 'hardly a prophecy of him who became •the foremost man of all this world. Galena and Appomattox are wide apart; but Grant spanned them. The law of growth rules; and only those who can rise to occasion are great. Measure Logan by this unfailing test and he becomes collossal. Emerson tells, in a familiar line, how Michael Angelo ' wrought in a sad sincerity '; but so in truth does every man who, in the stress of duty, builds domes, or carves statues, or fights battles." "This day is dedicated to Logan as a soldier. He won if from the calendar, and made it his own." Mr. Peck had a large part in both the fact and the commemoration of the return of fraternal relations between North and South. At Atlanta in the Peace Jubilee, which followed the end of the Spanish War, he expressed the new spirit in an address entitled "The New Union," and in the following year he addressed the University of Georgia upon "Scholarship and Patriot ism." In recognition of his attainments as a scholar and of his service to civic better ment, three colleges have conferred upon him the degree of LL.D.

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As the quality which is called tact gives success where mere strength would fail, so the personality of a lawyer counts for more than his abilities or his achievements in his standing at the Bar and in the community. George R. Peck is to-day president of the American Bar Association, not only because he is a great lawyer, but because he is a great man. His abilities are made fascina ting by the frankness, geniality, and hospi tality to ideas and all high human qualities, which show in his every public and private utterance. The life of the mere lawyer has never been his; it could not confine the amplitude of his tastes and powers. In all the years of arduous struggle for success at the Bar, he has lived as close to Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Tenny son, and Burns, as to Blackstone, Chitty, Coke, and Stephen. He has been a thorough student of literature as well as of law, has cultivated the humanities, as well as the judges and the jury, has had an interest and an influence in public affairs, and has kept himself in vital relations with the intellectual life of the world. In "the noble though arduous profession of the law," he has won the "truly enviable reputation" by that "industry, energy, per severance, and self-denial" which Lord Campbell, in the dedication of his "Lives," commended to his son. His generosity to his associates and his kindliness to his juniors win their affection and devotion. Companionable, large-hearted, and openhanded, he inspires enthusiastic friendships, in which admiration of his masterful abilities is submerged in a warmer admiration of the man. CHICAGO, ILL., August, 1905.