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 The Green Bag VOL. XVIII.

No. 9

BOSTON

SEPTEMBER, 1906

IN "MEMORIAM: JAMES M. WOOLWORTH BY HON. JOHN JAMES M. WOOLWORTH during his life spanned the period of time from 1829 to 1906. Those seventy-seven years wit nessed the discoveries and improve ments and developments that have marked the progress of peoples during the most interesting period of the world's history. When he was born the United States was young in years, small in population, and a great part of its present area un explored and uninhabited, and much of it not then acquired. In that early day there was no West as we now speak of it, and the East was content to travel by stage coach, and to do without the things they knew not of — the railroads, the telegraphs, the tele phone, and hundreds of present-day neces sary appliances that best denote the great transition from that early period until now. But in the East in that early day there were schools and colleges and universities. James M. Woolworth could take just pride in the fact that his grandfather was a gradu ate from Yale College and also was honored with the degree of D.D. from Princeton. His father, as an educator, had acquired a reputation that caused to be conferred upon him as a reward of merit the degree of LL.D. The subject of this sketch hav*ing descended from such a learned and dis tinguished ancestry, became equally de voted to education and learning. He re ceived his degree from Hamilton College, and for two years he personally acted as a teacher of Latin and Greek and English in Cortland Academy. This classical learning of boyhood days was but the beginning of a life of study. Amidst the trials and ex citement of a busy professional life he found

LEE WEBSTER hours of pleasure in re-reading the ancient classics in their original languages. Somehow, whether as a matter of choice, or from deliberation, or by an impulse, or by intuition, we know not, he elected to enter the profession of the law, and in 1854 he quitted the Albany Law School with credit to himself and in possession of his gradua tion diploma. From 1829 to 1856 the tide of American life was rapidly passing westward across the vast prairies. The great discussions that had gone on among the giants in those early days, who held seats in the United States Senate, the Websters and Bentons and Clays, had called the attention of the youth of the country to the fact that the United States had a West that would play a great part in its future history. Lincoln and Douglas in their debates on the hustings were soon to draw attention to the fact that there was in the West an undeveloped country that would in time be created into new states and become a part and parcel of the American nation, where freedom was to prevail and where intelligence and culture would build a new commonwealth. Perhaps inspired by such thoughts jas filled the minds of ingenious and ambitious youths, James M. Woolworth took his de parture from his early home in New York state and moved west to cast his lot among the strong and daring and courageous men who were to begin the building of a new state that was thereafter to remain his adopted home. Nebraska has just cause to feel proud of the good and sturdy and strong young men who began life with her be ginning, and who have achieved fame as the