the popular currents, nor studied the vanes to
see how the winds were blowing, nor sounded the depths and
the shallows before he decided on his own course. There was
no wire running to his seat from any centre of patronage or
power. To use a felicitous phrase, I think of Senator Morgan
of Alabama, he did not "come out of the door and cry 'Cuckoo!'
when any clock struck elsewhere."

Mr. Morrill was a brave man--an independent man. He never
flinched from uttering his thought. He was never afraid to
vote alone. He never troubled himself about majorities or
administrations, still less about crowds or mobs or spasms
of popular excitement. His standard of excellence was high.
He was severe, almost austere, in his judgments of other men.
And yet, with all this, everybody liked him. Everybody who
came to know him well loved him. It seems strange that he
never incurred enmities or provoked resentments. I suppose
the reason is that he never had any controversy with anybody.
He did not mingle in the discussion of the Senate as a debater.
He uttered his opinion and gave his reasons as if he were
uttering judgments. But he seldom or never undertook to reply
to the men who differed from him, and he rarely, if ever,
used the weapons of ridicule or sarcasm or invective, and he
never grew impassioned or angry. He had, in a high degree,
what Jeremy Taylor calls "the endearment of prudent and temperate
speech."

He was one of the men that Washington would have loved and
Washington would have leaned upon. Of course I do not compare
my good friend with him to whom no man living or that ever
lived on earth can be compared. And Mr. Morrill was never
tried or tested by executive or by military responsibilities.
But the qualities which belonged to Washington belonged to
him--prudence, modesty, sound judgement, simplicity, absolute
veracity, absolute integrity, disinterestedness, lofty patriotism.
If he is not to be compared with Washington, he was at least
worthy to be the countryman of Washington, and to hold a high
place among the statesmen of the Republic which Washington
founded.

Neither ambition nor hatred, nor the love of ease nor the
greed of gain, nor the desire of popularity, nor the love of
praise, nor the fear of unpopularity found a place in that
simple and brave heart.

Like as a ship that through the ocean wide
By conduct of some star doth make her way--

no local attraction diverted the magnet in his