lacking in high qualities either of intellect
or of character. However that may be, it is surely true of
Mr. Davis that whatever has been or will be said of him to-
day, or was said of him when the news of his death first shocked
the country, is just what would have been said when he was
alive by any man who knew him. I have served with him here
nearly fourteen years. I have agreed with him and I have
differed from him in regard to matters of great pith and moment
which deeply stirred the feelings of the people, as they did
mine, and doubtless did his own. I never heard any man speak
of him but with respect and kindness.

"Of course, Mr. President, in this great century which is
just over, when our Republic--this infant Hercules--has been
growing from its cradle to its still youthful manhood, the
greatest place for a live man has been that of a soldier
in time of war and that of a statesman in time of peace.
Cushman K. Davis was both. He did a man's full duty in both.
No man values more than I do the function of the man of letters.
No man reveres more than I do the man of genius who in a loving
and reverent way writes the history of a great people, or
the poet from whose lyre comes the inspiration which induces
heroic action in war and peace. But I do not admit that the
title of the historian or that of the poet to the gratitude
and affection of mankind is greater than that of the soldier
who saves nations, or that of the statesman who creates or
preserves them, or who makes them great. I have no patience
when I read that famous speech of Gladstone, he and Tennyson
being together on a journey, when he modestly puts Mr. Tennyson's
title to the gratitude of mankind far above his own. Gladstone,
then Prime Minister, declared that Tennyson would be remembered
long after he was forgotten. That may be true. But whether
a man be remembered or whether he be forgotten; whether his
work be appreciated or no; whether his work be known or unknown
at the time it is accomplished, is not the test of its greatness
or its value to mankind. The man who keeps this moral being,
or helps to keep this moral being we call a State in the paths
of justice and righteousness and happiness, the direct effect
of whose action is felt in the comfort and happiness and moral
life of millions upon millions of human lives, who opens and
constructs great highways of commerce, who makes schools and
universities not only possible but plenty,