It was not strange that the product of such influences should be a gentleman.  All that was courageous, all that was loyal to truth, all that was courteous to those with whom he came in contact, all that was gentle and kindly was not only the heritage which he received with his name and his blood, but it was developed by all the environments which he was so fortunate as to have surround him.  If I were to select a character of which it might be said that it was round, without angles, even without salient points, it would be his—­not because he was weak, but because the calmness, the serenity, and the magnificence (if I may use a word that seems to be hyperbolic) of the equipoise of his qualities made each of them seem less important than it would have seemed if other qualities had been less.

It would not be extravagant to apply to him the paraphrase of the apostolic description of a Christian gentleman—­loving without dissimulation; abhorring the evil; cleaving to the honorable; preferring to confer honor rather than to receive it; earnest in the work of life, and careful of time and opportunity to labor; hopeful of all good; patient in tribulation; forbearing to resent trespass; charitable in thought and word, as in deed; given to hospitality; at peace with his own conscience and with God.

We live, Mr. Speaker, in a heroic age.  I constantly hear of this being an age of materialism, of the worship of the “almighty dollar.”  I challenge all the past, in all the endeavors of man, to reach a higher level, to equal the heroism of the age in which we have been called to perform our part—­the devotion to duty, the readiness to make sacrifices, the willingness to give all for the truth which have marked our generation—­the era in which we have to act our part.

This simple, kindly, unaffected, modest gentleman; this man, with his sweet calm smile, who met us every day, passing in and out with a certain reticence of modesty, was himself but the type of the age in which he lived and of the people from whom he sprang.  All modest as he was, he had given up everything at the call of duty.  All simple and kindly as he seemed to be, he had at the head of charging squadrons captured cannon, and with more heroic endurance had lain without complaint in the cell of solitary confinement.  He carried about with him in the simple modesty of his everyday life the heart that at a moment’s notice was ready to still its beating at the call of duty; and with the same simplicity, with the same freedom from ostentation, with the same delicious smile, he would have walked into the jaws of death if it had become him as a gentleman to do so.

To live in such an age, to be associated with such men—­and, thank God, they are not uncommon amongst us—­the bar at which I practice, the tables at which I sit in the kindliness of social intercourse, the men with whom I have been blessed enough to be called into contact, the very strangers who call on business at my house, rank among them men just like unto him.  I say to live in such an age, to be associated with such men, to play a part, however obscure, in such drama, make life worth the living; make the hereafter nobler for him who has been so blessed.