OCR Text |
Show Judge Christopher Reed. A vast regret follows Judge Reed to the grave. He was a most eminent man as lawyer, judge and1 scholar. But above all he was eminent as a citizen citi-zen and a born gentlemtm at all times and everywhere. every-where. In his childhood he saw every day on the walls of his old homo the pictures of ancestors, every one of whom had borne honorable names. He went out from under the ancestral roof with a conviction that whatever he did he must not cast discredit upon his name and race, and had he needed an anchor to steady his life, that would have been sufficient. But he needed nothing of tho kind. Ho had not one drop of blood in his veins that was not pure. He could not do a dishonorable act; ho could not harbor for a moment a dishonorable thought. He was one of nature's noblemen. He was a thorough lawyer; he had that even pose and sense of duty which made him the perfect per-fect Judge; and then his learning was so varied that he was never alone. When no living person was near, out of the past the high souls that had served their captivity here came thronging back to entertain him. He was gentle and polite to all who met him; he greeted the high and the low among men alike, but his thoughts were high and true as become one of his lineage and breeding. breed-ing. He wae gaining friends here very fast; the people wore beginning to see how grand his character char-acter was, and they are mourning now that' they never had the opportunity of giving distinct appreciation ap-preciation of his worth. His brother Walter was the physician, who took his life in his hands and went into the contagion con-tagion of yellow fever that had raged with less or greater violence in Havana for a century, to study its cause and to find out if possible how it might be controlled. What he and his associates did was one of the most splendid exhibitions oi devotion to science and to duty ever seen. They altogether did not number ten people. To test the disease in all Its phases, two or three died, two more were sick almost unto death; but they triumphed at last. Their discovery has already saved thousands of lives; it has removed the chief terror from the tropics; it has exalted tho medical profession;- it has. made possible great worl.es that never1 could have been pushed to completion com-pletion wIhout'it' Speaking1 of it, Judge Reed was glad that his brother was an instrument of so much, good; ho rejoiced In his brother's triumph, but ho alwayB Q spoke as though what his brother had ddne wab merely following the call of duty; that What he did was merely a matter of course. That revealed the real key to his nature. It was that all mon should perform their duty as God gave thom to see their duty. In this respect he was more exacting toward himself than toward anyone else, for In tho homo he came from that had always been the rule, and to violate that rule would in his thought have been Infamy. He has passed on, but his momory and exam pie remain; the world was better that he lived, and there is no one to fill his place now that he has CPised to live. 0 |