TWO VOICES. I. Remarks of the REV. DR. W. POPE YEAMAN, President of the Board of Curators, at the funeral of James Sidney Rollins: VER LIVER WENDELL HOLMES was asked, "When should the training of a child begin?" He replied, "A hundred years before the child is born." And might he not have said, "It does begin then"? It has occasionally transpired in the history of men that individual characteristics and developments have borne no marks of heredity. But these were exceptions to well established rules. If we put ourselves to the trouble to search for the explanations of remarkable character, we shall find ourselves led back of the influence of personal surroundings, and discovering in remote or near ancestry the causes of present manifestations. In tracing the history of the family of which our honored neighbor was a descendant, we find ourselves in company with the best blood of Ireland, under the influences that developed the patriotism of an Emmet, a Curran, a Grattan, and a Phillips. When we come on down to the boyhood and youth of James S. Rollins, we find him in Kentucky, where the whole population was under the molding spirit and manifest impress of pioneer character. As individual progenitors impress character upon their progeny, so first settlers leave the impress of their characteristics upon the communities of which they are the founders. Central Kentucky was settled by a chivalric, bold, cavalier race, whose spirit was developed into self-reliance, adventure, and heroism by the nature of the country and the social conditions of a primitive and aggressive civilization. The circum stances of early Kentucky life, when civil institutions were to be founded, connection with an infant and struggling republic to be formed, when newspapers, mails, and the means of transportation were novelties, naturally gave to oratory a transcendent value in popular esteem. The man who could sway the popular mind and lead public thought was the man of influence. Orators were princes in that day and among that people. It is simply natural that young men of spirit and aspiration should covet and seek the gifts of oratory. And particularly would this be the case with one brought near to manhood in the shades of Ashland. The Kentucky River with its laurel cliffs and picturesque hills flowed in inspiring beauty between the early home of our lamented dead and the home of the pride of America, with only the distance of a half day's ride intervening. Leaving these influences for an education in the colleges of Pennsylvania and Indiana, and thence to make his home in the then far West, and at a time when society was in its formative condition, it is no surprise that our enlightened young man, trained under such a combination of elevating influences, should decide to devote himself to a profession involving at once the rights of man and the progress of civilization. To be a lawyer in the true sense of the term is to have attained the highest development of moral and intellectual capabilities and to be prepared for the largest contributions to the social and material advancement of humanity. The great principles of right which lie at the foundation of true jurisprudence, when incorporated with the habit of thought and interwoven with the consciousness of self, lift the subject into a condition of being and purpose of life in harmony with the truest conception of true manhood. To such men the world owes a debt of gratitude that is appreciated by that intelligence which can apprehend the forces that ameliorate the conditions of individual life and advance the material and social well-being of communities. He who seeks the noble and ennobling profession of the law, not in the spirit of self-aggrandizement, but in the spirit of truth, and prompted by a laudable ambition, is seeking the avenues to the highest secular usefulness. Such a man must be a conscientious man; and when to these high attainments there is added the spirit of Him in whom infinite law found its embodiment and highest personal exemplifications, we have reached the greatest possibilities of human progress. |