first white baby
born here, where now over two hundred thousand human beings reside. Here
are the pioneers who filled the first log-huts on the city's site,
until they overflowed through the roofs. And here is an inner circle of
children, and an outer one of grandchildren, about the two who are the
heart of this beautiful celebration. Can that lovely, erect, blooming
lady be a bride of fifty years? Looking at her, one would say it is a
great and unnecessary mistake of ours to grow old. But more closely must
we look at that quaint old man by her side. Lately he has passed away;
but every day of his long life left a trace worthy to be noted well. His
eighty years and twenty-five days of life comprise an epitome of the
history and growth of a great community. Not so would you at first
interpret that plain old man; though, to a knowing eye, that eye, clear
with looking at the duty that lies nearest, that mouth, telling of
patient, unimpulsive energy, that broadness about the brow, would be
guaranties of a marked life.

And now for my story, which you must let me tell in a rambling way; for
any systematic biography of that man would be like putting one of his
own Catawba-vines into your herbarium.

I introduce you to a fair-haired, handsome youth, on the deck of a small
steamboat, which is bearing him to his fortune in the great West. He is
penniless. His father was wealthy; but in the war he was a Tory, and, in
the confiscation of his property, his sin was visited upon his son. But
he was not the boy to repine, with youth and the great West before him.
And now as from the steamer's deck he sees a fine landscape with a few
log-houses on it, he believes that it is one day to be a great city, and
concludes to stop there. So he is put ashore with his trunk.

He has already determined to study law. He goes to the one judge
who resides there, and is taken as a student into his office. More
log-houses are built; a court-house is erected; and presently that
institution at sight of which the shipwrecked Englishman fell on his
knees and thanked God he was in a Christian land--the gallows--made its
appearance. So the young man had a fair practice.

The records of the West, if they are ever written, will testify how
often whimsical Fortune thrusts her favors on men against their will.
This very judge with whom our youth studied law became environed with
pecuniary difficulties, and wished once to satisfy a claim of a few
hundred dol