seemed made for nothing less than the command of men, whether as
general or as orator, comes before me as I write, with a look of
indignant appeal to the future for the chance of fame which inexorable
fate denied him. The appeal, of course, is in vain. Only a few men,
now growing old, knew what he was and what he might have been if life
had been spared him for a year or two. I will merely try to show in
these few pages, mainly from his own words, how great a heart was
broken by the slugs of the assassin at the Marshall House.

He was born in the village of Mechanicsville, Saratoga County, New
York, on April 23, 1837. His parents were plain people, without
culture or means; one cannot guess how this eaglet came into so lowly
a nest. He went out into the world at the first opportunity, to seek
his fortune; he turned his hand, like other American boys, to anything
he could find to do. He lived a while in New York, and finally drifted
to Chicago, where we find him, in the spring of 1859, a clerk and
student in the law office of Mr. J.E. Cone. From his earliest boyhood
he had a passionate love of the army. He learned as a child the manual
of arms; he picked up instinctively a knowledge of the pistol and the
rifle; he became, almost without instruction, a scientific fencer.
But he was now of age, and determined to be a lawyer, since, to all
appearance, there was no chance for him in the army. The way in which
he pursued his legal studies he has set down in a diary which he kept
for a little while. He began it on his twenty-second birthday. "I do
this," he said, "because it seems pleasant to be able to look back
upon our past lives and note the gradual change in our sentiments and
views of life; and because my life has been, and bids fair to be,
such a jumble of strange incidents that, should I become anybody or
anything, this will be useful as a means of showing how much suffering
and temptation a man may undergo and still keep clear of despair and