VOL. XI, No. 5. DES MOINES, IA., APRIL, 1914. 3D SERIES WILLIAM B. ALLISON.1 By HENRY CABOT LODGE.2 Advancing years impose their penalties upon every man. In their silent action there is a terrible certainty and an unsparing equality of distribution, but among all their warnings, among all the milestones which they place to mark the passage of time, none is more mournful than the task of reading the letters and biographies of those whom we have known and loved, or the sad duty which compels us to give utterance to our words of praise and affection for the friends, the companions, the long-trusted leaders who have gone. Yet all these trials must be faced as we look into the eyes of Fate or listen to its knocking at the door. All that we can do is to meet them seriously and solemnly, yet in the right spirit, without empty and helpless lamentations. I recall with great vividness my first meeting with Senator Allison at dinner in 1874, at the house of Mr. Samuel Hooper, a distinguished Member of Congress representing one of the Boston districts. The party was a small one, consisting only of our host, his nephew, myself, Senator Conkling, and Senator Allison. I was a boy just out of college and Mr. Allison appeared to me a person of great age and dignity. As a matter of fact, he was only forty-five, which seems to me now quite young, and he had but just begun that career in the Senate which was destined to prove so long and so memorable. Mr. Hooper's nephew, a classmate and lifelong friend of Revised and adapted from a memorial address in the United States Senate, February 6, 1909. "Henry Cabot Lodge was born in Boston, Massachusetts, May 12, 1850. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1871 and from the Law School of Harvard University in 1875. He was editor of the North American Review from 1873 to 1876 and of the International Review from 1879 to 1881. He has served in the Massachusetts Legislature, as delegate to the Republican National Conventions of 1880 and 1884, as member of the National House of Representatives and as United States Senator, since 1893. mine, and I sat by and listened to all that was said that evening with deep and silent interest. The talk was very good and well worth listening to. To those who remember the men it is needless to say that Mr. Conkling took the unquestioned lead in the conversation, and that when he criticised, as he frequently did, he spared no one. My remembrance of Mr. Conkling and of the character of his talk is very sharp and clear-cut, and that is all. My recollection of Senator Allison is equally distinct, but it brings with it a gentle memory of the kindness of a distinguished and much older man to a young fellow whom he never expected to see again, of a sense of humor as kindly as it was keen, of a good nature which took even Mr. Conkling's gibes with a quiet dignity and easy patience, very pleasant to witness and very pleasant still to recall. The qualities which I then saw, as I thought, in Mr. Allison were really among his most conspicuous attributes. He did. not wear his heart upon his sleeve, but his gentleness, his humor, his innate kindliness were as apparent to the casual and humble stranger as to those who knew him best. He did not cover them with austerity, solemnity, or pomposity and reserve them only for the benefit of the leading actors upon the great stage where his life was passed, but he gave them freely to all the world, and made the world thereby, so far as his influence went, a happier place to live in. After I went to Washington it was my good fortune to know Senator Allison better while I was still in the House, and for fifteen years in the Senate I saw him constantly and intimately every day of each session. The nearer view changed in no respect, although it enhanced, what my first brief glance of him had revealed. But years of a common service disclosed to me what I had only dimly perceived before, his qualities as a public man and as a statesman, for he was universally admitted to deserve the latter title long before the fulfillment of the last hard condition which turns a successful politician into a statesman. It is of Mr. Allison in this capacity that I desire particularly to speak. His life will be told by his biographers in the time to come with adequate |