Orange Jacobs

“ As the sun of the physical world—the brightest and grandest of all of the luminaries of the firmament sinks to rest, tingeing the clouds that stretch along the horizon with the golden glories of its declining rays, so Garfield, the sun-intellect of this nation, has gone to his repose, reflecting the light of his noble deeds and unfaltering patriotism, tingeing the breaking clouds of dissention with the beauty and effulgence of hope and peace. ”

“ Any act of legislation laying the foundation of a system—such as the school system and providing for its administration is a difficult task. The human judgment is imperfect—and prescience is limited—hence any approach to perfection in the system itself, or in its administrative provisions, is a matter of evolution of slow growth—and of the survival of the fittest. As time advances and light and knowledge increase, the dead and useless branches are pruned off and the fit and vigorous remain to blossom and bear fruit. ”

“ What force, then, is there in the claim that, simply because the instrument through which the soul manifested itself is dead, the soul itself is dead, or extinct? There are many illustrations of this thought in actual life. The wonderful, almost inspired, conception of beauty, passion and anguish transferred by the artist's brush to canvas, as enduring monuments of the immortality of genius, existed in the mind of the artist before a single line of the grand conception was transferred to canvas. ”

“ What do we understand by soul? By soul is meant the power to think, to reflect, and to judge of the moral quality of actions and thoughts. Let me take the sceptic's standard of what we should believe, and what we should not believe; that is, we ought not to believe that of which we have no evidence, and for which we can give no satisfactory reason. I proceed by a process of elimination, as will be readily seen. My first proposition, interrogatively stated, is this. Is the power to think and reflect and to judge of the moral quality of thoughts and actions, a property of matter or not? ”

“ Steam, whose latent energies were then but little known, under the exploitations of science and inventive genius, became, and continues to be the chief motive power of the world. Electricity alone now disputes its dominion. While the light of ages comes streaming down the pathway of history, it illumes the present and enlarges the scope of human knowledge, yet it gives no prophetic insight, hence, which will be the final victor is unseen. ”

“ Anarchy, bloodshed and general civil war will succeed the rebound of the popular heart. The popular frenzy which developed itself in mobs in many sections of our country, on the reception of the tidings of Lincoln's death, is but the logical sequence of the assassin's stroke at civil liberty and popular rights. Then it behooves every well-wisher of his country, on such mournful occasions, to give emphasis and intensity to the nation's woe. For, mark you, fellow-citizens, there is a smothered volcano of wrath and vengeance in the great popular heart upon such occasions. ”

“ Consider the wild fowl that, moved by some mysterious impulse, start on their prodigious migrations from the frozen fens of the Pole and reach at last the shining South and summer seas; the fish that from tropic gulfs seek their spawning-grounds in the cool, bright rivers of the North; the bees that find in the garniture of fields and forests the treasure with which they store their cells; and even the wolf, the lion, and the tiger that are provided with their prey. ”

“ Then consider the insatiable hunger for knowledge; the efforts of the unconquerable mind to penetrate the mysteries of the future; its capacity to comprehend infinity and eternity; its desire for the companionship of the departed; its unquenchable aspirations for immortality—and let me ask: "Why should God keep faith with the beast, the bee, the fish, and the fowl, and cheat only man?" ”

“ There are, I fear, in every community, especially on the Pacific Coast, many young persons, who, lacking in fixed moral principles and habits of life like the sensitive and impressionable chameleon, assuming the color of the bark on the tree which for a time is its home—take on the moral coloring of the society in which they move, and become for a time, at least, an embodiment of its moral tone. ”

“ Some one has truthfully said that there are but three words of beauty in the English language, and they are: 'Mother, Home, Heaven.' All know that the love and affection of our dead President for his aged mother, who by the cruel shot of the assassin, will be the chief mourner at the grave of her dear boy. These are the qualities, more than the brilliant display on the rostrum, in the forum or before enraptured thousands, that give the full measure of a noble manhood. ”

“ In contemplation of the solid and brilliant abilities of a great man, we often lose sight of those qualities that endear him to friends, and to the loved ones around the home circle. Man may possess transcendant genius, and be the idol of the populace, and yet be selfish, unsocial and cruel at home. Towering ambition may, and sometimes does, subordinate the love of wife, of children, and of parents, to its gratification. Such was not the case with Garfield. ”

“ When I commenced my return, he, no doubt, leaped off into the covering brush, and, although sharply looked for by me, the dense fog and the thick brush hid him from my view.
The cougar is strictly a carniverous animal. His principal food is the deer; and it is said that he requires two a month for his subsistence. That he is a good feeder is evident from the fact that he is always sleek and in excellent condition. He has a great love for the meat of the colt, and is consequently a terror to breeders in that line. He is not a hater of veal or pork, but does not prefer the latter. ”

“ With such a triumvirate of integrity, high legal attainments, and judicial honor, a teacher may well feel proud. While it is the duty of the teacher to aid and assist his pupils and to impart instruction in the various branches taught, yet this is not his whole, or principal mission. His higher and nobler mission is to arouse into action all the latent forces and qualities of his pupil's nature and to inspire him with a noble ambition to conquer in the arduous conflicts of life. ”

“ His memory will never die until time shall be no more. The tears of a sorrowing people will water the sod that covers the remains of their loved magistrate; and from every blade of grass that grows, and from the leaf of every flower that blooms upon his grave, an avenging spirit shall arise to demand requital for the damnation of his taking-off. ”

“ Passion may triumph for an hour, but the sober-second-thought of the masses is sure to assert itself. Passion has never but once in our history crystalized into revolution. It is this subordination to law, this reverence for its majesty, this reliant faith in its methods and results, that constitute the bulwark of our liberties, and make the American people capable of self-government.
"James A. Garfield was born on the 19th day of November, 1831, in Orange, Cuyahoga County, State of Ohio, and hence was in his fiftieth year when he died. ”

“ This great basin—circular in form and some eight miles in diameter—has been visited by me in connection with hunting parties many times since. It is, or was in former years the hunter's paradise; but I am informed that the cattle men—the pre-emptor, and the homesteaders, and timber monopolizers—have extended their dominion over the luxuriant grass-producing prairies and the magnificent forests of pine, fir, hemlock and larch, and have driven the game far back into the fastnesses of the mountains. The Indian kills only to satisfy his wants and with only imperfect instruments of destruction ”

“ Now I, as a lawyer, am prepared to maintain that the science of the law is just as accurate, just as complete, and just as reliable as any other science. As has been said, law in its practical operations is the application of principles to a certain condition of facts. There comes in the art. Where different judges differ, it isn't in the science of the law, it is in the art connected with that science.
"Now I am wandering a little. However, I was trying to show that pioneer lawyers were forced to do their own reasoning, to rely upon their own intellectual powers. ”

“ I have killed quite a number of elk since that time in the mountains of Oregon, but I have never seen one larger than one of those, although I have seen much larger and finer antlers than adorned the heads of any of them. The purpose of the antlers, in my judgment, is not to furnish the animal a weapon in fight, but as a protection to his shoulders as he dashes through the brush in flight from an enemy or in pursuit of his mate. When he moves swiftly he elevates his nose until his face is nearly in a line with his back ”

“ Virginia not only claimed the right peaceably to secede from the Union but to be the sole and exclusive judge not only of the existence, but also, of the sufficiency of the causes, to warrant such secession. She did all she could to make that secession effective. Old Virginia had by her act, and by her theory of the nature of the Government under the Constitution, estopped herself to deny that the forty-eight counties west of the Alleghany Range possessed the same right of secession—if any such right existed—that she possessed herself ”

“ President and brothers, I owe you an apology for detaining you so long with this unsubstantial matter, this unwritten poetry of the profession. I am inclined to believe, however that the actual intellectual and moral tone of a given period, as well as the social status, has no truer index than its current anecdotes. Every new and formative community is marked with distinctive individualities. In the onward sweep of development and civilization, and in the largeness of population, individuality becomes fused [228] in the general mass, and loses its salient characteristics. ”

“ The great Carlyle declares that if a person possess a quality in a high degree, whether that quality be mental or physical, he is unconscious of the fact; but if he be deficient in any quality, either moral or physical, he is always conscious of the deficiency; and, seeming to act on the supposition that what he feels so distinctly, he fears others might perceive, he is constantly hedging: therefore, a dishonest man is always talking about his honesty, and a coward about his bravery. All the men of our company behaved well but one, and that one was "the Colonel." ”

“ As a partial compensation for this inevitable want of political power in the lower house of Congress, it was the true policy, as I have declared, for the Pacific Coast to divide its immense territorial area into small States, so as to secure in the United States Senate, an approach to equality of political power. We have seen that within sixteen degrees of north latitude on the Atlantic Coast there are thirteen States, bordering on the ocean, with twenty-six Senators; while on the Pacific Coast in the same number of degrees of latitude there are but three States, with only six Senators. ”

“ For over fifty-five years I have been in close contact with many individuals of the different tribes of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and California and I have taken considerable interest in the study of their characteristics. I have already stated that the Indian is an impassive stoic. If he has any human emotions, they are with the exception of anger, never displayed in his countenance. When angry, his countenance becomes fixed, sullen, morose and determined. He does not voice his anger, but silently nurses his wrath to keep it warm. ”

“ To read without thought, without reflection, without analysis and a thorough digest of what one reads, is a waste of time. More, it weakens the memory, does not accumulate knowledge, and incapacitates the mind for serious work. While I have no admiration for a correctly-styled "case lawyer," yet, were I to live my professional career over again, I would get my legal principles from a small but well-selected library of authors of established repute ”

“ Ever and anon, as the rushing waves of the Seattle fire would roll over and envelope a drug or other store where powder or other explosives were kept, a volume of flame would shoot upward, with a deafening roar, towards the clouds, as though claiming the storm-king as its kinsman. ”

“ Man's immortality is usually proven by the declarations of the Bible, which are supposed to reveal it as an ultimate truth. The immortality of the soul is susceptable not of demonstration, but of reasonable proof by reason itself. If we concede the existence of God with the attributes usually ascribable to such a being, and which He must necessarily possess in order to be God, such as infinite wisdom, goodness and Almighty power, and if we concede further that He is the Creator of man, man's immortality results as a logical sequence from such concessions. ”

“ The most valuable and useful of all the game family to man, and especially to the pioneer, was and is the deer. Without venison the table of the pioneer would be lacking in one of life's choicest and most sustaining food. Of beef, pork and mutton, in any of their various forms, he had none. The rifle was his purveyor; a table furnished with delicious venison, the realization.
Deer are everywhere to be found in this State, and especially in the wooded country west of the dividing-ridge of the Cascade Mountains. ”

“ Equipped with snow-shoes, they successfully passed over the summit's ridges to the desolate base of old Mt. Hood. Here they were enveloped in a dense fog—that most fearful of all calamities to a man in unknown woods, or mountains. Even to the experienced hunter or trapper, familiar with the topography of a mountain range, or a dense forest, the coming-in or settling-down of a fog envelopment, is viewed with apprehension, and alarm. A fog obliterates all the landmarks. Darkness has different shades of blackness;—the depth before you has an intensified blackness ”