Patient industry and impregnable virtue are the essential cardinal
qualities that make the man, in the vast majority of cases, worthy of
love and honor, and which conserve the best interests of the world.
That man who in his career and relations to society has gone on from day
to day and from trust to trust, never disappointing but always realizing
every just expectation, it seems to me is the character who deserves of
his fellow-men the highest meed of praise, and gives in his person and
example the surest guaranty that the world will be all the better for
his agency in shaping its affairs.
The friends of Gen. LEE enjoy the perfect assurance that in every walk
of life, on every occasion when duty called him, his responses were ever
marked by a dignified and intelligent performance of the tasks assigned
him.
What higher honor can we ask for him than this: that weighty as were the
responsibilities that devolved upon him by inheritance and high as the
expectations which were the natural implications of this inheritance, he
fully and nobly met them. Much as was expected of him, he more than
realized the claims and obligations of a noble lineage. His
fellow-citizens and his contemporaries regard his career as an honor and
his companionship as a delight and a resource that adds poignancy to
their grief in the loss of so loved and valued a friend.
Pages:
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129