where he lived no one ever assailed his purity or the integrity of his intentions. Even during the last political strife, a campaign when plummet and press fathomed greater depths of acrimony and injustice in the political sea than any before, the fierce light did not beat upon him with withering rays, and he came here the accredited Representative of the better elements of each party in his district. He sought to serve his people and the Commonwealth which he in part represented on this floor.
The only time we heard his voice was when he appealed for the interests of Louisiana to promote the prosperity of its great undertaking. We all remember a bill he offered and urged its passage. It was to remove a bitter reminder to his constituency of the struggle of two decades agone. He hoped to see the prejudices of the past "dissolve like the winter drifts in the sunshine of spring," and rejoiced that they were yielding to the inevitable influences of time.
Our late associate was of a genial nature and loved harmony. I remember just before he left this House the wound inflicted on him by party reflection, and the mournful manner in which he read to me an article from a journal in his State and expressed the hurt he felt from its injustice.
Little did its author realize the one he assailed would so soon join the vanished procession of men who were. Ah, Mr. Speaker, we can but deplore partisan malice, while kindly feeling and justice are lost on the arid waste of political controversy. It is one of the lamentable accompaniments of our institutions that the sincerest and most upright intentions are too often refracted by party atmosphere from their aim. As I think of my friend who is gone, I am mournfully reminded of the truth of the Arab proverb "The word that we speak to day, shall it not meet us again and again at the turning of the ways to show us how it has cursed or blessed our fellows?"
The evidences of respect and regard for the memory of our departed brother, shown by those in whose midst his honorable life was passed, were a comfort to relatives and friends. To them it was a sweet blossom of the thorny wreath of sorrow. In the harsh and
