when long years had interposed between the sharp antagonisms of the past and the present time.
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose).
The bosom of his Father and his God.
Address of Mr. Gay, of Louisiana.
Mr. Speaker, this occasion has been set apart by solemn resolution to pay the just tribute of respect to the memory of Hon. Michael Hahn, of Louisiana.
It often happens in intercourse with our fellow-men that we do not fully appreciate their value until the rude hand of death removes them from our midst. This I feel to be especially true with regard to my deceased colleague, and when made aware of his untimely, unlooked-for death, I awoke to a partial realization of the great loss sustained by this House, by his colleagues, by his constituency, and by the State of Louisiana.
Michael Hahn was a native of Bavaria, and removed in 1840, with a widowed mother, to the city of New Orleans, in the tenth year of his age. His mother had five children, and when the yellow-fever epidemic of 1841 visited that city she fell a victim, leaving these children, doubly orphaned, in a strange land.
The solid metal of young Michael's nature maybe seen by watching the progress of events. He attended the public schools and graduated in the high school of the second municipality. In his nineteenth year we find him in the law office of Christian Roselius, an eminent lawyer, whose pure and unblemished character no doubt stamped itself on young Hahn.
While here, besides attending to the duties of the office, he followed two courses of lectures in the law department of the University of Louisiana, and graduated in April, 1851.
