186 Soittln rn Historical No.vWy Papers.
added the Colonel, with emphasis, "if it doesn't come back to me safe, be careful that you do not come back." His old soldier com- rade lived in a distant parish, and so impressed was he with the earnestness of his former commander's words, that he was afraid to trust it to the express company or any messenger, and it was only when one of the Colonel's sons by accident happened to be in his portion of the State, that he hunted him up and asked if he was quite sure that he could bring the sword safely back to the Colonel, if he were entrusted with it.
[From the Richmond (Va.) Enquirer, May 10, 1871.]
HON. JAMES MURRAY MASON, Of " Mason & Slidell " Fame.
A Tribute to this Exalted Patriot by Hon. Henry A. Wise.
The Hon. James Murray Mason is no more. His death has already been announced, but we deem it a pleasure, as well as a duty, to take more than a cursory notice of the loss of such a man to the once honored State, which he and his ancestors served so long and so eminently, at a time when her glory was the chief pride of her sons.
Descended from the Masons of Gunston, in Virginia, and from the Murrays of Maryland, he was born November 3, 1798, in the county of Fairfax, and after early boyhood was reared and educated chiefly in the city of Philadelphia, with every opportunity for attaining accomplishments of a high order. He was a resident in a French family of superior refinement, and was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, A. D. 1818. Thus trained to the age of his ma- jority he could not be other than a gentleman, in the highest sense of that much abused term.
The son of General John Mason, Sr., of "Claremont," the grandson of George Mason, of " Gunston," the only rival of George Washington, and the author of the first Bill of Rights, properly conceived and expressed, ever penned for mankind, and sprung from a mother more like a " mother of the Gracchi," than almost any woman of her day, James M. Mason could not but feel the
