the library of the student of American history, and a great help to the teacher of the principles of civil government.
From boyhood Judge Bliss's convictions upon the question of slavery were fixed and earnest. His best and highest efforts were given to the cause of abolition. He was with the advance guard, — the trusted friend of Sumner, Chase, Giddings, and Lovejoy.
Although by nature of a modest and retiring disposition, and hampered by constant ill-health and physical weakness, Judge Bliss was always at the front, active, zealous, and aggressive in the cause. He had studied the question of slavery in all its phases; and his arguments made during the Kansas struggle, on the legal aspects of slavery in its relation to the Federal Government, were pronounced by Mr. Sumner and other anti-slavery leaders to be the ablest made in the House.
Judge Bliss's opinions rendered while on the Supreme Bench are singularly concise, lucid, and able, and bear the impress of careful study and training.
After his accession to the Supreme Bench and during the years following, Judge Bliss took no active part in political or other affairs of a public nature, although he maintained a lively interest in all questions affecting the public welfare, and furnished occasional articles upon current topics to various reviews.
His duties at the Law School proved highly congenial to his tastes; and the training of young men in the profession to which he was devotedly attached, was a labor of love rather than a perfunctory duty. During the last distressing days of pain and suffering, his thoughts constantly reverted to his classes, with an anxious solicitude for the success and welfare of the school he loved, and for which he had labored so long and well.
Modest, retiring, and unselfish in disposition; kind, gentle, and courteous by nature; wise, upright, and pure of heart; faithful and true in every relation and duty of life, — Judge Bliss furnished an honorable record such as few men leave behind.
Edward A. Lewis.
Though Judge Lewis was upon the Supreme Court only a few months, he subsequently gave to the State nearly twelve years of service as presiding judge of the St. Louis Court of Appeals. He was born at Washington, District of Columbia, Feb. 22, 1820; at the age of fifteen he became an apprentice to the printer's trade in the office of Duff Green; in 1836 he became a private tutor; in 1838, a clerk in the Government Land Office; the next year he removed to Yazoo, Mississippi, where he was admitted to the bar in 1841 . He was a self-made and self-educated man. In 1845 he settled at Richmond, Missouri, and after filling a number of county offices, accepted editorial charge of a newspaper in St. Louis in 1851. He was the father of that body known as the International Typographical Union. In 1853 he entered upon the practice of the law in earnest, and soon attained an enviable rank in his profession. He made St. Charles his home in 1856. He was a Presidential Elector twice, and the unsuccessful candidate of the minority party for the Supreme Court in 1868. In 1874 he became a member of that tribunal, and in 1875 was appointed a judge of the St. Louis Court of Appeals. He was a man of singularly modest and retiring disposition, but endowed with rare powers of discrimination. He was a master of the English language; and his opinions are clear, to the point, and strikingly free from dicta. In 1888 physical infirmity and increasing deafness compelled his resignation; but his associates, as a testimonial to his long and laborious services, and in a spirit that reflects credit upon them, at once appointed him reporter to the court. He held this position until his death in 1889.
Henry M. Vories.
A jolly, easy-going boy, there was little in his youth that promised an able and popular lawyer. A native of Henry County, Ken-
