Senator Vance was a "leader among men." Few in our day, or in our history even, have better earned that distinction. He was a leader among men--and naturally so. He had those characteristics which could not fail to make him a leader, not self-appointed, but chosen by common consent. He was a wise man. He was able to estimate causes and calculate effects. He was able to foresee what would come to pass, because he understood men--that is necessary in a leader. We rely upon the Infinite because we are finite. We feel the limitations of our own knowledge, and we long to find some one who knows more and can see further than we. Among men, we naturally turn to the one who can foresee events, as a child turns to a parent for advice. It was not the experience of age which he possessed, it was a sort of intuitive judgment, an instinct for truth, that made him see in advance what others only found out afterwards. It has been mentioned here to-day that when the late civil war was about to break out he was able to survey the whole ground and see what would be the necessary result, and that he told his people what that result would be. He did this, too, when a young man--younger than any of us who are on this floor to-day--and time proved his wisdom. So, coming on down, as each new crisis arose, as each new force began its work upon society, he seemed to be able to calculate what was coming, and every time his judgment was justified by events his hold upon popular confidence increased. When the Fifty-third Congress was convened in extra session in August, 1893, no man in this country more clearly foresaw the course of events and more clearly predicted the results of the proposed financial policy. He talked with his associates; he wrote to his people, he told them just what the effect would be upon the party with which he was identified, and whose name he loved. Not only was he wise, but he was courageous. And courage is a characteristic, too, in a leader of men. He had the courage to assume responsibility. He shirked no duty. What he believed he said, and he was willing to stand or fall by the correctness of his conclusions. Jefferson, in speaking of some man, said that he had not learned the sublime truth that a bold, unequivocal virtue is the best handmaid even unto ambition. Zebulon B. Vance had learned that sublime truth. He knew, while trimming one's sails to catch a passing breeze may help temporarily, there is nothing which is permanently of aid to a public man except standing by his convictions. I have no doubt he had ambition; but from what I have been able to read and learn of him, it was a laudable ambition which every man in this country may well possess, an ambition to do his duty everywhere, an ambition to deserve well, to have what he deserved and nothing more.