“And in this retrospect we have to include at least one example of the type of Irish descendant which rises to eminence in the peaceful professions in our late-lamented and highly-respected President-General, Thomas J. Gargan, whose obsequies in Boston last fall were the occasion of so impressive a manifestation of civic gratitude and esteem. Surely his life was in itself a powerful effort to ‘place the Irish element in its true light in American history.’ Eminent in the legal profession in a community where the standards of that profession are especially high, he also gave to the state of Massachusetts as a trusted official such services as were duly acknowledged by the presence in his funeral cortege of the Mayor of Boston, the present and past Governors of Massachusetts, and an immense multitude of citizens. And if this great lawyer’s career brilliantly illustrated the truth that the Irish race excel in other things besides fighting I must not pass over in silence that other departed fellow-member, Major John Crane of New York, a man whose career was illustrious both in war and in peace, a citizen who first turned his back upon commercial success in order to take up arms for what he considered the cause of the Republic, and then, when he had won glory for himself in four years of active military service, returned to the peaceful pursuits of commerce to achieve a place among the leading merchants of New York, and at last to dispense his honorably-acquired wealth and to apply his talents and his time in the charitable relief of poverty and suffering.