In the grave should be buried the prejudices and passions born of conflict. Charity should hold the scales in which are weighed the deeds of men. Peculiarities, traits born of locality and surroundings--these are but the dust of the race--these are accidents, drapery, clothes, fashions, that have nothing to do with the man except to hide his character. They are the clouds that cling to mountains. Time gives us clearer vision. That which was merely local fades away. The words of envy are forgotten, and all there is of sterling worth remains. He who was called a partisan is a patriot. The revolutionist and the outlaw are the founders of nations, and he who was regarded as a scheming, selfish politician becomes a statesman, a philosopher, whose words and deeds shed light. Fortunate is that nation great enough to know the great. When a great man dies--one who has nobly fought the battle of a life, who has been faithful to every trust, and has uttered his highest, noblest thought--one who has stood proudly by the right in spite of jeer and taunt, neither stopped by foe nor swerved by friend--in honoring him, in speaking words of praise and love above his dust, we pay a tribute to ourselves. How poor this world would be without its graves, without the memories of its mighty dead. Only the voiceless speak forever. Intelligence, integrity and courage are the great pillars that support the State. Above all, the citizens of a free nation should honor the brave and independent man--the man of stainless integrity, of will and intellectual force. Such men are the Atlases on whose mighty shoulders rest the great fabric of the Republic. Flatterers, cringers, crawlers, time-servers are the dangerous citizens of a democracy. They who gain applause and power by pandering to the mistakes, the prejudices and passions of the multitude, are the enemies of liberty. When the intelligent submit to the clamor of the many, anarchy begins and the Republic reaches the edge of chaos. Mediocrity, touched with ambition, flatters the base and calumniates the great, while the true patriot, who will do neither, is often sacrificed. In a government of the people a leader should be a teacher--he should carry the torch of truth. Most people are the slaves of habit--followers of custom--believers in the wisdom of the past--and were it not for brave and splendid souls, "the dust of antique time would lie unswept, and mountainous error be too highly heaped for truth to overpeer." Custom is a prison, locked and barred by those who long ago were dust, the keys of which are in the keeping of the dead. Nothing is grander than when a strong, intrepid man breaks chains, levels walls and breasts the many-headed mob like some great cliff that meets and mocks the innumerable billows of the sea.