Edmund Winston Pettus is one of the great living men of the world. He is an old Roman who represents the high-water mark of the Republic’s true greatness—one who might sit at the council table of the Gracchii, of Pitt, of Washington. I speak not from hearsay—all my life I have known him. And never will the Republic look upon his like again, for as he quotes, “Time changes and men change with it.” But there was a scope, a broadness, a breadth and dignity in the Time which reached out to all the ages in making the men of his day and generation which seems sadly lacking to Trotwood’s in making of some of our Southern statesmen of to-day. But blame not the South for this. She has passed through the shoals and the rapids of politics since the war. It is natural that much froth and foam should follow it. But the two old Romans which Alabama has sent to the Senate go far to atone for the froth of some of our sister Southern States. All honor to Alabama for clinging to such ideals! The picture we present of this grand old man (by courtesy of The Saturday Evening Post) brings to my mind a flood of remembrance—tender, and of the kind which has gone into the soul of me. One morning in the year 1868, when I was too small a boy to go anywhere alone, my father took me by the hand and led me to the courthouse to hear General Pettus speak. He turned me over to the sheriff while he himself went on the bench, and the sheriff placed me in a big chair, and, small as I was, I sat spellbound under the thunder of this man’s oratory. It was the first great speech I had ever heard. And when I see this picture I see the old Judge, before whom he practiced—the old Judge, my father—who died the oldest judge in the State, wearing for twenty-six years the ermine and never sullying it. They were men of the same type—men of the Old South—men whom the poet called for, saying: “‘God give us men. A time like this demands Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands; Men whom the love of office cannot kill; Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor; men who will not lie; Men who can stand before a demagogue And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking! Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog In public duty and in private thinking— For while the rabble with their thumb-worn creeds, Their large professions and their little deeds, Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps, Wrong rules the land, and waiting justice sleeps.”