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THE LATE C. C. GOSE

W. T. DOVELL.

Were it not that those who have a right in this regard to command me have desired it, I should decline, at least while his loss is so recent, to publicly discuss the life and character of the man who was in life my dearest friend. One would wear his grief upon his sleeve who, under such circumstances, could lightly parade what is within his heart; and I undertake the few words I have to say concerning my friend with a foreknowledge of their utter inadequacy to describe him to those who knew him not so well.

Sometimes you may know a man so well or have known him so long that there can never be a complete comprehension of his taking off; and it is hard indeed when you realize at once that it is a loss which not even time will serve to temper. As from year to year we grimly note death taking its insistent toll from amongst the friends of a lifetime-taking the men to whom we have looked for counsel, whom we have sought for entertainment, and for that fair companionship which comes only to men who have looked into each other's hearts-the sense of desolation and of loneliness becomes sorely oppressive.

C. C. Gose was one of that type of men who, trusted instinctively, invite the confidence and intimacy of all who come in contact with them. In the community in which he had resided all his lifetime he was a local institution, and let me say now to the people of that community which he and I knew so well, that they will some day come to a realization of the fact that they have lost their most interesting and distinctive character. I do not doubt that there are other men beside myself who already feel that for us Walla Walla can never be the same. He was brought to that fair valley as a very young child in 1863, his parents emigrating from Missouri, where he was born. His father and mother were distinctly typical of that intrepid band of men and women who broke the frowning barriers of the Rocky Mountains and penetrated to the Far West. Honest and simple, but indomitable and fearless of hardship or of labor, they would not hesitate to plunge into a wilderness unknown to them or concerning which they could have little authentic information. Upon the chance that the wilderness might be made to yield to toil a livelihood, they took their children-they being the sum of their possessions and in an ox-team crawled slowly toward the setting sun. Men and women of this type are apt to breed a sturdy race. Such are the forebears of the man of whom I write.

In the nature of Lum Gose there was nothing but simplicity and in his heart no guile. As well as any man I ever knew he could detect a sham or pretense, and none despised it more. Perhaps this was

because he possessed so keen an eye for the ridiculous. The hypocrite, the charlatan and the demagogue only thrive amongst those who do not possess this sense and it is because those who do not have this faculty constitute by far the larger class that imposition of one character or another is so widely and successfully practiced. He was straightforward and unless he acted without wile or craft he acted not at all. This was not because he gave it thought, but because he knew no other way, nor could he learn. An illustration of this characteristic occurs as I recall an incident in his life for which he was at that time, strangely enough, bitterly censured. In 1899 he was a member of the State Legislature, the principal business before which was, as then usual, the election of a United States Senator. He had consistently supported a certain candidate and at his request had agreed to go into a caucus with the other members of his party, there to determine by a vote of the majority who should be the nominee, and abide the result. Many ballots had been taken, but the caucus had not yet performed the function for which it had been organized. Upon a certain day it became evident that if the caucus were prolonged a candidate other than the one he was supporting would be nominated. Thereupon it was arranged by those who had been voting with him that they would abandon the caucus and their agreement in a body. If all of this faction, including Gose, would so desert the caucus, and decline to be bound as they had agreed, a suffcient number would not be remaining to make an election possible. Strange as it may seem at this day, every member of that faction, with the one exception, in direct violation of the signed agreement, fled the caucus. Gose alone remained and by adhering to his compact frustrated the plan of the others with whom he had been allied. A candidate other than the one he favored was consequently elected.

It is scarcely believable now, but is nevertheless a fact, that for this act Gose was at the time grossly maligned. It changed the political history of the state and there were those who, in their chagrin at the result, did not hesitate to intimate that ulterior influence had induced his course. They made it hard enough for him to endure, but he forgave them long ago, and so should I, for, as he often said to me, they did not understand. The others could find a way to violate a pledge, and, as we must not judge the workings of men's minds, we must say that to them their reasons were sufficient. But he could find no way, for he had passed his word and by that he must abide. Such was the limit of his simple logic. Oh, simplicity and common honesty-in thy name and for thy sake, and forasmuch as they would follow no other god but thee, how many men in this day and generation, have set themselves back in the race for the material things of life, and its immediate rewards, and died possessed of little but the whiteness of a soul.

When he was a very young man and before he came to the bar he served one term as sheriff of Walla Walla County, an honor which had been accorded him because of his personal popularity, but which well nigh wrought his ruin for this reason: In those days the sheriff provided board for the prisoners and was paid therefor a certain sum by the county. The difficulty was the county paid only until the term defined by the commitment had expired. So many prisoners chose, however, to remain about the jail and apparently accepted their discharge with the qualification that it be suspended during meal time, that Gose, not having the heart to turn the unfortunates away, was before the end of the term furnishing subsistence for a sensible portion of the county's population.

Had Gose had more aggressiveness and more taste for the practical as distinguished from the theoretical application of the law, he could easily have been one of the most successful practitioners. He had a legal mind of the keenest and possessed a profundity of learning not frequently encountered. He was a natural logician and a close student of literature. But he loved the law for the science sake alone and not because of the advantage one party might gain by a proper application of its principles. So long as he was able to maintain the abstract doctrine for which he contended, it was difficult for him to interest himself in the concrete result as measured by the profit or loss to either party. If the question involved was attractive, his case or yours interested him equally, and he would be apt to devote the same amount of time to its study or discussion.

In 1910 he was elected President of this Association, and presided with decorum and grace. He was utterly lacking in any element of vanity, and always criticised the erroneous viewpoint of the man who, having directly sought an honor, believed that he was honored by securing it. But he said to me that he felt profoundly the deep honor implied in his selection to preside over this organization, and that he belived he would never covet a higher one, as it had not occurred to him that this was within his deserts.

He was a Republican in politics and a delegate to the last national convention of that party. He was always unwavering in his partisanship when he had reached a conviction. He had left the Democratic party in 1896, and declared that holding the settled conviction he did upon what was then the paramount issue, he could not remain with a party with whose principles he was so clearly at variance, merely for the sake of maintaining a reputation for political regularity.

If ambition means the heedless pushing on for place and power, the laying waste of powers in the getting and the spending, the submerging of the natural impulses and the primal emotions in a great lust for worldly things, he was not ambitious. But if success be meas.

ured by the power to keep undiminished through life's span the purer ideals, to be "true to the kindred points of Heaven and Home," to die without an enemy and leave among his friends a void which none can fill, he was successful.

His truest love was nature and his passion was the things which spring from out the lap of earth. Always grace and charm and goodness walk with such a man. The last time I saw him he stood in a great field of roses at his rustic home in that fairest land of all, which is the valley of the Walla Walla. He had reared them all with his own hands, for this flower was his greatest joy. As he cut great armfuls to give to me and mine, he mused, "Were it not that they shall shortly perish, it were a shame to touch the knife to one of these." A few days later I stood beside him in the early summer morn, and again those roses were about him; and from out their pallid petals dropped the morning dew upon his bier. I could dream that every dew drop was a sentient tear: he had been their friend-as he was mine.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON OBITUARIES

Hon. Ira P. Englehart, President of the Washington State Bar Association:

Dear Mr. President-Last year your Committee on Obituaries mentioned that nineteen members of our profession had passed away during the year 1912-13, and voiced a prayer that the coming year would show a much shorter list of our departed brethren. This prayer has been answered. We have to report this year upon the departure of fifteen members of the profession. An evidence of our humble efforts to chronicle a short account of their lives is given below.

JOHN ARTHUR, Chairman.

ROBERT R. GEORGE.

The first of our brethren to bid us farewell was the victim of a singular accident. In the evening of September 10th, 1913, Robert R. George, about twenty minutes to ten o'clock, was on his way to his office in the Lyon Building in Seattle. When he reached that building the cage was standing at the first floor; as he stepped into the elevator it suddenly jumped, caught him and jammed him between the elevator and the shaft and dragged him almost to the ceiling, whence he fell back on the floor and into the basement. The elevator was in charge of a man fifty-four years of age; instead of taking hold of the handle of the door, he got hold of the controller, and the car shot up. Before he could stop it, the cage had caught its victim between it and the grating surrounding the elevator shaft, and Mr. George was thrown back into the basement. He died early the next morning. He was fifty-two years old and a native of Mount Vernon, Ohio. He had lived in Seattle twenty-two years, and was married on September 30th, 1896, to Miss Amy George, a daughter of the late Jesse W. George, former United States Marshal of Washington Territory. He left two children-Donald, aged thirteen years, and Doris, aged eleven years, besides Mrs. George. Mr. George had served twelve years as Justice of the Peace in Seattle, and four of those twelve as Police Magistrate of the city. He had resigned from the Justice Court and returned to the practice of law, after having made an unsuccessful effort to secure the nomination for the Superior Bench. He was a model Justice of the Peace-well read in the law, of even temperament, and a thoroughly refined gentleman.

JOHN A. PARKER.

In the City of Tacoma, on October 17th, 1913, one of the old-time practitioners of that city, John A. Parker, passed away. He was born

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