JAMES FROST PITT.

By JOSEPH MORTON.

James Frost Pitt, son of John E. and Elizabeth Pitt, was born at his father's home, one mile south of Platte City, Missouri, in the year 1851. He died at San Antonio, Texas, on Tuesday, the 10th day of April, 1906, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and was buried the following Saturday in the cemetery at Platte City.

Of the time intervening between his birth and death, the first fifteen years were spent upon the family homestead near Platte City. His father, member of the Constitutional Convention of 1845, member of the Legislature in 1858, veteran of the Mexican War, circuit attorney of his county in 1878, was for four years of this period away from home fighting the battles of the Confederacy under General Price, while the mother, declining the proffered shelter in the town, remained on the farm with the children about her that she might the better maintain her independence and do the father's part as well as her own in providing for the family.

Then followed a period devoted to schooling, a year or so at Platte City, four years at the State University at Columbia, then back to Platte county to teach school and read law and there to receive his license to practice on April 9, 1874, and to follow his profession till May 11, 1875, when, complimented by resolutions of regret at his leaving, passed by the Platte County Bar, he moved to St. Joseph, since which time and to within a few weeks of his death, he passed in and out before the people of this community, exemplifying in his daily life the highest ideals of professional integrity and manly character.

Orderly, accurate, thorough, just, faithful, persistent, self-reliant, he was a man of great labors and unwearied industry. Pure in heart, his thought was likewise pure and his conversation clean.

An indefatigable worker, no labor was too great for him to undertake. He was thorough to a rare degree. Upon first coming to St. Joseph, having little practice and much leisure time, he went through the Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, line by line, word by word, from cover to cover, and reduced its contents to possession, and was perhaps the most accurate man in the use of words and in the pronunciation of them that ever practiced at the St. Joseph Bar. It is doubtful if any of his contemporaries ever knew him to misuse a word or to mispronounce one. The faults and inaccuracies in our digests and in the revisions of our statutes jarred upon his harmonious soul and early in his practice he began the preparation of a digest of the decisions and an index of the statutes and session acts for his own use. During his whole life he labored with unceasing faithfulness upon this work designed to remove these faults and to bring order and system out of what seemed to him to be chaos, a task never completed but co-extensive with his life, and that resulted in making him perhaps the best authority in the State upon our decisions and statute law.

Sincere, open, frank, his words were always the correct expression of his thought. They impressed the hearer with confidence in what he said and with faith that he believed as he had spoken. Results he left to destiny and fate. Processes were his own, and in his management of a case no circumstance arising, ever in mind, justified departure from what he considered to be the strict right and strict law of the matter. The desirability of gaining a verdict or of scoring a judgment were never so potent as to cause him to deviate a hair's breadth from the line of procedure his mind and his conscience told him to pursue.

He was a man of strong feeling as well as of decided opinions; self-contained and self-reliant, however, to such a

degree that he rarely gave expression to those thoughts that affected him most, except to those who knew him intimately. There was a delicate, sensitive, affectionate quality to his nature, which the dignity and outward bearing of the man concealed. Beneath his placid exterior, he carried a heart tender and sympathetic to all persons suffering distress, haughty, disdainful, severe, to tyranny, oppression or deceit.

Such being the cast of his truly scientific mind, it was inevitable that he should walk apart, unaffected by those considerations which usually influence mortals and that his pathway should lead him far above the common highway. He never ran for office; he never held an official position; the meanness of our politics he viewed with contempt. The process of begging votes, of circulating calls to run for office, subserviency to interests having political power, he held in disdain. He needed not the plaudits of the public since he had the approbation of his own mind. He avoided those positions galling with their embarrassments and condescensions to a truly noble soul, which the foolish vanity of the world denominates as honors.

He was singularly free, as a lawyer, from those practices excused as management, tact, diplomacy, but which have served to bring the profession into disrepute. The attainment of justice in the trial of his cases was the one result his mind and soul endeavored to secure. Of rare analytical powers and unbending uprightness, he drew the line of conduct straight and true. A dignity of manner approaching solemnity, marked his bearing in the trial of his cases. He entered the courtroom as going to a sacrament. Justicia fiat, coelum ruit-let justice be done though the heavens fall—was a maxim blazing in fire before his eyes. The judge and the jurors were the arbiters of fate and he stood before them a priest in the holy of holies.

Such was the man as his associates knew him, faithful as the sun, fearless as the north wind, pure as the hoar frost.

THOMAS JEFFERSON PORTER.

BY H. K. WHITE.

Thomas Jefferson Porter was the son of Jesse J. Porter and Marion (Fowler) Porter, who were natives of New York. Shortly after their marriage they moved to Greenville, Ohio, where Thomas Jefferson Porter was born December 17, 1842. He received a good common school education and in 1860 commenced the study of law in Sidney, Ohio. In 1863 when his father moved to Leon, Iowa, he went there with him and continued his studies and was admitted to the bar at Leon, Iowa, in 1865. In a few months he moved to Plattsburg, Clinton County, Missouri, where he resided until 1888.

In a few months after his arrival at Plattsburg his ability was so apparent that Judge Turner, one of the most mature members of the Clinton County Bar, offered him a partnership which continued until Judge Turner's death. For a time, by appointment from Governor Silas Woodson, he acted as probate judge of Clinton county, but declined further service in that office because of its interference with his practice. After this he held no public elective office. For many years he was the attorney for the School District of St. Joseph, and the business of that growing district brought many cases of importance and intricacy to his office which were well handled.

He was married in 1866 to Miss Sarah A. Shepherd of Cumberland county, Ohio, who survives him. He left surviving him five daughters. One son died in early infancy.

In 1888 he moved to St. Joseph where he practiced his profession until his death, January 12, 1906. Politically he was a Democrat and stood high in its councils and expounded its doctrines with energy and logical ability. He was genial in his social intercourse and to know him well was a culture.

Judge Porter came to Clinton county unknown, with no friends to give that assistance so valuable to a beginner in our profession, but he was soon recognized as a man of force and unusual ability. He was a careful student and conscientious in preparation of his cases. Gifted with unusual powers of rhetoric and oratory he was sought in those cases where those accomplishments were most needed, and for many years no case of importance was tried in Clinton county unless he appeared for one party or the other. Although not blessed with an advanced collegiate education, his forensic efforts showed rich imagination, accurate and graceful use of language, terse and singularly apt. His defense of Solomon Musser in the criminal case growing out of the same facts that are set forth in the case of Robinson v. Musser, 78 Mo. 153, was a model of invective, irony and sarcasm, never yielding to the temptation to descend to vulgarity. Although opposed by trained prosecutors of greater age and experience, although the atmosphere of the county was unfavorable and although this case should never have been submitted to the jury, he won for his client an acquittal which is said to be a rare victory in defending cases of this character.

Although many of his greatest triumphs were achieved in defense of persons charged with crime, so that he was recognized as one of the best criminal lawyers of Northwest Missouri, he never forgot his fealty to his professional oath by adopting those methods which have brought so much reproach on the criminal practice in the minds of the people.

Immediately upon taking up his residence in St. Joseph he was recognized as the equal of any member of that Bar and his services were sought in important cases already pending by those who knew that he possessed all the necessary qualifications of a practicing lawyer. He was safe and sound in counsel, diligent in study, logical in argument, persuasive and forceful before the jury.

Better than all this, he had high ideals of life and successfully tried to live close to them. One associate says: "He was always just and generous with the members of the