Price.] 216 f^P"'- 



Oswald Thompson was as husband and father I will not dare to de- 

 lineate, nor venture to intrude upon the hallowed scene of his home, 

 where the wounds yet freshly bleed; but will leave you to form your 

 own high ideal of all that the kind, affectionate, and good husband 

 and father should be, and to assure you, from all I have learned, that 

 that ideal will not surpass the real, of him whom we now most 

 sincerely mourn and honor. 



A slight circumstance will indicate the religious and reverential 

 bent and habit of Oswald Thompson's mind. Within the past year, 

 while convalescent, and sojourning at a kind friend's country place, 

 when on Sunday morning some reviews were offered for his amuse- 

 ment, he quietly replied, "T would like something better to-day;" 

 and accepted and read Dr. Barnes' Notes on Isaiah. 



But duty compels me here to change the tenor of JTiy remarks, 

 and to ask you and the public to contemplate with me a melancholy 

 phase of the latter years of this eminent and good public servant ; 

 that the wrong done to him, to a large extent for want of thought 

 and consideration, may not be repeated and perpetuated upon his 

 judicial contemporaries and successors. By the united testimony of 

 many judges and lawyers, and other witnesses, Judge Thompson has 

 fallen an early victim to overwork, too close confinement in a bad 

 atmosphere, and that with a compensation wholly inadequate; if any 

 could compensate so severe a sacrifice as that of health, happiness, and 

 life itself. Yet although from the bitter tears of sorrow shed upon 

 his untimely grave there now grow bitter plants, let us endeavor 

 to make them medicinal for cure to save health and life in others. 

 So a kind Providence intends; from evil he ever educes good; and 

 commissions the bitter to heal and restore. 



At the expiration of the term of ten years, for which Judge 

 Thompson was elected, he was again nominated and elected to the 

 same office. It had then been perceived that his constitution had 

 become impaired by excess of labor, by long confinement in the 

 courts, and by breathing the tainted air of the illy-ventilated Quarter 

 Sessions Court-room. He was warned, by solicitous friends, of the 

 peril he was about to incur by a re-election, as no doubt he had been 

 keenly self-warned by his sufferings. But he had no choice, and 

 then declared his purpose to continue to work on while life should 

 last. He had left his practice, and his clients had become satisfied 

 with other counsel ; and no one's lost business would return at his 

 bidding, and if that were possible, could not be sustained with im- 

 paired health and strength. His salary, consumed in maintaining 



