118 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1910. 



the great problems arising continually under new conditions inci- 

 dent to our progress and higher civilization that our republican in- 

 stitutions and the a Hairs of the people have not suffered. 



" Chief Justice Fuller was among the greatest of the;-e great and 

 illustrious lawyers and judges, and it is therefore most fitting thai 

 we should do honor to his memory and hold these appropriate exer- 

 cises. By so doing we not only honor him, but we foster that spirit 

 which always exists among a free people, and which tends to con- 

 serve our highest ideals and uphold our free institutions. Great men 

 make great history, and love, veneration, and respect for them make 

 a great people. 



"The great Italian poet, speaking of the mighty presence which 

 he met in that mystic realm of departed spirits, paid a great tribute 

 to him when he said, 'His was a life so round and full that when 

 it rolled out of time into eternity the world knew not how great 

 a void was left until a generation has passed away.' This thought 

 is applicable to him whom we meet to honor to-day. 



" He was not a young man, dying in the fullness of his strength and 

 power with unfilled possibilities. This is no place for sorrow. This 

 man died after a full, well-rounded, completed life. He died when 

 age was ripe, with the harness of his great official position yet upon 

 him, and after maintaining the best traditions of his great office and 

 of a great lawyer. Crowned with honor, ripe with age, respected 

 by a great people, he leaned his white head beneath the soft touch 

 of death — a death befitting such a life. 



" ' Why weep ye, then, for him, who, haying run 

 The bounds of man's appointed years, at last. 

 Life's blessings all enjoyed, life's labor done, 

 Serenely to his final rest has passed?' " 



Mr. Charles E. Littlefield, on the same occasion, said : 

 " * * * He came from a family of able preachers and lawyers. 

 With Mr. Chief Justice Shaw, of Massachusetts, one of the greatest 

 justices that ever sat on the Massachusetts bench, he had a common 

 ancestor in Rev. Habijah Weld, called in his time 'a perfect 

 Boanerges in the pulpit.' Rev. Habijah Weld was the fourth in a 

 succession of four generations of preachers. Mr. Fuller's paternal 

 and maternal grandfathers were both lawyers of note. Hon. Nathan 

 Weston, his mother's father, was one of the first associate justices of 

 the Maine supreme court and its chief justice for seven years, and 

 a lawyer and judge of unusual ability. His father and mother each 

 had a brother who was a lawyer. He graduated from Bowdoin Col- 

 lege when 20 years of age, destined to become one of the most dis- 

 tinguished of an alumni which has a larger percentage of men of 

 eminence and note than that of any other educational institution in 

 the country. He had by inheritance an aptitude for the law. Ad- 



