PORTRAITS AXD BIOGRAPHIES. 



349 



S. O. Daws. 



"The ancestors of Mr. Daws, on his father's side, are of 

 Ireland, while his maternal forefathers came from the 



colder region of the 

 Baltic. From the Emer- 

 ald Isle cosmopolitan 

 America draws mainly 

 her genius of wit, quick 

 intellect, sentiments of 

 bravery, venturesome- 

 ness and irrational im- 

 pulses, while the sturdy 

 Teutonic blood soothes 

 our nationality with in- 

 dustry, caution and the 

 love of equal liberty in 

 all its aims. Having 

 been born of poor par- 

 ents, it is readily conjectured that the facilities held out 

 to him for an early education were limited, since in those 

 days he did not have the advantages now given the poorest 

 youth of this generation by beneficent laws to acquire a 

 common school learning; but, as he says, by some hook or 

 crook, he managed to acquire these rudiments, which only 

 stimulated his mind with a thirst for a broader knowledge 

 of the world and its highest creati n man. This desire 

 he nourished by reading history, especially that of his own 

 country. Later on he gave to agriculture his studious 

 application, not only as a means for individual subsistence, 

 but from a more intellectual standpoint, when finally 

 important public topics, touching social and economic 

 relations, attracted his inquiry. He is cheerful to acknowl- 

 edge, also, the great benefits he derived, when a boy, from 

 his regular Sunday-school attendance, and from the divine 

 lessons of life as expounded from the pulpit to the congre- 

 gations of God. Thus taught in his early life that 



