COLONEL A. C. ELLIS.

 

            BORN in Kentucky, a University and Law School graduate, he was district attorney in St. Louis when the war came on. He joined the Confederate army and fought until the Confederate arm was broken in Missouri ; then made his way across the plains and settled in Carson City. Almost at once he took his place in the ranks of finished lawyers. Later he was nominated for governor, but was defeated because in those days Nevada was strongly Republican. After practicing his profession for ten years, he removed to San Francisco, where he pursued his profession for ten years more, always up in the front rank among lawyers. Removing to Salt Lake City, for twenty years he maintained his place among the leaders of his profession until his health failed. He died in March, 1912.

            His great charm was the high manhood that always was his. His great and varied scholarship and superb conversational powers with his ever-sanguine temperament made him delightful company everywhere. But for the war he would in ten years more have secured for himself any desired position in Missouri. As it was, he was one of the thousands of young men in the south whose hopes were shattered by the war, and whose after lives were always shadowed by the thought of what might have been. He was always genial and kindly ; he tried his utmost to conceal the scars of the wounds his soul had received ; but they were manifest enough to close observers.

            A tree blasted by a thunderbolt often puts out new branches, and with every spring tries to hide its scars under green leaves ; but it is never quite the same tree, no matter how bravely it meets the tempests; how uncomplainingly it bears its ancient wounds.

[332]