HON. GEORGE W. CASSIDY.

 

            GREAT George was he. In the late fifties he appeared in Dutch Flat, California, fresh from Missouri, then little more than a boy. But like the others from his state, he wanted to be shown. He became a reporter on a little newspaper there, and soon made a name. He was an inspiration to the people there to raise the funds to enable T. D. Judah to make his preliminary surveys for a railroad over the Sierras.

            He drifted early to Nevada and found a broader field for his local pen. Shorthand writing was not known then in newspaper work, but Cassidy was a wonder as a reporter. He could sit through a long speech and then write it up for next morning's paper in better form than it was generally delivered. He showed me one of these speeches as he had reported it, remarking : 'I believe I have improved that old duffer's speech."

            I suggested that he may have had an advantage that possibly the speaker might have been handicapped by conscientious scruples, to which he replied that if that had any weight it would be hard to improve any of my speeches.

            He was chaffing with a friend one day when he cried out : "Oh, let up. If you keep going I shall lose my reputation." To which the friend responded : "If you could it would be the making of you." To this he said : "Maybe it would," sat down and laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks.

            He worked on the Virginia City papers, growing intellectually constantly; went from there to White Pine, when the Eberhearst mine was found, and after a couple of years established the Sentinel at Eureka, Nevada.

            He was soon elected to the legislature and served with honor several terms, growing to be a first-class debater. Then an appreciative constituency sent him for two terms to Congress and he held his own there and did much for his state.

HON. GEORGE W. CASSIDY. 349

            He was given the position of bank inspector, and served with great credit in the office for several years.

            While making a speech at a state convention in Reno he was seized with heart failure and in half an hour was dead. He died in the prime of life, but he knew every man in Nevada ; he was a poor man but always had a dollar for an impecunious fellow citizen and excused himself for being caught so often by explaining that it was cheaper to give up a dollar than to wait to hear a tale of woe, and then would add : And maybe the poor devil really needed it."

            He made a name from nothing and grew intellectually from the day he landed in California to the day he died, and counted confidently on the belief that the highest was yet to come to him.

            He was a mighty worker, no one ever saw him in bad humor for more than a minute at a time ; he was the most genial man that ever looked misfortune in the face and laughed it to scorn ; he was one of the most genial of men and his death was too soon by a quarter of a century.