WILLIAM M. STEWART.

 

            HE WAS six feet two inches in height, his natural weight in early manhood was about 210 pounds, which, with age increased to 250 pounds. He had a great wealth of reddish-brown hair, with immense whiskers and mustache of the same hue; his eyes, I think, were gray, but under any light except sunlight, they seemed to be black. He had fine hands and feet, and was a most impressive-looking man.

            He had, too, a bearing like that of a lion when he stalks up and down his cage and dreams of his days in the jungle when he was lord of all.

            He was born a little east of Rochester, New York, in Wayne county, and grew up on a farm.  He received a fair education and studied law. But he did not know law enough to hurt, until after he reached California.

            When the news reached the east of the gold discoveries in the far west, he only waited to have the news confirmed, and then, going west, bought four or five yoke of oxen and a wagon, loaded w r hat stores he thought he would need, and drove his oxen into California. No man from Pike county, Missouri, could excel him in manipulating an ox team.

            When he sold his outfit, bought a few books and opened a law office in Nevada City, California, those who had seen him navigate his "prairie schooner' and oxen, resented the change and gave gloomy forecasts of the future of an accomplished "bull-whacker" trying to be a lawyer.

            But Stewart was never sensitive and was always sanguine, and worked on the theory that a man who possessed the needed qualifications to successfully engineer an ox team across the continent might, if he tried, succeed in other fields of effort.

            He grew in his profession from the first. If, now and then, he received a metaphorical black eye from some giant at the bar like Colonel E. D. Baker or General Charles H.

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Williams, he was not discouraged, neither did he sulk in his tent, but went to work to fit himself to meet a like attack in future, and reasoned that after a while there would be no attacks that he could not parry.

            It is told that when the original James Gordon Bennett had a street scrap in New York, and got the worst of it; he quietly went to a pump on the street corner, washed the blood from his face and eyes, then sat down on the curb, and wrote a picturesque account of the collision for publication in his own paper, declaring, with proper journalistic alertness, that he did not intend to permit the Tribune to get a scoop.

            Our idea is that Stewart would have done the same thing under like circumstances.

            His practice in California oscillated between Nevada county and Sierra county, Nevada City and Downieville being the respective county seats.

            He had sharp competition. There were Thornton, Taylor, Meredith, Dunn, Campbell, McConnell and a score more, and important cases drew from Marysville and Sacramento their ablest attorneys, and many of them were giants.

            The resourcefulness of Stewart was something wonderful. Then, as said above, he was not sensitive, neither was he sentimental, and his nature all his life was to conquer any difficulty that he met.

            He commenced the construction of a fine house in Nevada City. Asked what he wanted of so pretentious a structure, he replied that the finest girl in all the Golden West had consented to marry him, and on a certain date he was going to San Francisco to get her to come up and put the house in order.

            At the appointed time he left for San Francisco. He called upon the lady she was a most splendid woman and told her he had come for her. Then, in the most delicate and pleading words she could master, she told him that she had thought that she loved him and meant to marry him, but that she had met another, and from that hour she had known that it would be wrong for her to marry any other man.

            Stewart made no comment, uttered no reproach, expressed no sorrow, but merely asked the name of the favored man.

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            The lady tolcl him, he bade her good-bye and went back to his hotel. Soon, ex-Senator Foote- -formerly of Mississippi, came in, and seeing Stewart, asked him to take a drink. Stewart acquiesced, then asked Foote to drink, and they made a night of it and all the next day, and part of the second night.

            They had reached the limit and were lying side by side on the floor of Stewart's room, when Foote said :

            "Stewart, you are a northern man; your political principles are a disgrace to the world, but personally I like you exceedingly, and it will be a pleasure to me at any and all times to serve you personally.'''

            "You can do me a great favor right now," said Stewart. "I want your permission to ask your daughter Annie to be my wife."

            "Well," said Foote, "as I told you, your political principles are a disgrace, but you are clever, and I never go back on my word, suh. Go and see and if you can fix up things with Annie all right. She might do worse."

            Stewart straightened up as rapidly as he could, and when fully himself, he called upon the young lady and asked her to be his wife. She wanted a little time to consider the matter, but Stewart insisted that every day she would be considering would be a day lost for them both, and he carried his point. Within a week they were married. Stewart carried his bride triumphantly home and it was a long time before Nevada City people new that Mrs. Stewart was not the lady that he had all the time expected to marry.

            By the way, the other lady married the man of her choice. The pair moved to Virginia City just about the time that Mr. and Mrs. Stewart moved there, and the two men were rivals professionally and politically for years, Stewart winning more than half the honors professionally and all the honors politically. But the other was the abler lawyer.

            The Comstock was just the field for William M. Stewart. The laws governing mining titles at the time were confused and often of doubtful construction ; the titles sometimes over-- laid each other three times on the same ground, the courts were presided over in great part by judges who in the east had

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been given appointments because of political services rendered congressmen; the majority of them knew little of the science of the law and nothing at all of the complications they would meet in the west; many of them were as corrupt as they were stupid ; there were witnesses who could be educated ; there were jurors who were not there because of the climate; tremendous sums were often at stake, and fortunes were made or lost on the determination of a case.

            In such a field William M. Stewart was entirely at home ; the forces around him were such as he loved to ride and control.

            Then he was, personally, much liked by the stormy crowds that surged up and down the great lode. He was generous, never apparently caring for money, a host was always ready to back him, and he had a courage that never failed him in or out of court.

            Much more profound lawyers than he thundered against him, and made arguments which before a great judge would have carried absolute conviction, but Stewart was never fazed ; he could appeal to juries and to those chumps of judges successfully, when his case had been torn to shreds, and in a thousand adroit ways -baffle all legitimate conclusions.

            He made a great fortune between the time of the finding of the Comstock and the creation of the state of Nevada, and then was in such a position that it was conceded on all sides that he would be one of the first United States senators.

            He was elected almost without opposition.

            In the senate his first work was to frame a bill defining how quartz veins should be located, their extent, and what the location should include, pushed it through both houses and never rested until he had obtained the president's signature. For that service he is entitled to the gratitude of every mining man in the nation.

            He performed much other splendid work for his constituents and for the west, and was one of the bulwarks of his party in the senate on all the questions that were sprung in reconstruction days. He was a stalwart of stalwarts. Grant leaned on him, so did Conkling, Chandler, Carpenter all of them.

            He maintained his place as one of the foremost senators

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until the silver question assumed an acute stage. So sanguine was he in the righteousness of the silver cause that he believed he could carry the senate his way. He did not realize that the cards were all stacked against him and when finally told by a friend that he was lighting a hopeless battle, he replied : ''I may not convince them, but I can make the situation almighty disagreeable for them."

            At last, when he began to speak on that theme, senators, one by one, would get up and leave the hall. The gold press, too, assailed him with anathemas and ridicule, but neither senators nor newspapers could answer his arguments, and they are more pertinent today than when delivered.

            Mr. Stewart left the senate after serving two terms, was re-elected in 1885, and served two terms more.

            Filled with his old farmer memories, he went over into Virginia, bought a farm and started a dairy. But it was not a financial success. When his last term in the senate expired he returned to Nevada, built a fine house in Bullfrog and opened a law office and remained there two years until the titles in Goldfield and adjacent camps were pretty well settled. He then returned to Washington and made that city his home until in about 1908 he suddenly died.

            He was one of the most extraordinary men who ever lifted his head above the level in California and Nevada; one of the most forceful personalities in the nation.

            He had fine legal abilities, though not of the highest, but he was one of the most successful lawyers that the west ever knew. His executive abilities were wonderful. He would have made a superb state governor, a broad, enlightened president of a continental railroad company, and a much more able president of the United States than either of several who have been presidents.

            In preparing a case for trial not one detail was omitted to insure success ; in framing up a political campaign he was the same way.

            He liked to make money, but he cared little for it, and rich men received no consideration from him on account of their wealth.

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            When one very rich man was in much trouble he sent for Stewart to help him out.

            Stewart said : "I will do what I can for you, but I don't like your tone. You have been a d----d old fool, but now brace up and take your medicine."

            He was hearty and strong to the very last, and did not mind a champagne dinner that lasted all night. He should have lived many years longer.

            For some ailment he submitted to a petty operation, and died next day. My belief is that he died from the effects of the anesthetic administered to him.

            He was not only a great man, but one of the very truest of friends. His loyalty to his friends was one of the very finest of his manifold attributes. He would not permit any one to assail a friend of his in the friend's absence.

            He early clashed with President Cleveland, most naturally on the silver question. Shortly after the inauguration of President McKinley, he came west. I asked him if the change of presidents would make any difference in the status of silver in Washington. He thought it would not. I said, 'The change of presidents then -is not much more than a change of men ?"

            He replied : "That is about all except that the man who is now president is a gentleman."

            He made "The House of Stewart" a great house.