I well remember Mr. Rix when I was a boy and young man. My father was a close friend and a fellow-Democrat with him, and I thus gained an intimate knowledge of Mr. Rix.

His mind was the most vigorous, active, and incisive of that of any man that I ever knew. He was of light physical frame, a large, well-developed head, black hair, keen. black eyes, and a nervous energy that would attempt to conquer anything, as you will see by his picture now presented to you.

He was a Democrat because he believed in the principles advocated by the political party that he belonged to, and not because of the spoils of office.

By permission of Brother Corning, I quote from a letter written by our president, relating to Mr. Rix:

"Prior to the year 1846 I only knew of him as an active leader of the Democracy, and the editor of the Coos County Democrat, a small, but spicy sheet, recognized as a reliable and vigorous exponent of Democratic doctrines.

"After the year 1846 my acquaintance with him became quite intimate and friendly and so continued until his death.

"During all this time he was clerk of the Superior and the Common Pleas Courts in Coös and for two years or more of it he represented Lancaster in the legislature and for a similar period held a seat in the state senate. As a legislator, he was well fitted for a proper discharge of the duties devolving upon him, was prompt, diligent, discreet, and influential.

"I do not know what his early training and education were, but whatever they were, his mind was well-disciplined and stored with a large fund of general information.

"His intellectual resources were always at his command. As a writer, his articles were always terse, logical, and to the point. He was an intense worker, and indefatigable in the discharge of all his duties, whether public or private.

"During the last two or three years of his life he was in bad health, so bad that most men in like condition would have been abed, yet he was about his work early and late.

"He was a man that followed his convictions with untiring assiduity and uncompromising boldness. In politics, his party trusted him implicitly, in his honesty and sagacity, and in political contests his singleness of purpose, his zeal, and straightforward course was an inspiration to his followers and friends, and was notice to the other side to retire or prepare for a desperate struggle. The man who could count Mr. Rix as his friend had something on which he could rely in case of need.

"The man whom Mr. Rix counted an enemy needed not to fear stabs in the dark, but he might expect solid warfare and blows thick and heavy by daylight. Mr. Rix was honest and able, earnest and untiring, and his death in the prime of life was a great loss to the community in which he lived, to the political party with which he was affiliated, to the state and the country."

I should be glad to present my own views and memories of Mr. Rix further, but want of opportunity to make preparation and time now to do so prevent, and I will leave it to Brother Kent to present Mr. Rix to you.

JAMES MADISON RIX.

A BIOGRAPHY, BY HENRY O. KENT.

This sketch of the career of Mr. Rix will not be like the sermon so highly approved for its recital of notable events occurring during the life of the deceased, nor will it be wholly unlike that production, in that it will necessarily be a narrative of the times and a story of the man,, almost wholly outside any legal work or professional duties performed by him in his capacity of clerk of our courts, a connection which presumably accounts for its production before this association.

Although much my senior, I remember Mr. Rix very well, recall his personality, and the crowning events of his maturer life. I regard it as fortunate that at this meeting a paper has been prepared upon one of Mr. Rix's contemporaries, a man eminent in public life as in the profession, Jared Warner Williams, representative, senator from, and governor of, his state. There were points of similarity in the career of each, those singular coincidences. that emphasize the commonplace in life. Each was in political life; the one was defeated before the people for governor, and the other for state senator, by an exceptional combination of adverse elements, and the year succeeding the defeat, in each case, victory came to each, seating the one in the executive chair and the other in the state senate, the one to be advanced to the elevated station of federal senator, the other to the presidency of the state senate.

For years before his decease, Governor Williams, out