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count, and her last husband was an Earl. In the face of that record all unprejudiced minds must agree that Bacon's mother-in-law was altogether a very desirable person.

Admitting that Jonah's case is in point it makes very strongly in favor of the mother-in-law. She has been compared to Jonah. He was one of God's chosen, and the whale could not cast him out until empowered and directed so to do from on high. It inevitably follows, therefore, that the mother-in-law is one of the chosen, the elect, and the reason that no son-in-law has ever succeeded in casting her off is because the power to do so has never been given him. She is under the protection of divine right. Then how dare you lift up your voice against her, O, son-in-law? Does it grind you to know that she understands your frailties and can not be deceived? What if she does see through those stories told to an o'er confiding wife about business detentions down town. What if you do roll home earlier from the club and the lodge. What if you do carry home a lighter load and all on her account. It is for the best. You ought to be a good son-in-law and she will help you. It was ordained from the first that she should assist in taking care of you, she is especially fitted for it, she has had years of experience with one of your gender probably no better than you, and she knoweth your frame.

Besides, she is helpful to your wife in a thousand ways. You may have the benefit of your father's assistance in your business without objection, why should you deny your wife, in the most trying period of her life the helpful experience of a mother? Surely that mother's influence that made your wife so lovable before marriage can not be harmful to her after. Where the daughter is the mother has a right to be. These are the words of the law: Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh. The command to leave father and mother is given to a man and not to the wife.

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The contrary idea is contrary to law, it was born in the dark ages when might made right, when woman was a mere chattel and nobility ate with its fingers; it can not exist in the light of civilization. Be kind then, to your mother-inlaw, show her the consideration which is her due. If she have property, help her take care of it,—you may chance to handle it after she is gone (laughter); she is your children's grandmother, next to their mother to them the kindest, dearest friend on earth. There is a Jewish saying: God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers. To that should be added,-The mother could not be ever present, and therefore he made the mother-in-law. (Applause.) When the children's mother can not listen they go with the troubles that fret their little hearts to grandma and there find always loving sympathy. All honor to the children's grandmother, the wife's mother, the husband's unselfish friend, the mother-in-law. (Applause.)

PRESIDENT HOLDOM: The next toast on the program is The Federal Judiciary, by Judge J. Otis Humphrey, of Springfield. (Applause.) (Applause.) I have much pleasure in presenting to you Judge Humphrey, the latest acquisition to the Federal Judiciary in our State.

JUDGE HUMPHREY: Mr. President and Gentlemen: I have been assigned to speak about the contribution which Illinois has made to the Federal Judiciary, the reason for the selection, as I suppose, being that as I am the newest member, I would be the easiest worked by the committee.

I shall confine my remarks to those members of the Federal Judiciary who are no longer living,-Judges Pope, Drummond, Treat, Allen and Davis.

I do this for two reasons. First, out of obedience to an injunction of my old preceptor, J. C. Robinson, early in my professional life, that I should avoid discussion of live men owing to their propensity to talk back. My second reason for this limitation is because you know the living

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Federal Judges. You know that Judge Blodgett has made a good judge and you know that Judges Grosscup, Kohlsaat and myself are good judges. How do you know it? For the same reason that a Springfield friend of mine assigned at one time upon a disputed question. My friend was repeating a story which was going about the town to the effect that a certain young man had married a certain young woman for her money. My friend repeated the statement. He was taken to task for it. He replied that it was true. How do you know he married her for her money, he was asked. "Because," he replied, "I have seen her." (Laughter.)

The first appointment made to the Federal bench in Illinois was that of Nathaniel Pope, appointed by President Monroe in 1818. Judge Pope had already won for himself an honorable distinction. At the age of twenty-three he was secretary and acting governor of the territory of Illi nois. At thirty-two he was a delegate in Congress and at thirty-four District Judge of the United States.

Perhaps his chief distinction then and his chief distinction now rests upon two acts of his while a delegate in Congress; the one fixed the northern boundary of Illinois as at present located; the other established a permanent fund for the encouragement of education in the State by appropriating for that purpose three per cent of moneys arising from public land sales. No more far-reaching, no more beneficial legislation has ever been secured by any public servant, at any time, on behalf of the State, and the historians generally accord to Judge Pope the distinction of having achieved more lasting benefits for the State of Illinois during his brief service as delegate than can be accorded to any other man.

As originally fixed, the territory of Illinois had for its northern boundary a line running east and west through the southern bend of Lake Michigan. Judge Pope, with marvelous certainty, saw that the metropolis of the north

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west must be developed on Lake Michigan. He saw that Illinois by her location, fertility of soil, her great length, her eastern shore washed for one hundred and fifty miles by the Ohio river, about the same distance by the Wabash and her western shore bounded by the Mississippi, would be forever united by commercial ties to the Gulf of Mexico and the influences of the south. He saw that the channels of commerce must eventually reach east and north through the great lakes and that if Lake Michigan or the southern portion of it belonged to Illinois, it would bind the State to Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, and thus create a rival interest against the southern influence; that this would make the State of Illinois the keystone of the national fabric; the cementing link, which would hold the south to the east and the north; that in the days to come a canal would be built, which in connection with the Illinois and Mississippi rivers would unite the lakes and the gulf and that whenever the question of the dissolution of the Union should be raised, as he argued it would be raised, Illinois would be the great central power that would save the Union. So in that early day in January, 1818, on the floor of the House of Congress he presented these arguments with such power that they were adopted without division; the boundary was moved northward for fifty miles, taking in what is now the fourteen northern counties of the State and the act also established a perpetual fund for the encouragement of learning. How like the voice of prophecy does this argument now appear! In less than fifty years. every word spoken by Judge Pope was verified in history. But for this change, the canal would not have been built. But for this change, the Illinois Central Railroad, the creation of which was a chief distinction of Senator Douglas, would not have been built. It was the vote of these fourteen counties in 1854, which sent Lyman Trumbull to the Senate. It was the vote of these same counties which, two

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years later, saved the State to the party of Lincoln and made possible his candidacy for President of the United States. I need not go farther by way of suggesting the momentous train of events which followed as the result of Judge Pope's work.

Judge Pope occupied the Federal bench for thirty-two years and during all that time seems to have preserved the character and dignity of a great Court. None of his opinions have been preserved, but the few citizens who remember him speak of his distinction both as a judge and in social life. Linder recites that Judge Logan said of him, that he had one of the finest legal minds he ever knew and this estimate has more weight in view of the historic fact that there was never any close friendship between the two men. Judge Pope's labors were performed during a period when the State was working under its first Constitution and the State Judiciary appointed by the legislature was often the tool of politicians. Many political questions were dragged into the Federal Court and it is due to Judge Pope to say that in all such cases his decisions have since received the approval of the profession. Such was the occasion for Joe Smith, the Mormon prophet, coming before Judge Pope in 1842 on writ of habeas corpus. Smith was arrested on a warrant in the hands of the Sheriff of Sangamon county. He was taken by a writ of habeas corpus before Judge Pope, who discharged him. There was intense political excitement.

The Court room was crowded and a bank of beautiful women sat on either side of the judge. It was on this occasion that Justin Butterfield began his famous speech with the words, "May it please the Court. I had never supposed that it would fall to my lot to stand before your Honor, the Pope, in the presence of angels to defend in my humble way the prophet of the Lord."

Pope died January 22, 1850. In his place was appointed Thomas Drummond, then of Galena, Illinois. The