University of Maryland School of Pharmacy - Terra Mariae Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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Severn 1 eackle vv allis BY THOMAS S. BAER, ESQ., OF THE BALTIMORE BAR. EVERN TEACKLE WALLIS was, for many years prior to his death in 1894, the Provost of the University. The Bench and Bar assembled to do honor to his memorv and adopted a memorial minute, to be entered upon the records of the Supreme Bench, to this effect : ' ■ Rcsok ' cd. That in the deatli of Severn Teacklo Wallis. the Bar of Alar vland has lost its brightest ornament, his friends, a clierished and revered companion, and the State, its noblest citizen. Chief Justice Harlan, in responding for the Bench, in part, used this language : The acknowledged leader of the l)ar has fallen. Equally pre-eminent as a lawyer, orator, patriot. Severn Teackle Wallis has passed away. But the influence of his life remains. He occupied so conspicuous a place at the bar and in the community ; he united, in his remarkable personality, so much that fills the mind with admiration and the heart with affection ; he was such a personification of lofty ideals ; he was so high- minded, so cultured, so versatile, so accomplished, so knightly, so nobie, so faithlul in the performance of duty, so courageous, so contemptuous of all that was ignoble, so unsparing of himself in any cause that he espoused; he did so much to raise the standards of professional and public life; he was so ready to enlist his talents when- ever and wherever he believed they would make for right; he was so true to his friends, so attractive in his social qualities, that he has long been justly regarded as illustrating the highest type of our profession, a model as well as an inspiration to all who have known him, and to those who shall come after him. These proceedings, together with addresses made l)y mcmljers of the bar and the response from Chief Justice Robinson, of the Court of Appeals, will be found in Volume yy of the Maryland Reports. At the time of his death the managers or directors of the many associations and institutions, educational, charitable and semi-political, with which iie was connected, met and adopted resolutions or minutes of similar import, to be entered upon their records. He, of whom this superlative eulogy could be spoken, must, indeed, have been a man among men. 25

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When the writer was asked to contribute something to this pnbHcation, it occurred to him that nothing- couki lie more appropriate than to call the attention of the students of the l niversity to some of those traits of character in the one who was so long its head, which could cause such universal encomiums. It is not the purpose of this article to add — if that were possible — to the unstinted praise, spoken and written wh.en he died, but to point t)Ut some of the characteristics upon which that praise was based. jNlr. W ' allis was seventy-seven years old at the time of his death. He had reached, indeed, for some years had gone beyond, the age when the present and the things of the present, the future, and its developments in the realms of art and science and government are the things that engage the mind. (. )rdinarily, the thoughts of one, in the decline of life, dwell more in the past than in the activities of the present or the expectations of the future ; the gaze is upon what has been, rather than upon what may be done. In reading eulogies of i ir. Wallis one is struck, at once, with tlie absence of any intimation even that he had ceased, by reason of his age or infirmities, to be a present, active, potential ])ersonality. The language is the bar has lost its brightest ornament, n( t one who had been its brightest ornament ; the State, its noblest citizen, not one who liad been its noblest citizen. ' Jdie loss expressed is a present liereavement ; his leadership at the bar passes forever only at the time of his death ; the man, whom the people of the State nozv recognize as its noblest citizen, drops into his grave. It can be truly said of him that he never grew old. No one thought of him as old. His health was always frail, and in his later years his form was some- what bent. et even his physical appearance at the close of his life did not convey the idea of age or decrepitude. r)Ut his mind to the very last was as alert, as vigorous, as outhful, as it was when in the maturity of his ])hysical i)owcrs he had found the lM)untain of )nt]i for which I ' once de Leon souglit in vam : not one, nideed, that would sa ' e him from the end apjioinled unto all men, but which kv )[ him a man, in all the fullness of his powers until the end came, lie not only kejit at the work which the practice of his ])rofession entailed; many others do ihat. and yet grow old both mentally and physically: but his interest in and active effort to promote every movement that tended to elevate the standard of his profession to render more just and speedy and certain the dis]iensation of justice, to diffuse knowledge, to encourage art. to expose and drive out corruption from high places, to purif - jjolitics. to develop a citizenship founded uixm worth and righteousness, never flagged. And because of this be continticd to form new friendshi])s. . s the com- 26