Section first: Parentage and education.
- The author's tribute to Sumner -- the three great funerals of our time—Lincoln, Greeley, Sumner -- Parentage and auspicious birth -- Academic and University course -- study and practice of law. He delivers law lectures. Edits Dunlap's Treatise
Many a grander tribute to the noble life of Charles Sumner will hereafter be paid by the pen; but this one, however unworthy, cannot be withheld while tears of mingled love and sorrow are yet undried upon the cheek of the nation. In private life, the first tributes to the loved and the lost, are the best, because they are the tenderest and most sincere. So, too, is it with a mourning people; and no offering of affection can be held more sacred than that which flows unbidden from the bereaved heart. Since the death of the Father of the Republic, which filled the country with grief, and threw distant nations into mourning, there have been but three funerals in America which bore even a faint resemblance to that, in the depth and extent of the public sorrow; and these have all occurred within the last few years:—The first was of Abraham Lincoln, who holds the next place to
