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Aside from an intellectual treat, permit me to say that I am certain nothing will be omitted to make your cordial welcome a delightful reality, in the hospitality, which it will be yours to enjoy during every hour of your stay, when not engaged in association work.

Its members, and others, with their gracious wives and winsome daughters, will, I am sure, engage in active rivalry to make your visit as happy, as happy can be.

It would be an unpardonable invasion of the Committee's functions should I venture to tell you in advance all that is, or ought to be, in store for you-such as luncheons at high noon; receptions everywhere, with juleps of grape juice, automobile drives on beautiful boulevards, and through lovely parks; steamboat excursions, and the banquet final-not omitting golf for such of our guests as would enjoy physical recreation after long listening to lawyers, oftimes with pleasure, and sometimes with patience, as time limit drew nigh.

This reminds me, to inject an amusing incident wherein a flighty lawyer, having completed only one-half of his argument, turned dramatically to the clock and feelingly said: "Yon dial plate admonishes me of the rapid flight of time, and the painful and constantly recurring thought of it, has made me forget what I was about to say." To which the court, with great relief, replied: "Although given to you, you are not bound to consume it all. Your forgotten argument will be duly considered."

My pleasurable duty will have been done, when I shall have conveyed to you our sincere and hearty welcome. It will then remain for the Committee of Arrangements to make good, wherein, if they fail, the Committee on Grievances will be heard from at our next annual session.

Seven association meetings have been held at Memphis. We only wish they had been or will be, seven times seven, for your coming has always furnished pleasure, and your going has always left behind a feeling of closer union and higher estimate of the Bar Association of Tennessee. Without more, we greet and welcome you.

Mr. Biggs:-Gentlemen, your committee has selected to respond to this eloquent and cordial address of welcome a speaker

of such attainments that when he was twenty-one years of age he was elected as speaker of the House of Representatives of this State that he might continue speaking perpetually during the meeting of that assembly. It affords me very great pleasure to present to you the Hon. Hilsman Taylor, of Trenton, who will respond to the address of welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Taylor.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen and Members of the Bar Association of Tennessee:

The only objection that I have to responding to an address of welcome is the time at which you have to respond. One could perform this ceremony much more effectively if he were permitted to enjoy all of the hospitalities before he had to tell about them. Of course, I know that every word spoken by the distinguished gentleman in his eloquent address of welcome was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; and I can now see this entire Association embraced by the men and women of Memphis, in my mind's eye, but just think how much better I could tell you how we have enjoyed it, when we are about to leave. However, that might be a dangerous thing to do, considering the fact that some of us come from dry towns, but I forgot, Memphis is dry, too.

This is the second time in the last few years that the Association has met in Memphis and in behalf of those of us who attended the meeting the last time, I want to thank the Bar and the people of Memphis twice for their cordial welcome into their splendid and hospitable city. Too much cannot be said of your treatment of the visitors at the last meeting, and I feel that you will even do more this time. We appreciate profoundly the warm welcome and generous hospitality that has been so eloquently extended to us.

Your magnificent and progressive city stands here on the banks of the mighty Father of Waters, the embodiment of prosperity, thrift and energy, the gateway to the Southwest. There is in the atmosphere that which makes men hurry onward and upward forever seeking and striving for a higher goal. An invitation to the stranger is not needed to your city, for the latch strings hangs on the outside and it is known far and wide

that in Memphis a man's success is only measured by his ability and his application.

For a great many years, the fathers were saying "Go West young man," but now all over Tennessee from the Great Smoky Mountains, on the East, passing on West into other States and territories the Patriarchs are saying "Go to Memphis, Young man, go to Memphis.'

All over Tennessee, Memphis is painted as a city flowing with milk and honey and a place where any industrious young man can gather in the money. The greatest glory for the ambitious country youth is success in Memphis and they believe that success in Memphis will be the reward of the strong. When a country boy sniffles the fresh air from the forests on a frosty morning and drinks his fill of nature's exhilarating freedom he feels he can conquer any great city.

Memphis is strictly a Southern city, full of Southern people, and there are none who can give the same warm welcome that the people of the South can, and we appreciate your welcome more because we know you have let the business take care of itself, and given yourselves over to our enjoyment and pleasure. We esteem this a great honor very highly, but, we feel that our cause is one that deserves great honor. The Bar Association of Tennessee was not formed to aid the lawyers; it was not formed for the pleasure nor profit of the members, but that the lawyers might get together and help their clients, that they might exert their best efforts to keep the State in the straight and narrow channel of wise and efficient government and restrain useless and costly litigation.

Most conventions, associations and meetings have for their purpose the betterment of the members of the organization or the success of some particular party or class, but the only good that we ask or seek is the public good, innovations that help all alike and of which any man may partake freely of who places himself in the right position in the proper state. The lawyer is the world's greatest Altruist and the only man who is at all times seeking to do good for others and especially is that true of those who attend our annual meetings for only those come who love their profession and love the work for the work's sake.

With these purposes and ideals so well known we feel like this meeting is entitled to the best you have in your city and that the Association is entitled to your support for your own better protection and safety if for no other reason.

In spite of all our goodness, we have not come to your city as did the angels in the days of old, to warn you to flee from the wrath of God, for if I remember correctly the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers met in Memphis just before the last meeting of the Association and there were many times as many of the engineers present as there were lawyers, but the liquor dealers said they much preferred the lawyers. If by chance we should leave the Association and visit the Bar, forget it, forget it.

We appreciate your eloquent and heartfelt welcome and assure you it is a real pleasure and a joyful feeling to be permitted to enjoy your hospitality and live with you for only a too short a time in your matchless city.

ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT, ALBERT W. BIGGS. Gentlemen of the Association and Ladies:

I was not present at the meeting of this Association, which was held in Knoxville last year, hence I did not have the opportunity of returning to you my thanks for the honor conferred upon me by my election as its President. I beg of you that I may be permitted to do so now.

I know of few honors that can come to a Tennessee lawyer greater than to preside over the Tennessee Bar Association. For more than one hundred years the bar of Tennessee has played an important and an honorable part in our history. From the days of Felix Grundy, Haywood and Cooke, a long and illustrious line of lawyers, Catron, Andrew Jackson, the Wrights, Archibald and our own Luke E., the Reeses, the Greens, the Carrolls, Howell E. Jackson, Horace H. Lurton, Jacob M. Dickinson, and others, have furnished not only to the State, but to the nation, examples of the highest ethics united with great ability and unselfish patriotism. It has been to the honor of the Tennessee bar that its members have been selected for the most difficult and important tasks which have confronted our national government, and it many instances by a President

of a different political party. Thus it was that one of the members of this Association was called to represent the United States Government in the Behring Sea controversy; another was sent to formulate a government for a semi-savage people in the distant islands of the sea. Both occupied seats in the cabinet of presidents of different political beliefs. Twice have members of this bar been appointed to places on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, when the appointee was of a different political faith from the appointing power. I may say that the time has never been, and I trust it never will be, when the lawyers of Tennessee will be ready to enlist under any flag which promised personal aggrandizement at the sacrifice of professional honor.

To be numbered among the distinquished presidents of an Association, with a membership such as this Association has, is an honor of which I am justly proud, and I thank you, gentlemen of the Association, for my election.

The Constitution of this Association makes it the duty of the President to open each annual meeting with an address, in which he is enjoined to "communicate the most noteworthy changes in the statute law on points of general interest made in this State and by Congress during the preceding year." At the present writing (June 21, 1913), the session of the General Assembly which convened on the first Monday of January last. is yet in session, and, while a few weeks ago there were none who would venture to say when it would adjourn, there are now some of greater faith, who look for an adjournment during this calendar year. For the benefit of our invited guests I pause to say that not all of these have been legislative days, but during at least half of the time both houses have but met and adjourned from day to day. I venture that if such were not the case, and if all this time had been given to the making of laws, we would be in the condition here that was once said of France: "We have more laws in France than in all the rest of the world besides." I do not disparage the quantity of our laws, despite the fact that our legislature has not been running at full capacity. Indeed, during a part of the time, owing to the biennial pilgrimage of some of the members to another jurisdiction, and a refusal at other times to attend the sessions, they

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