More fitting words could not be selected with which to close this sketch than those of the gifted and lamented Langley, whose best years were given to scientific research, and whose name is inseparably associated with the Smithsonian Institution:
"What has been done in these two paths the reader may partly gather from this volume—in the former from the various articles by contemporary men of science, describing its activities in research and original contributions to the increase of human knowledge; in the latter, in numerous way—among others from the description of the work of one of its bureaux, that of the International Exchanges, where it may be more immediately seen how universal is the scope of the action of the Institution, which, in accordance with its motto 'PER ORBEM,' is not limited to the country of its adoption, but belongs to the world, there being outside of the United States more than twelve thousand correspondents scattered through every portion of the globe; indeed there is hardly a language, or a people, where the results of Smithson's benefaction are not known, and associated with his name.
"If we were permitted to think of him as conscious of what has been, is being, and is still to be done, in pursuance of his wish, we might believe that he would feel that his hope at a time when life must have seemed so hopeless, was finding full fruition; for events are justifying what may have seemed, at the time, but a rhetorical expression, in the language of a former President of the United States, who has said: 'Renowned as is the name of Percy in the historical annals of England, let the trust of James Smithson to the United States of America be faithfully executed, let the result accomplish his object, the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men, and a wreath more unfading shall entwine itself in the lapse of future ages around the name of Smithson than the united hands of history and poetry have braided around the name of Percy through the long ages past.'"
XII THE OLD RANGER
JOHN REYNOLDS, GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS, A BORN POLITICIAN—HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THE PEOPLE—HIS AFFECTATION OF HUMILITY—ADMITTED TO THE BAR —HE CONDEMNS A MURDERER TO DEATH—HIS CURIOUS ADDRESS TO ANOTHER MURDERER—BECOMES A MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE—ELECTED GOVERNOR —HIS GENEROSITY TO HIS POLITICAL ENEMIES—BECOMES A MEMBER OF CONGRESS—HIS ADMIRATION FOR HIS ASSOCIATES—ELECTED A MEMBER OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE—RETIRES TO PRIVATE LIFE.
This world of ours will be much older before the like of John Reynolds, the fourth Governor of Illinois, again appears upon its stage. The title which he generously gave himself in early manhood, upon his return after a brief experience as a trooper in pursuit of a marauding band of Winnebagoes, stood him well in hand in all his future contests for office. "The Old Ranger" was a sobriquet to conjure with, and turned the scales in his favor in many a doubtful contest.
The subject of this sketch was a born politician if ever one trod this green earth. He was a perennial candidate for office, and it was said he never took a drink of water without serious meditation as to how it might possibly affect his political prospects. The late Uriah Heep might easily have gotten a few points in "'umbleness," if he had accompanied the Old Ranger in one or two of his political campaigns.
While Illinois was yet a Territory, his father had emigrated from the mountains of Tennessee and located near the historic village of Kaskaskia. This was at the time the capital of the Territory. The village mentioned was then the most, and in fact, the only, important place in the vast area constituting the present State of Illinois. There were less than five thousand persons of all nationalities and conditions in the Territory, and they mainly in and about Kaskaskia, and southward to the Ohio. Beck's Gazetteer published in 1823—five years after the admission of the State into the Union—contains the following: "Chicago, a village of Pike County, situated on Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Chicago Creek. It contains twelve or fifteen houses, and about sixty or seventy inhabitants."
The acquaintance of John Reynolds with what was then known as "the Illinois Country" began in 1800, and his thorough knowledge of the people and their ways gave him rare opportunities for acquiring great personal popularity. Fairly well educated for the times, gifted with an abundance of shrewdness, and withal an excellent judge of human nature, he soon became a man of mark in the new country. He was at all times and under all circumstances the self-constituted "friend of the people." He affected to be one of the humblest of the sons of men; and his dress, language, and deportment were always in strict keeping with that assumption. For the pride of ancestry he had a supreme contempt. In his "My Own Times," published a few years before his death, he said: "I regard the whole subject of ancestry and descent as utterly frivolous and unworthy of a moment's serious attention."
This recalls what Judge Baldwin said of Cave Burton: