ADDRESS OF MR. BECKNER.

Mr. SPEAKER: We are all walking on the thin ice of a Lethean lake whose depths no mortal power can measure. It will sooner or later ingulf every human being, and to the great majority the final catastrophe will be reached without warning or even an intimation that it is near. To others, however, bodily infirmities herald death long before it might be expected in the usual course of nature. The young man in whose memory these services are held knew for years that his days were numbered, and in his waking hours could ever hear the hoof beats of the pale horse in a race which he realized from the start he could not win. It was death in life with him from the time he entered this House until the closing scene.

Consumption and Bright's disease had begun their combined assaults upon his system and there could be no escape. His was not a craven spirit, however, and he made a struggle that was as heroic as it was hopeless. Shortly after he had reached home last spring I called to see him, and as I arose to take my leave asked if I could in any way serve him. "I am very much obliged," he answered cheerily, "but I am fighting Death, and it is a struggle in which none can help me." He had rallied somewhat under the balmy influences of our Kentucky spring, and was beginning to think that the end which had seemed so near when he left Washington might after all be for a while deferred. MARCUS CLAIBORNE LISLE was born on the 23d day of September, 1862, in Clark County, Ky., within a few miles

of the historic spot where Boone made the settlement which bore his name.

It is a beautiful portion of the border land between the far-famed blue-grass and a not less worthy region. He had the usual experience of a country-bred boy in attending the district school and working on a farm until almost grown, when he had a limited academic training at Winchester, the county seat.

After attending Kentucky University, at Lexington, where he was a classmate of our worthy Chaplain, he was for a while a student of the law in my office, and closed the preparation for his professional career at Columbia College, in the city of New York. It was not long after he had been admitted to the bar before he was elected by a most complimentary vote to the office of county judge, a position of much honor and responsibility under the system which prevails in Kentucky, and one peculiarly to be desired by a young man beginning to practice law.

Soon after he had finished his professional education he married Miss Lizzie Bean, a member of one of our oldest and most respected families, and beyond doubt one of the gentlest and most charming girls that favoring nature and careful culture could produce. The future seemed to have in store for him nothing but prosperity and happiness until disease marred the flattering prospect. In the fall of 1890 he went to Colorado, hoping beneath the bright skies and amid the bracing atmosphere of that elevated region to regain the health which it was then evident he had lost. He rallied, but it was merely a respite.

Returning in the spring of 1891, he resumed the discharge of his official duties. It was plainly to be seen,

however, by those most intimate with him that he would never fully recover. He was not himself deceived as to his condition. Hon. J. W. Kendall, at the time a member of this House from the Tenth district of Kentucky, died in March, 1892. When I first heard that Judge LISLE had it in mind to offer for the unexpired term I went to see him, and suggested that the son would most probably want to succeed his father, with a sentiment in his favor that would make his candidacy well-nigh irresistible.

"Yes," he replied, decisively; "I understand all that most fully, but it has been the ambition of my life to have a seat in Congress, and if not gratified at once it will never be, as the condition of my health is such that I can not hope to live very long." He did not succeed in that effort, but in the summer of 1892 was nominated, and in November elected to fill the term now drawing to a close. He seemed to gather strength from the canvass, but as soon as the excitement had subsided and the effects of the vigorous exercise and the constant exposure to sun and air incident to an active race had worn away he began again to droop.

His gentle, loving wife died about the time his term of office began, which gave a perceptible impetus to a decline already painfully apparent. A heroic will, however, enabled him to rally from the effects of this bereavement, and held him up through the strain and struggle not to be avoided by a Representative trying to do his duty toward the men who looked to him to see that they were not ignored in the distribution of the patronage of a new Administration elected by the party to which he belonged.

He was zealous and diligent, although never well, and rarely really able to undertake what he so energetically did. He took his seat at the extra session, and, like the man that

he was, followed the course which his conscience and judgment approved, although in opposition sometimes to the views and wishes of many whose opinions he most highly prized. He continued to come to this Hall long after his strength had so far failed that it would not have been a discredit to him had he quit the field and surrendered to an enemy he could not then reasonably hope to vanquish.

In the spring of 1894 he was compelled to take to his bed, but would not distress his friends by apprising them of the serious nature of his condition until death seemed very near indeed. By rallying all his strength, he was able to reach his home early in May, but, ill as he was, he would not give up his candidacy for a renomination until he had become so weak that he could not even dictate the letters he had never ceased to send over the district with a view to organizing and rallying his friends.

Early in July last he wrote in no gloomy mood to his secretary, whom he had left in charge of his affairs at Washington, to send him without delay the draft for the June installment of his salary, as it would be the last he would ever call for and he did not want his administrator to be annoyed with so small a matter so far away from home. Early in the morning of July 7 he ceased to breathe, and his spirit took its flight-whither, do you ask? Human wisdom can not tell, although it has been diligently inquiring throughout all the ages. We must accept the answer that faith gives. There is no other.

But whither went his soul, let such relate
Who search the secrets of the future state.
Divines can say but what themselves believe,
Strong proofs they have, but not demonstrative.
For were all plain, then all sides must agree,
And faith itself be lost in certainty.

H MIS 83- -3

How many in their anguish have uttered the cry expressed by the late poet laureate in Maud:

Ah, Christ, that it were possible

For one short hour to see

The souls we loved, that they might tell us

What and where they be.

When Secundus was asked by Hadrian what was death, he replied:

It is a sleep eternal; the body's dissolution; the rich man's fear; the poor man's refuge; an event inevitable; an uncertain journey; a thief that steals away man; sleep's father; life's flight; the departure of the living and the resolution of all.

Shakespeare has spoken of "our little life" as being "rounded with a sleep," and makes Hamlet say:

To die; to sleep;

To sleep! perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause.

When David declares, "For so He giveth His beloved sleep," it may be the license of the poet; but when God announces to Moses, "Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers," it can reasonably be taken as meaning nothing else than the condition in which he would be after death. Lazarus had been dead four days, and had been placed in the tomb, wrapped, as was the custom of the Jews, so that breathing was impossible. Yet, after the Master had learned all of this, He said, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth;" and St. John significantly adds, "Howbeit, Jesus spake of his death." So also, when He appeared at the house of Jairus, the Saviour assured the ruler of the synagogue that his daughter was "not dead, but sleepeth;" and when He called her to life again, Luke significantly records that "her spirit came again.”