In the beautiful and expressive language of a former member of this body:

We complain that the divine sickle could not wait for its human harvest until the whitened and bending heads should incline with the weight of years toward the earth which was destined to receive them.

As Mr. WELCH's successor it becomes my duty, as his friend it is my privilege, to hold up to public view the record of a life which has in it much that is praiseworthy and little that can be censured. WELCH was born in Massachusetts in 1835. In childhood his family removed to Boston, where Mr. WELCH received his education. Adopting the profession of engineering, he came West in 1857 to assist in running the line of a projected railway across Iowa, the terminus of which was to be on the east bank of the Missouri. In 1863 he married, in Boston, Miss Elizabeth Butts, of Hudson, New York. In the mean time he engaged in the mercantile business, which resulted disastrously. At various times he represented his section of country in the Territorial and State legislatures, and in 1865 was president of the upper house. In 1871 he was appointed register of the land office at West Point, Nebraska, which position he held until 1876. In the fall of 1876 his claims were pressed with such enthusiasm by his friends that he received at the hands of the Republican State convention the nomination for member of Congress, and after a spirited contest was eleeted by an overwhelming majority.

Mr. WELCH entered Congress in the prime of manhood, when the play of his pulse was still healthful, representing as large an expanse of country as all New England, and a population of over three hundred thousand. The demands upon his time and strength were incessant. The extension of the postal service and keeping up the efficiency of the Federal Government to a level with the needs and wants of a growing State required his constant attention. Nebraska may have had in this body in other days men of greater talent, men of broader culture, yet it is doubtful whether any of her Representa

tives ever served her with such fidelity and tireless industry as Mr. WELCH.

Mr. WELCH was, indeed, a representative man. Though educated in the Athens of America, yet he had lived so long in the West, almost a quarter of a century, that he might be called a child of the prairies. He had stood by the cradle when the young State was born; he had grown with its growth; his name was in some measure identified with its greatness. He knew the needs and wants of his people, and was in warm sympathy with their life and purposes. He took a pride in the State of his adoption, occupying the midway position between the far East and the far West, along which the life currents of immigration daily flow. He expected to see the dream of one of America's most gifted poets realized, "She is the prairie dame, that sitteth in the middle and looketh east and looketh west." Hence Mr. WELCH was peculiarly fitted to represent the people of my State in the national councils. Had he lived, it was the hope of his friends, and perhaps his own ambition, that his influence in public affairs, which had hitherto been confined to the limits of his own State, might sweep out into broader fields of usefulness; but "death's untimely frost" nipped the blossoming hopes of his friends and his own budding aspirations.

Mr. WELCH in public life was an eminently useful man. His influence was a positive force for good. He reached and controlled men in the most practical way. He was no orator. He possessed none of the graces of oratory which captivate and conquer public assemblies, yet when the occasion was imperative he could put his thoughts into the traces of compact expression and utter his ideas with force and clearness. "Many are the friends of the golden tongue," says the Welsh proverb. FRANK WELCH, however, had many friends though he did not possess the golden tongue in the sense used. Without marked ability for public speaking, without great knowledge of that seasoned life of men stored up in books,

and little of that ripe culture which comes from meditation in the closet, yet Mr. WELCH was an influential man.

He had mingled with and been jostled by men upon the dust-swept highway of business life; he had been in close contact with those extreme types of character indigenous to frontier life. He had in his earlier life known men at the other extreme who had been under the intellectual sand-paper too long, and he had thereby acquired that practical talent, that ready adaptation of means to ends which reaches and controls men and often achieves success when a higher talent fails.

He enjoyed

Mr. WELCH in private life was an exemplary man. life with the keenest zest. While he lived laborious days, yet he did not scorn delights of life. Mr. WELCH was a man of fine social powers; there was a genial magnetism in his presence, a certain heartiness in his greeting, a frankness and openness of manner that attracted men.

It was said of the late Lord Holland that he always came down to breakfast with the air of a man who had just met with some signal good fortune. Mr. WELCH possessed a like sunny disposition over which the clouds of gloom rarely if ever settled.

But it was in the sacred precincts of the home circle that his social nature shone with the pure luster. It was there that he gave utterance to the best thoughts of his best soul, and gave full play to the kindly emotions of the heart. Upon his hearth-stone the fires of domestic happiness always burned brightly. In his home, where peace, love, and happiness were enthroned, he found both an incentive to his ambition and rest from his exciting public labors.

But the seal of death has been placed upon his life before it had attained the ripeness of age. The reed has been broken by an untimely wind. A useful man, an active and vigilant public servant, an ornament to society has retreated from the din and turmoil of life to the realms beyond.

It remains for us to move upon the stream of being as if—

'Tis not all of life to live,

so that when the inevitable hour comes we shall find that'Tis not all of death to die.

ADDRESS OF MR. SAPP, OF JOWA.

Mr. SPEAKER: In the death of Hon. FRANK WELCH, to whose memory I would to-day pay a brief tribute, we are called upon to mourn the loss of a truly good man. When we met in this Hall at the beginning of this session of Congress I am sure the thought was present to each of us that one of our number was not here, that one seat had been made vacant, and it was then as now hard to realize that one so young, so full of hope and honorable ambition when we separated a few short months before, had crossed that narrow line that divides time from eternity, and that his youthful form and face would be seen by us no more forever. It is proper that this House suspend its deliberations upon public affairs at this time that we may offer fitting and appropriate tribute to the memory of one so recently associated with us.

It was my privilege, Mr. Speaker, to know Mr. WELCH long and well. I met him first in the year 1860, when, a wanderer from my old Ohio home in search of health, I found the home of my adoption on the green prairies of the West. In the intervening years a kind Providence has permitted me to form many warm friendships, but there are none I recall more fondly than his. It is not my purpose now to speak in detail of the life and character of our lamented friend, though his short career furnishes much for a lengthy eulogy. His most prominent characteristics were, I think, sound discretion, clear discernment, good common-sense, great honesty of purpose, and

indomitable energy, and I believe had he been permitted to pass through the vicissitudes of a long life he would have met and manfully fulfilled all the duties allotted to him. He inspired all who knew him with confidence in his honesty, integrity, and honor, and compelled the concession that he was both just and generous. Guided by his high sense of justice, his reasoning faculties rarely failed him in the attainment of truth, which was with him the controlling principle in both public and private life. He was, doubtless, not without a commendable desire for worldly distinction; but that desire was always subordinate to his convictions of right. With these admirable endowments were happily blended the kindlier affections of the heart that endeared him to his friends, and made him in private life the valuable citizen, the affectionate husband and father, and the devoted friend.

Mr. WELCH was a native of Massachusetts, and was born on the historic ground of Bunker Hill, February 10, 1835, and was therefore at the time of his death in the forty-fourth year of his age. By the death of his father in the tender years of his infancy he was left to the care of his remaining parent, who happily for him was one of New England's most capable and devoted mothers. She survives her lamented son and is doubtless comforted in her great bereavement that many of her fondest hopes for him were realized before his early summons came. He received his education in the public schools of his native State, graduating at the high school of Boston. He chose the profession of civil engineering, and in this capacity was intrusted with several important surveys in the West, after which he settled in Nebraska, making it his home from 1857 until his death. In his new home he held many places of trust, among which were register of the United States land office and member of the legislative council, and by which body he was elected as its presiding offiIn every station he was called upon to fill he was distinguished for his devotion to the cause of truth and justice.

cer.