Caleb Cushing's Great Victory

Ante-mortem statues to even great men are not common; the fewest number perform acts of such transcendent beneficence to their fellow-men as to call forth sketches of their lives in print previous to their decease. Of these few is Caleb Cushing. He is as old as the nineteenth century. He opened his eyes upon the light in January of the year 1800. He began a career of public usefulness and honor when he was twenty-two years of age, having been admitted to the bar a year or two previous, and having, even at that early age, attained high professional success. He served with ability as a member of the legislature of his native state, Massachusetts, and represented his district in the national congress four consecutive terms, during which he was distinguished as a faithful laborer in the committee room, an eloquent debater and an accomplished parliamentarian. He served as United States commissioner to China, and negotiated the first treaty of this government with the emperor of the land of the sun. He furnished from his own means the funds to equip a regiment of Massachusetts volunteers who served in the Mexican war, and performed active service during its continuance himself, as Colonel and brigadier general. As member of the Massachusetts supreme court he sustained his high reputation for legal ability, and ably and faithfully executed the duties of the office of United States attorney general under President Pierce. He was president of the Charleston convention in 1860, and his name will go down to history as one of the members of the Geneva arbitration. His public life covers almost half a century, and at an age when most men are believed to be falling into the sear and yellow leaf, he gives evidence that the vigor which has made his name illustrious has not deserted him.

Caleb Cushing, like many other people of age and low degree, has been living in close proximity to the owner of a dog. The dog's owner is named Kelly, and the dog, whose name is now celebrated in rhyme, was neither gentle nor kind, but vicious, troublesome and noisy; it barked by day and bayed the moon at night, interfering with Cushing's daytime studies and disturbing his sleep during those hours when men, three score and ten, desire to sleep in quiet. Cushing brought suit in the police court at Washington city for damages against the dog's owner, and made the point that the dog was a nuisance; its owner was fined thirty-five dollars and ordered to either kill or remove the dog. In Cushing's victory will the whole country rejoice. With this precedent established, no man, nor woman, nor baby, no pair of lovers, no restless invalid, no industrious student, no anybody, need hereafter be at the mercy of any snarling, barking, whining, growling dog. Wherever there is a dog and a police court, the dog will have to keep mum, or go the way of Kelly's dog, be killed or removed.

Truly, the world moves, and thinking of what we have suffered in the past from our neighbor's dog, as vicious, as noisy, as perseveringly growling as Kelly's dog, we throw up our sailors' hats and cry "Cushing forever." He has made himself the benefactor of the people while dogs live and police courts sit; all men will bless him; all women, mindful of his kindness, will hold his name in grateful remembrance; and if bullets could speak, we have no doubt one long, loud and heartfelt shout of "Cushing forever!" — he who would make our daynaps peaceful, and our nightly slumbers undisturbed — would go up from an army of infants yet unborn. As a lawyer, he may be great; as a statesman, he may be sound; as a soldier, he may have been brave; as an arbitrator, he may have been wise; but as the winning party in the contest with Kelly's dog, he deserves the victor's crown of laurels at the hands of his countrymen; long may he wear it, living many years, and may it, unfading, grace his tomb when dead.