William Sheppard Bryan: I move it be accepted and filed. The motion was duly seconded, and after vote was declared carried. The President: We will now hear the reports of special committees. REPORTS OF SPECIAL COMMITTEES. Oscar Leser : As Chairman of the Committee on Special and Local Laws, I have a brief statement to make. You may recall that in view of the appointment of a commission by the Governor of our State on the subject, it was the understanding that our committee would cooperate with that commission. The work has not reached that stage when a report can be made, and I therefore suggest that our committee be continued. Guy W. Steele: I move the report be accepted and the committee be continued. The motion was duly seconded and after vote was declared carried. The President: The next in order is the report of the Committee on Nominations. REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON NOMINATIONS. To the Members of the Maryland State Bar Association: Pursuant to a resolution of the Maryland State Bar Association, passed at the annual meeting for the year 1906, the Committee on Nominations, appointed at the annual meeting of said Association for the year 1910, respectfully reports that it has nominated the following members as officers of the Maryland State Bar Association for the year 1911-1912, which names are to be voted upon at the next annual meeting of the Association. William Sheppard Bryan: The Committee has nominated for President a young man from Kent county by the name of James Alfred Pearce. He is a young gentleman of great modesty, and it is but proper I should state that it was only on account of my extreme persuasiveness and my extreme tact, that I could get him to consent to run. If anything is done wrong in the next administration I shall partially be to blame, for it was I who persuaded him to accept the nomination. The Committee also reports the following names for the other officers of the Association: Benjamin A. Richmond, of Cumberland. Moses R. Walter, of Baltimore City. WILLIAM SHEPPARD BRYAN, Chairman. The President: The Association will act on the names later, and we now simply receive the report. The Secretary: I desire to announce that the daily papers of Baltimore City will be found each day at the headquarters of the Association. After motion, duly seconded, and vote, the Association adjourned until 8 o'clock P. M. EVENING SESSION. Pursuant to adjournment the Maryland State Bar Association was called to order at eight o'clock P. M., June 29th, 1911, the President being in the chair. The President: The first pleasure, on the programme for this evening, is an address by Judge Henry Stockbridge, of the Court of Appeals of Maryland, the subject being "Titus." I have the honor of introducing to you Judge Stockbridge, and he will introduce "Titus." Judge Henry Stockbridge: Mr. President, ladies and fellow members of the Maryland State Bar Association: I have no apology to make for what I am about to say. It is only due to you, however, that a word of explanation should be given. Nothing has given me as much or as thorough enjoyment as when I received some time. ago, over the signature of our genial secretary, a list of those who were to speak on the occasion of this gathering, supplemented by the statement that they were all eminently qualified to speak with authority and force upon the selected subjects. The reasons for my quiet enjoyment of that statement you will discover before I have finished. Some one has said that throughout this universe there is nothing but a succession of contrasts; that it is because of the shadows which lie outside that we see and appreciate the lights which so fully illumine us here within. It is simply the old story that every circus has its clown. Everything must have its foil. When we look over the addresses of this meeting I am a little bit afraid that the members of the legal profession are apt, particularly on such an occasion as this, to take themselves just a little too seriously. There was a time, not so far ago, when the great genius of the English bar existed in the close personal relationship which existed between the bench and the members of the bar as they rode the circuit. In our modern hurried life we too often lose sight of that and, engrossed with difficult themes where the light of reason does not always clearly point the way, we are led often, in our moments of relaxation, to feel that we must produce something ponderous in fact and then to make the title correspond to the fact. It is stated upon the programine this evening that I am to give you an address. I do not like to be contentious, but I will assure you, ladies, in all candor, that is unqualifiedly an act of Mr. Chapman's imagination. It is simply a little reminiscence. Today one of the reporters came to me and said he did not quite understand the title and wanted to know my theme. I, of course, obliged him with the information. Said he, "Well, what is the moral of it all?" I said, "That is the beauty of it; it has no moral." "Well,” said he, "what do I understand by that?" I said, "I do not know what you understand, but it has no moral." And to you ladies let me say in passing that it is also not immoral. "TITUS." BY JUDGE HENRY STOCKBRIDGE. On a warm, summer Saturday evening, thirty-six years ago, the subject of this sketch began a public career, and from that time on, with only the briefest of intermissions, he continued to serve his State in one station or another, until claimed by death early in 1911. His name is not em blazoned on the walls of any of our public buildings, no stately monument of chiseled stone or metal tablet of artistic mold commemorates his virtues or his frailties. Yet he will long be remembered with varying emotions by many of those with whom he was brought in contact. Titus was his name by birth; Titus, the trusty, and to be trusted, was the record which he left. As I said, on a warm, summer Saturday night in 1875, those who were tardy in their marketing in the Belair Market had a fleeting vision of a diminutive colored boy and a ham, apparently having a race with one another, and it was even money which would win, when there appeared upon the scene the majesty of the law in the shape of six feet one inch of uniformed police, rapidly closing the gap between the ham, the boy and the law. A ponderous handl was extended, Titus was in the toils, his public career had begun. This is not intended as a biography, so there will be no attempt made to follow this dark-skinned descendant of Ham through all the vicissitudes of an eventful life. Only a meagre statement of his service to the State of Maryland will be given, with one or two anecdotes of occurrences which endeared him to many, and will cause him to be gratefully remembered when some of those who carved their names higher up on the walls of the Temple of Fame shall have been forgotten. It was at Cheltenham that Titus began a study of the penal institutions of our State, three times was he a guest of that ever genial host, John F. Weyler, once he observed, from the inside, the method of carrying on the House of Correction, but the modes in vogue there, or an excess of country air, proved too much for him, broke down his health, and from there he retired to Bayview, saddened, dispirited to such a degree that he pined and passed away. The jail of Baltimore City did most strongly appeal to him, and on more than fifty separate occasions he found |