The Fourth Annual Meeting of the North Carolina Bar Association convened at Battery Park Hotel, Asheville, N. C., Wednesday, July 9, 1902.

The Association was called to order at 10:30 a. m., by Mr. Henry A. London, of Pittsboro, N. C., Chairman of the Executive Committee, who said:

President of the N. C. Bar Association, and Ladies:

It becomes my duty, as Chairman of your Executive Committee, and it is indeed an honor and pleasure, to call to order this, the Fourth Annual Session of the North Carolina Bar Association. In doing so allow me to extend my congratulations upon the increasing interest shown in this organization, which no doubt will be of much benefit, not only to the members thereof, but to the people of North Carolina. I am not here for the purpose of detaining you with any extended remarks, but simply to introduce, first the gentleman whom you will have the pleasure of hearing deliver the speech of welcome, a genuine North Carolina mountain welcome, which

will be delivered by Mr. J. Harry Martin, whom I now have the pleasure of introducing to you, Mr. Martin.

Mr. Martin, in extending a welcome, spoke as follows:

Mr. President, and Members of the North Carolina Bar Association, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Through the generous impulse of lawyers, I enjoy the privilege of bidding you, on behalf of the Bar and her citizens generally a most hearty welcome to Asheville.

In view of my very brief connection with the local Bar, I was surprised that this most pleasant duty should be assigned me, and I can only attribute the choice of the Committee on Arrangements to that spirit of kindness and consideration, which is so often shown by lawyers to the younger members of their profession.

You, gentlemen, are used to good speeches; your standard in this, as in all other things, is high, but unfortunately for me, I have had so little practice before the bench, that I cannot now speak as I would to the Bar.

You have been so well welcomed at the last two meetings of the Association, that you have a right now to expect more than I can give you. The "Address of Welcome" as a literary effort, has become in the skilled hands of Mr. Jones and Mr. Ruark a complete and perfect thing. The final word has been spoken.

As a lawyer I, of course, should have nothing to say against precedents, but it does seem to me that my learned brothers have established an unnecessarily hard one against me. Like the old class-leaders, they have raised the tune too high. I beg to remind them that one of the expressed purposes of this Association is to elevate the standard of courtesy in the legal profession. It certainly shows a most reckless disregard for the spirit of that purpose for these gentlemen to form a trust of ideas and leave me nothing to go on. I have been stabbed in the house of my friends; my own brethren have conspired against me. One of them has used up all the wit, and the other all the eloquence, and left me to stand, as it were, on the confines of space, and whack away at eternity. Were those speeches not of record in the reports of the Association, and

also, by reason of their fineness, in your memories; were they not too good to be forgotten, I might, by judicious borrowing, make of my own address a beautiful mosaic of mingled colors. The temptation to do this was all the stronger because it occurred to me that in welding the two together, I might possibly make you feel doubly welcome. But since it is against good morals to steal even another man's ideas, I am forced to console by the reflection that, after all, a welcome is largely a matter of the heart, and I can, therefore, make up in cordiality of feeling what I may lack in happiness of phrase or originality of thought. For me this will not be difficult. I have the deepest admiration for the old and honorable calling that we have chosen, and the most kindly feeling for the members of the profession throughout the State. And it being allowable, according to the dictum of some old Frenchman, for a man to boast of his heart, though not of his understanding, I wish to say to Messrs. Jones and Ruark, and to you, gentlemen, that I am as warm-hearted a welcomer as ever extended the right hand of fellowship. If I may be permitted a personal word, I will also say that if affection and respect fit one for the office, then certainly no one is better qualified than I to welcome here the able lawyer and generous friend, the pure and manly gentleman, who is now the much-loved President of our Association.

I thank you for the compliment of your second visit. We are covetous of pleasure, and your coming would always be an event. Your arrival would always be timely, but just now it is peculiarly opportune. You are, as it were, balm to our bruised spirits. You are straightening up a broken reed, for owing to some slight misunderstanding, to some slight variance in the pleadings; to the fact that the "Land of the Sky” Lodge of Doctors was divided against itself, we have slipped up, not to say fallen down, in our efforts to have the Medical Association meet here. So far as Asheville is concerned that Convention will be able to prove an alibi. So you see you have come just at the right time to save the situation. We have failed in the small and unimportant matter of getting the Doctors here, but this little failure has been wiped out and

swallowed up in the great success of securing a Convention of Lawyers.

We rejoice that you are with us, but with our gladness is mingled the sad thought that probably you may never be here again. I fear this will nevermore be a possible meeting place for an Association of idealists, who have "Scorned delights and lived laborious days;" who believe in plain living and high thinking. For to the best of my information and belief, that "fastidious body," such was the descriptive adjective, the Medical Society have turned us down, because the accommodations of this famous resort were not, in their opinion, adequate in extent, or, so it was suggested, high enough in price! Crumpled rose-leaves. Think of it, my impecunious brethren of the Bar! Think of the success and opulence of a profession that objects to this town, to the "Battery Park," because the rates are not high enough! and feels a haughty disdain for that worthy Boniface, Ed. McKissick, et al., because they will not gouge! Prices too low. Tell that to the ice man. This is the "Land of the Sky" in every sense of the word. As Mrs. Gaskell once said of the old ladies of "Cranford," "Some might be poor, but all were aristocratic." So of our places of accommodation, we may say some might be poor, but all are high. This objection of our spoiled friends, the doctors, who have done so much to increase the gaiety of nations, reminds one of the complaint of the old Virginia farmer, who in a year of great abundance and fine crops, when every field had done its level best, and the desert itself had bloomed, entered a demurrer to the general rejoicing, and dolefully shaking his head, remarked, "Well, I dunno. The crops is surely the best I ever seen, but it's powerful straining on the land."

Now, gentlemen, of course the hotel men are not going to tamely submit to an imputation against their prices. As selfrespecting men, no matter how painful it may be to their feelings, even if it sours the "milk of human kindness' in their bosoms, they will be compelled to resent this insult and make their prices high enough to suit even the most fastidious. Thrice happy are you that the arrangements for your accommodation here were made before McKissick was goaded into frenzy by this unjust accusation; was struck this foul blow