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CHARLES H. TOLL.

Charles Hansen Toll first saw the light in Onondaga County, New York, on the 25th day of April, 1850. He was born of rugged parents and of sterling stock. His childhood, his youth and his early manhood were spent upon a farm or in the midst of rural surroundings. He early evinced a love for study. His school days were spent in the common schools and in the academy near his home. At the age of twenty-two he was graduated from Hamilton College; thereafter studied law; was admitted to the bar, and began the practice of law in the city of Syracuse, in his native State, where he early gave promise of rising to distinction. But the conservative character and habits of life of the people of his surroundings chafed and restrained his rising ambitions. He therefore took the advice of the great journalist, and started for the opening West, halting not until he reached the then promising El Dorado, Del Norte, situate in the then territory of Colorado, near the source of the Rio Grande. So promising was his life and so genial and frank was his nature, that on the very next year after his arrival there, and when he was but twenty-six years of age, he was elected by the voters of his newly adopted county to the honorable and responsible position of Judge of the County Court. Two years later he was elected to the Lower House of the General Assembly, in which body he at once took honorable and high rank.

In 1880 he was elected Attorney General and, as required by the duties of his office, located in the capital city of Denver, where he remained constantly engaged in the active practice of his chosen and loved profession until the last moment of his life, which came to him suddenly and without warning on the morning of December 4, 1901. He indeed died in the harness and at the post of duty. The grim monster summoned him hence at the moment he reached his desk on that fatal morning, and before he had time to lay down

the papers which contained the memoranda made by him in his last professional engagement.

He became, early in his professional career, well grounded in the elemental and fundamental principles of the law. He was not only versed in the law, but was also thoroughly acquainted with the scientific principles of business. He knew men; their methods, their motives. He was therefore often able to successfully guide his clients through the complicated meshes of business transactions where more profound jurists, devoid of such attainments, might have utterly failed. In this fact lay the secret of his great success. For his clients, men of large business affairs, learned to rely implicitly upon his judgment by reason of the fact that he often surprised them by his own familiarity with affairs supposed by them to lie particularly within their own peculiar domain, and by pointing out and by showing them how to avoid dangerous pitfalls in their pathway.

As a worker he was both patient and tireless. No piece of professional work was regarded by him as finished until the last and most skillful stroke which the most patient and careful thought could suggest had been added. He thought through and all around every question presented to him for solution. He always put himself in the place of his opponents, real or supposed, when he began his investigations, and would, not infrequently, push his associates to the point of exasperation by the difficulties which he would suggest and against which he would have them guard.

As a gentleman of honor he had no superior. His demeanor toward the Court and toward opposing counsel was always marked by fine courtesy and absolute fairness and integrity. His word he was never known to violate. He lived up to the full standard of the proverb, "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold."

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