Rock Island Argus

REMEMBER JOHNSON
Local Woodmen and Citizens Present Him With Fitting Testimonial.

AN EVENING AT WATCH TOWER
Appreciation of the Order's Ex-Attorney's Effective Work in Connection With Head Office Removal Attested in Eulogistic Speeches-He is Given a Handsome Silver Tea Service.

A work which has for a period of years commanded in so large a degree the energies of the Woodmen and citizens of Rock Island, and has in so broad an extent engaged the attention of the community at large, both within and without the order, a work which for so long awakened the intense earnestness and determination on the part of all our people, was happily rounded out last evening by the bestowal of a fitting testimonial upon one who has been so identified with those joint endeavors on the part of a great order and a city as to indissolubly associate his name with the achievements of both.

The occasion was the presentation, on behalf of the Woodmen generally and citizens of Rock Island through the original committee, and representing three Woodmen camps of the city on head office removal, to Hon. J. G. Johnson, former general attorney of the order, of a tribute of the high appreciation and esteem in which he is held in Rock Island.

The committee and the citizens who were associated with the committee in the event could not have adopted a more entirely pleasing, as well as appropriate, manner of celebrating the consummation of a task fraught with many difficulties and perplexities, but completed as the reward of unflagging devotion.

To Woodcraft in Rock Island, the home city of the great order, Johnson is what the sweet prince of Denmark is to the masterplay of Hamlet.

And who can better judge of a man's worth and the elements which are his of true greatness than those who see him in moments of most severe ordeal, moments that test the wits and try the soul.

The Woodmen and the citizens of Rock Island have seen J. G. Johnson under such circumstances, and they have seen a man undaunted by adversity, unfaltering in fidelity to a trust, unwavering in the execution of a duty-even at the risk of life.

In the relation that Rock Island bears to the Modern Woodmen, the city is in a position to know and to realize the inner character of the man who during his official connection with the order was entrusted with some of the most exacting responsibilities looking to the society's welfare, if not its very existence.

Happy and Appropriate Affair.

It was meet that the committee which had played so important a part in all the affairs of the Woodmen order so far as this city, her claims, and mutual interests are concerned, and the citizens who had cooperated with the committee in many ways, should adopt this method of closing its affairs prior to reporting back to the camps.

Hence an invitation was extended to Mr. Johnson to meet and dine with the committee and friends at Black Hawk inn on this occasion.

Head Clerk C. W. Hawes and those of the official board of the order who were in the city, Directors B. D. Smith and Marvin Quackenbush, and General Attorney J. W. White, were also of the party which left the city on the 8:30 car for the Tower last evening.

Reaching the delightful summer resort, an hour was spent sociably on the verandas, and at 10 o'clock the party gathered about tables which had been spread in the private dining rooms on the second floor, where Manager McHugh as usual did himself proud in the nature of the repast. When this had been served and cigars had been passed, Chairman W. C. Maucker of the committee of fifteen, acting as president of the evening, made a few appropriate introductory remarks, speaking of the event as witnessing the culmination of the work of the committee of fifteen representing the various camps in Rock Island of the Modern Woodmen on headoffice removal.

He then traced briefly the circumstances of the appointment of the committee and its labors in harmony with the head officers for the removal of the head office to this city. It was right and fitting now, Mr. Maucker said, that the committee, prior to reporting back to its respective camps and asking to be discharged, perform a pleasant duty which it had assumed on this occasion. He spoke of those who outside of the committee had been identified with the work, and referred regretfully to the absence of Hon. William Jackson and Hon. E. W. Hurst, both of whom, though out of the city, had shown that they were present in spirit through words of greeting on the occasion. The committee had not an Admiral Dewey, Mr. Maucker said, to stand for its achievements, but it had a Commodore Sturgeon, who had commanded a fleet in the enemy's waters on an historical occasion, whom he thereupon introduced to voice further the sentiments of the committee and citizens on this occasion.

SPEAKS WORDS OF APPRECIATION.
Mr. Sturgeon Tells of How Rock Island Feels Toward Mr. Johnson.

In responding Mr. Sturgeon stated that he had been commissioned to speak for Woodmen and citizens of Rock Island in a general way, and for others in a special way. He had not been familiar, he said, with the committee of local Woodmen camps, and was not a member of the Woodmen order, and while he had taken an interest in the question of the removal all along, as any public spirited citizen would in any affair in which the city was concerned, his deepest interest was aroused when he became familiar with the work being done by his esteemed and honored friend, Mr. Johnson, and the latter's great legal battle against unusual and tremendous odds. The speaker said he doubted if there would ever again come a time in Mr. Johnson's career, or if there had ever been a time to so thoroughly try his personal worth and metal, his worth to the order he had served so faithfully and with such signal distinction. Mr. Sturgeon spoke of the days in the great undertaking, when the wheels moved slowly, when time dragged and when circumstances were most discouraging, and yet these were days when Mr. Johnson lost not heart nor pluck, and the Woodmen order and the citizens of Rock Island knew that nothing was neglected that faithfulness and fidelity to a trust could suggest.

The people of Rock Island, Mr. Sturgeon said, every one of whom was Mr. Johnson's friend, appreciated to the limit what he had done for the city, and particularly what he had done for the order. After referring thus to what he had been commissioned to say to Mr. Johnson on behalf of his friends and neighbors in Rock Island, Mr. Sturgeon said he wished to speak also as a member of the bar, and here he paid a professional tribute to Mr. Johnson's work and worth. As a brother in the practice of law, Mr. Sturgeon pronounced it as his verdict that Mr. Johnson had, through his achievements, won the everlasting appreciation and esteem of the legal profession in this county.

Mr. Sturgeon spoke at some length of the magnificent work of Mr. Johnson in the legal contest in which the order was striving to carry out its own will in the government of its own affairs. It was in the hour of the general attorney's most trying experience in that contest that the sympathy and admiration of the bar of Rock Island

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REMEMBER JOHNSON.

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Island county were aroused. The night in particular was recalled when Mr. Johnson walked the floor, trying to discover some means of still saving to the Woodmen order and to the people here a victory ; which he had "fairly and repeatedly won, but which it seemed was to be snatched from him by methods wholly outside the control of any lawyer. In the life of every professional man there are milestones that actualize certain stages of advancement, there are monuments marked "victory," but in all of the professional career of the honored guest of the evening, Mr. Sturgeon said he did not believe there had been an experience, or would come again an experience that would so challenge his skill and ability as a lawyer.

Mr. Sturgeon said that talk was cheap, however, when it comes to properly expressing one's appreciation of another. The friends and neighbors in Rock Island of Mr. Johnson had felt that they desired to do as well as to say, by way of remembrance.

The Presentation Made.

Mr. Sturgeon then spoke of the pleasantest part of the duty he was commissioned to perform, and, stepping to the side of the room, drew forth from its place of concealment behind a door, a table on which was displayed a beautiful tea service of solid silver, enriched with gold lining.

It is an old saying, Mr. Sturgeon said, but a trite one, that there are times when words are feeble factors to express what we mean and feel, but there are some words in the English language that poets have tried to wreath laurels about, and rhetoricians have planted in figures of rhetoric, but in all ages no one has yet arisen who has been able to add strength to the simple words—love, friend, neighbor, home. "Take this gift," said Mr. Sturgeon, "from the hands of loving friends and neighbors; take it to your home, sweet home, and wherever your journeyings may be hereafter, remember that you will always find a hand extended to greet you in Rock Island."

MR. JOHNSON'S RESPONSE.

Popular Former Woodmen's Attorney Is Deeply Touched.

As Mr. Johnson arose to reply he was greeted with an ovation that attested to the genuineness of the feeling toward him on the part of those present. The former general attorney of the Woodmen order was visibly touched by the incident, and in opening his remarks, which were characteristically eloquent and feeling, notwithstanding that he was unprepared.

Mr. Johnson said that when he was invited out to the Tower to spend a social hour, possibly the last he would enjoy among friends here, he had no suspicion that such a design was lurking in the hearts of his Rock Island friends as had been manifest. Acts of kindness, oft and sincere, had, the speaker said, kept words of individual thanks constantly upon his lips, but to those who had conceived this generous thought and carried it to a conclusion, he could say that if the lips failed, the heart was overflowing with sentiments that no words could adequately express. Although Mr. Johnson said he had come among the people of Rock Island as a stranger, yet it had been as a neighbor, and that feeling of neighborly kindness never failing, had cheered and encouraged him and formed about him attachments to which he would always cling. "You have exemplified to me," he said, "the beautiful teachings of the order, which the lapse of time or the intervention of miles cannot destroy." An occasion such as this, Mr. Johnson said, presents a better and grander evidence of the true virtue of the order of Modern Woodmen than all the millions that it can scatter in pecuniary blessings, great as those blessings are. For this shows the beautiful friendship, the brotherly love that permeates this order from center to circumference. It shows how we may rely upon each other in sickness and in sorrow, and how safely we may trust our material interests to the hands of our brother men as well as to our own. The order of Woodmen gets its strength from the great body of the common people, and hence these exemplifications of the order's teachings typify how secure we all are in the great heart of the common people. Mr. Johnson assured his Rock Island friends that wherever his duties might hereafter take him, he would always have a warm spot in his heart for the Modern Woodmen of America and the people of Rock Island, and he would cherish the hope that the headquarters building would stand for centuries as a monument to the pluck and perseverance of the citizens of Rock Island, as well as to the principles represented in the noble order, to whose enterprise its erection was due. Above and beyond the great intrinsic worth of the gift that had been made him, Mr. Johnson said that he would ever treasure the spirit that it represented, and in concluding Mr. Johnson again spoke his gratitude.

Other Remarks.

Following Mr. Johnson there were brief, but appropriate, remarks by Hon. William McEniry and W. B. McIntyre, who were introduced in turn by Chairman Maucker, the former going into the history of the removal question and its legal and statutory features, and the latter talking in a humorous vein. Both were heartily applauded, and at midnight the happy occasion was at an end, a special train bringing the participants to their several homes in the city.

The Testimonial.

The testimonial presented to Mr. Johnson consists as stated, of a silver tea service, each piece of which bears a separate monogram of the initials of the recipient, while the urn is thus inscribed:

J. G. Johnson,

General Attorney M. W. A.,

From

Neighbors and Friends of Rock Island,

Ill., July 24, 1899.