Alvey thereupon signified his willingness to accept the appointment, and warmly thanked the President. The appointment of Chief Justice Alvey to the District Court of Appeals caused mingled feelings of surprise, regret and satisfaction throughout Maryland, but no person was more surprised than the Judge himself. No one had recommended him, no one had filed any application in his behalf for the place, and no one, so far as he knew, had recommended the appointment to the President. He was not even acquainted with President Cleveland personally, but the President, of course, knew Judge Alvey by reputation, and the selection was entirely due to his high merit and eminent fitness for the place. When Chief Justice Waitc died during Mr. Cleveland's first administration, Judge Alvey's name was among those sug gested to the President as his successor. Mr. Cleveland, after ascertaining what kind of a man the Maryland judge was, said that no one could be better fitted for the place. But he did not think it expedient at that time to appoint a Southern man to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. But for this, Judge Alvey would probably be in the seat now occupied by Chief Justice Fuller. On the 20th of April, 1893, Chief Justice Alvey retired from the Court of Appeals, and the occasion was one of the most memorable ever witnessed in that venerable court-room. Never before had so many lawyers been pres ent there. All the judges of the Court of Appeals were present except one : the Balti more Bar was represented by some of its most prominent members; and lawyers from the various counties of Maryland came to do honor to the retiring Chief Justice. The speakers were Attorney-General John P. Poe, Hon. John V. L. Findlay, Col. Charles Marshal, and others. It is well to rescue from newspaper oblivion some of the speeches made on this occasion, especially as they express the opinion of the leading
members of the Maryland Bar as to the eminent worth of Chief Justice Alvey as a man and as a judge. Attorney-General John Prentice Poe, as the representative of the Bar of the State, was the first speaker. He said : — "The public announcement that to-day for the last time we shall have the privilege of seeing our honored Chief Justice in his accustomed place in this court very easily accounts for this unusual gathering of representative members of our Bar. We come to take affectionate leave of him as he quits us to enter upon a new field of judicial usefulness and honor. We come to bear our public testimony to the dignity and purity with which for twenty-five years he administered enlightened justice in our midst. "We are here to thank him for the serene patience with which he always listened, the la borious thoroughness with which he always in vestigated, the calm, analytical thoughtfulness with which he pondered and the commanding power with which he embodied the well-con sidered results of his deep study and reflection in the luminous judgments which, enriching fortynine volumes of our reports, will connect his name forever with the proudest history of this tribunal. "We are here to tell him before he steps down from the high place which it has so long been a strength and a consolation for us to know that he filled, how we admired and gloried in his enthu siastic devotion to his work, the absolute sur render of his time and talents to the absorbing demands of his judicial functions and the inestim able benefits to the jurisprudence of our State of his ample legal learning and acquirements. "We would have him to know also that a life so completely given up, as his has been, to the best and loftiest discharge of the duties and re sponsibilities of his office has made a deep and permanent impression upon both Bench and Bar," and cannot fail by the simple force of its quiet and unobstrusive example to stimulate to gener ous emulation the gifted and aspiring of our pro fession. "We part with you, Mr. Chief Justice, with the sincerest and profoundest regret. Those of us to whom for a quarter of a century you have been so familiar a figure in this chamber can
