OBITUARY NOTICE.
[From the Times and Journal, Lakewood, N. J., Dec. 22, 1888.]
TO EDWIN SALTER'S MEMORY.
-----
To give in a cold and conventional way an outline of the life of Edwin Salter would be an easy, and to us an ungrateful, task. It is so little to the purpose that he lived more than sixty years; that he died at Forked River; that he was a member of the Legislature and Speaker of the House; that he was for a score of years a clerk in one of the Departments at Washington- these are the things that we all know, and in some sense he may be measured by them. But our immediate concern with his life, now that he is done with it, is how and to what purpose he lived it. Men of as little moment, after they go hence (and often before) as a dead letter in a waste-basket, go to the Legislature, sit in the Speaker's chair, or hold a clerkship under the government. The political status of the State has come to this, whether by progress or retrogression is of no moment here except to confront the face of the fact and be- it so happens often- rather belittled than distinguished by it. Edwin Salter was not one of the little men of either his time or his generation. When he sat as a servant of the people, it was to their honor and his credit. When he was a government clerk, he was faithful and efficient. His public life was clean and meritorious. So much for truth and for him in this respect.

But, compared to his life as a student and chronicler of State history, his public life was as a flicker beside a flame. When the one is almost forgotten, and when it would be entirely so but for his name being linked with it, his contributions to the career of the State and his delineations of the character of its men and women, will be growing brighter in a steadier, stronger light. When the one will be almost valueless save as a chronological fact, the other will be invaluable as a historical heirloom to all future generations of Jerseymen. By this work he will live in the association of men of renown; his work will be perpetual, because upon its merits it will deserve perpetuity. His patience in collecting data, his industry in the pursuit of information, his care and judgment in selection, his love of veracity and respect for fact, his clearness in detail and ability in setting the whole sum of his studies before the world, his modest and unpretentious concealment of himself- these are some, and only some, of the characteristics of Edwin Salter's life. Men of this stamp do not die and be forgotten. They are not ephemeral. They "still live" when the multiplying years have left their unrecognizable dust far behind. Students of history must pause to do honor to their memory and be grateful to them for the good they did with little hope of reward. Indeed, reward, beyond such as necessity may have entailed, did not enter into the consideration with Edwin Salter. He loved his chosen work, and gave of his means to it as freely as he would have lightened the burdens of a beggar at his door, giving all that he had. His private life was that of the Christian man- pure and undefiled. He was generous to a double fault, honorable to the breadth of a hair, mild and gentle as the village preacher whose life is perpetuated in undying verse, and true as the love that was beneficently given to him that he might share it with others. Thus we knew him, and here we lay this tribute to a beloved memory upon the bier of its departed shade.