There are businesses and there are professions in which the measure of a man's success may be determined by the amount and the value of material goods he has gathered to himself, but conspicuous among those callings in which such a standard would be basely false and utterly misleading, is the law. True, great fortunes have been amassed from legal activity, but in the law a man might strive with diligence, might reap honor and glory from high intellectual endowments, might rise to prominence among his; fellow practitioners, and still neglect entirely that financial watchfulness that brings material independence. Such a lawyer was Asa Brundage who for sixty years followed the legal profession with brilliant success, and who at his death was; the oldest member of the Luzerne county bar. For him the upholding of right, the establishing of justice and the punishment of legal offenders were the paramount objects in all litigation, and, careless of his reward, he labored to these ends throughout the long years of his professional activity. The esteem and respect of his legal brethren was ever his; by bench and bar and the public he was recognized by his stern integrity, his unswerving loyalty to the good and the just, and he was known as a man who. in all relations of life, great or small, consequential or unimportant, walked nobly erect.

Until his fourteenth year he attended the public schools in the vicinity of his birthplace, when. with Dr. J. B. Thornton and forty slaves, he departed for Jackson, Mississippi. At Centenary College, near Jackson, at Brandon. he continued his studies, graduating after five years with valedictorian's honors in a class of two hundred. He returned to the State of his birth after completing his classical education, and in the law office of Colonel Henry B. Wright began his preparation for a legal career, gaining admission to the bar in 1849. Within the six years following his beginning legal practice, he had gained such a strong position in the county and had acquired such worthy legal reputation that, when becoming the Democratic candidate for district attorney of Luzerne county in 1855, he was elected, defeating Judge W. W. Ketchum, Still further public honor came to him in his nomination on the Democratic ticket for Congressman in 1880, but, finding that he could not conscientiously and honorably lend his support to certain issues with which his party was then indissolubly identified, he withdrew from the congressional race, his manly action adding to, rather than detracting from his reputation. To the public service he brought those fine qualities of mind and ability that had distinguished him in private practice. and as a servant of the people he cornpromised not one whit more with the forces of wrong than when his personal honor alone was at stake. He stood the tests of years with noteworthy success, and in mind and body remained vigorous and alert until approaching death's door, when bodily ills were less easily resisted. Luzerne county had in him a loyal son, one whose fiber made strong the fabric of citizenship, and who was worthy of the honor that so lovingly surrounds his memory