Excerpt from James Nelson Burnes: Representative in Congress From Missouri; His Life, With a Concise Reproduction of His Speeches and Debates in Congress The great veneration felt by the people of the State of Missouri for the character and services of their distinguished Representative in Congress, the late Honorable James Nelson Burnes, together with the sincere regard and deep affection borne him by a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, both in private and public life, has encouraged the collecting and collating of his speeches and debates in Congress and their presentation in the following work. To his old and cherished friends such a volume will, no doubt, prove acceptable as a choice memorial of their associate. To those attached to him by the loving ties of kinship, particularly the worthy members of his immediate family, it is respectfully presented as a legacy, bequeathed to them most assuredly, but which it has been my good fortune to succeed in rescuing and giving convenient shape between these covers; and which, it would seem, ought to be most precious since it comprehends the culminating work of his life - the work he was ardently pursuing when struck by the shaft of Death. A collaborateur, and I trust I may appropriately apply the term to myself, undertakes a work of this character with feelings akin to those which move one who walks the ocean strand the morning after a wreck - when there comes drifting in towards him, like sorrowful messengers, the fragments of the good ship which has failed and sunk into the sea. These fragments along the shore! what mute expressions of the lives of others - of departed friends, perchance, whose memory alone survives! Here a bit of something may open up a flood of memories; or even a scrap of a letter may cause the tears to unbidden flow. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.