Mr. Noyes entered upon his eightieth year apparently well and strong, little realizing that he had but one more week of life. A few days later, the last time he was at his desk, he announced to one of the older men at the store that he had just had a birthday and remarked that he had just 362 good sound days ahead of him before he would be eighty years old. The man congratulated him on the prospect and wished that the next twenty-five years of his life would be as happy and fortunate as the last twenty-five years during which they had been associated. Mr. Noyes stopped a moment, as if reckoning up, and then said with a twinkle in his eye, "That is fine, but why limit me, why limit me?"

On the very next day he suffered from an acute attack of appendicitis. He was operated upon at once, but at his age the chance of recovery was small. He failed to rally and passed away early in the morning of April 30, 1921. The funeral services were conducted by his pastor, the Reverend Henry C. Swearingen, at the church he loved, and the burial was in the family lot at Oakland Cemetery.

Mr. Noyes's career was a happy one. He enjoyed good health and all his faculties during a long life, experienced few personal sorrows, and was spared a lingering illness at the end. He started life with very limited worldly advantages and had to give up a college education; but with application, thrift, a keen business mind, and observation of the highest standards of business honor, he built up step by step during a long life a comfortable fortune. He married happily, and saw four children grow up, the three boys securing the education at Yale that had been denied to him. He saw the three oldest children married and independently established in comfortable homes of their own. He found increasing pleasure in his later years in his grandchildren and the widening family circle. In a time of change he never faltered in his devotion to the faith of his fathers.

Mr. Noyes took a helpful and important part in the varied life of his city, except in the one field of politics. He never ran for office, nor was he ever actively engaged in political work. Probably the thought to do so never occurred to him, since, like the rest of us, he realized that the industrial conflict has rendered it almost impossible for a successful business man to use his great abilities in the public service. In this his career differs from that of many of his ancestors who not only had the ability but actually did render the body politic efficient and loyal service.

The record of his life shows him a worthy descendant of these men and women who lived such useful lives and whose careers he delighted to study and preserve from oblivion. Assuredly Mr. Noyes enjoyed that "purest and most enduring of human pleasures . . . the possession of a good name among one's neighbors and acquaintances.

Such reputation regards not mental power, or manual skill, but character; it is slowly built upon purity, integrity, courage and sincerity. To possess it is a crowning satisfaction."

WILLIAM W. CUTLER

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA

CHARLES WILBERFORCE AMES

St. Paul lost one of its foremost citizens in the death of Charles W. Ames, who passed away at his home on April 3, 1921. He was a man of rare qualities, combining idealism with practical judgment in a degree possessed by few. He was of large vision, seeing the need of improvement in social and political conditions and striving with unsurpassed energy to bring about beneficial changes. In his public work he was zealous and untiring and wholly devoted to the task of benefiting his fellow men. As a citizen he stood in the foremost rank, and as a man he had no peers.

His ancestry endowed him with strong traits. He was born in Minneapolis, on June 30, 1855, the son of Charles Gordon Ames and Sarah Daniels Ames. He was educated in his early years at the Albany Academy, a school for boys at Albany, New York. When his family removed to California, he entered the public schools there, and later he was graduated from the Minneapolis high school and from Cornell University, receiving his degree of Bachelor of Literature in 1878. Between 1869 and 1871 he worked as a printer's apprentice for the San José Mercury. After his return to Minnesota he joined the railroad surveying party obtaining data for the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad, and he subsequently engaged in similar work on the Pennsylvania Railroad. In the intervals of his college work at Cornell he was engaged in geological work with the Pennsylvania Geological Survey. After his graduation he assisted his father for two years in the editing and publishing of the Christian Register in Boston.

His taste and experience being largely along the line of newspaper and publishing work, it was natural that he should incline toward that vocation, and in 1880 he became associated with the George H. Ellis Publishing Company of Boston. In 1882 he removed to St. Paul and purchased an interest in the

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