Ohio History Journal

112      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

The years in which Professor Randall taught were previous

to the introduction of the Case system in the Colleges of Law.

In a degree he anticipated this method of teaching. He had

familiarized himself with a large number of the important de-

cisions of the courts in cases where commercial paper was the

cause of the litigation. In addition he had the happy faculty

of developing by hypothesis a well constructed controversy. His

students from these hypotheses and cited cases were led to the

derivation of the principles on which the decisions of the courts

rested. This method was in striking contrast with the a priori

method long in vogue among teachers of the law. The test of

time has demonstrated the wisdom of his method. It may not be

too much to say that in a measure he was the forerunner of the

present method now universally in use.

Others have written upon the personal qualities of Professor

Randall but it may not be superfluous to add here that his high

ideals as to what the legal profession should represent, supported

by his own unimpeachable character, aided greatly in determining

the character of the College of Law. The spirit of industry

and of moral earnestness in the Faculty permeated the student

body and has led to a quality in the College that in turn has

reacted upon the graduates and produced a body of lawyers de-

voted to the best ideals and practices of the profession. The

character of the lawyer is quite as important to the state as his

learning, or his ability to try a case. From this point of view the

College of Law has won its place. The Faculty has been largely

responsible for this result and is entitled to high praise for the

inspiration aroused in students by virtue of what they were. Not

the least worthy of mention in this particular was Emilius Oviatt

Randall.

 

 

RANDALL, THE JOURNALIST.

BY JAMES W. FAULKNER, L. H. D.

There was something of the Bohemian in the composition of

Emilius O. Randall, a tendency to escape from the conventional

and to appear in the natural. This trait, observed by many of

his friends, had its origin in something akin to a congenital

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Emilius Oviatt Randall.             113

 

attribute. Old journalists - and they alone - understand this

outward manifestation of an inward surge, because he was their

brother in bond and blood. Nature designed him for membership

in their craft. In the old Indian days he would have been the

story-teller of his tribe. There was in him an ever-present im-

pulse to go and see and come back and tell, as the child would

phrase it.

It was this feeling that made him adventurous in his limited

fashion. Desire to travel to strange places, to attend notable

gatherings, to be present when first steps were taken, and to meet

and study great men and unusual incidents - all these grew

from the instinct of the born narrator. It urged him, too, to go

around the mighty, as it were, and view them from the rear; to

divest the powerful of their insignia and sit with them as naked

tribesmen. Nothing so well establishes his guild brothership as

the account he wrote of his trip to Paris while a youth. In this

he told of splendor of the empire of the third Napoleon, then

rotten-ripe and about to fall. His description of men and things

as he beheld them was worthy of Thackeray.

That cynicism which comes to all journalists he possessed

in the gentlest fashion. It infrequently found its way into his

writings. Rather was it to be detected in the delicious satire in

which he indulged when in the company of chosen spirits of the

little clubs which he was ever fond of founding and nurturing.

In these companionable gatherings the Bohemian within him was

displayed to its fullest measure. His treasures of wit and humor,

his wonderful knowledge of men and affairs, were lavished un-

sparingly. At these assemblages wherever he sat, like the Mac-

Gregor, was the head of the table. He ruled because of native

right.

There was also, as a part of his make-up, a spirit of didac-

ticism. He loved to teach as well as to inform. Hence his love

for and interest in history. The reporter's instinct bade him

delve and dig for the facts and to penetrate every mystery that

forbade inquiry save from the courageous and the patiently in-

dustrious. These qualifications he possessed. When he had ex-

hausted research he-told in simple truth what he had discovered.

Defeat he accepted with equanimity. For example, addressing

Vol. XXIX-8.

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114      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

a group of earnest seekers for some knowledge as to those van-

ished people, the Mound Builders, he replied to their appeal by

saying: "We know nothing of them."

Therein was found the true journalistic ideal - the render-

ing of an exact account of investigation and survey rather than

the promulgation of theory and the formulation of hypothesis.

In his work as an official, that of preparing for the records the

decisions of the Supreme Court, his vocation made him doubly

valuable. There was intense interest for him in traversing the

new fields of law and bringing back novel principles growing

out of modern conditions and in writing the romances and the

tragedies of the legalistic world.

It is not widely known that Mr. Randall virtually grew up

in the atmosphere of the journalistic profession. When a mere

lad his father gave him a small printing press and several fonts

of type. With these he formed the useful habit of preparing

his school exercises in print. After writing them he would set

up the articles, strike them off from the press, correct the errors

of composition and syntax, and finally secure a clean proof which

the next day he carried to his teacher. In later years he said

that his boyhood custom had given him his unusual vocabulary

and remarkable precision in spelling.

With his entrance into the public schools of Columbus there

sprang into life his innate tendency for the journalistic. With

one of his playmates he edited and published a monthly called

the Whip-poor-will, devoted to the instruction and entertain-

ment of their fellow children. Upon entering the Central High

School he established and fostered a paper given over to the

students' interests, the High School News.  Transferred to

Phillips Academy at Andover, Mass., he became one of the staff

of the school magazine, the Philo Mirror, later becoming its

chief editor. During his college days at Cornell University he

was selected to edit the Cornell Era, the students' weekly. As

he received his education in academics and belles lettres his de-

velopment as a public writer grew side by side with other phases

of mental equipment.

Coming back in his early maturity to Columbus he did not

relinquish the pen, because in 1878 he is found editing the Sat-

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Emilius Oviatt Randall.              115

urday Gazette, a weekly magazine devoted to literature, art and

the gossip and news of polite society. The secular dailies and

weeklies, quite numerous in those times, were constantly regaled

with contributions from his facile mind. Throughout his life

he found occasion to respond to invitations and requests from

editorial managers for special articles upon current topics of a

serious character. This continued, one might say, almost to his

last hour. Several months before the end came, he was to be

found writing editorial contributions for the Columbus Dispatch.

These were, for the most part, upon historical subjects, although

there were notable digressions in which political issues were

handled skilfully. Some of these articles were written while

confined to the bed from which he never rose.

His principal monument as a writer is to be found in the

noble collection of books he wrote and edited for the State

Archaeological and Historical Society. These are in the aggre-

gate twenty-eight volumes. With the unerring discernment of

the born historiographer and superior journalist he made selec-

tions from  the great mass of material confronting him and

brought them together with such tact and grace that the books

have all the attraction of a fascinating work of fiction. His

next greatest memorial is to be found in the deeds and accom-

plishments of the thousands of men he instructed as a teacher

of law at the Ohio State University, as the guide and mentor of

the Kit-Kat, the Harrow and other literary clubs, and as the

anonymous contributor to the columns of the current periodicals.

With but a select few, however, remain the remembrances

of his ambrosial nights within the Bohemian circle where flowed

the entrancing current of his most intimate thoughts upon men

and matters; where he sat weaving the spell in the minds and

hearts of his listeners with the warp and woof of his lore of

ancient days and his newly-coined knowledge of fresh created

circumstances. In some long dead age his transmigrated soul

must have inhabited the body of an aboriginal master of the

narrative and in the dusky twilight in the ancient fort above the

Miami river must have entranced the warriors, the women and

the children of a people whose history is lost in the hazes of

the centuries.

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