The principle which dictates that things said of a man immediately after his death shall be as gentle as is possible is a human and a highly intelligible principle. It rests first upon this; that almost every man leaving the world creates an agony in individual affections, the intensity of which is greater even than that of patriotic anger; it rests secondly on this; that every man dying is going where he may be understood for the first time. To put the matter briefly, we speak as well as may be of a dead man, for two reasons. The first is that some men knew him; the second is that no man knew him.

-July 21, 1906, Daily News