Arthur G. Sedgwick

It is difficult to phrase the subtle human qualities of Arthur George Sedgwick—soldier, lawyer, journalist, publicist, and to his intimates a most cherished friend. He was First Lieutenant in the 20th Massachusetts in 1864, the year in which he received his A.B. from Harvard. Illness from imprisonment in Libby incapacitated him for military service, and he turned to the law, graduating from the Harvard Law School in 1866. At first he practiced in Boston and helped to edit the American Law Review; then he came to New York, and took up practice here; and also compiled and edited law books. Later he lectured on law at the Lowell Institute in Boston and at Harvard. But he had already been drawn to the editorial staff of the Evening Post and the Nation, and had entered on his long, but never quite exclusive, work as journalist. In 1912 appeared his most thoughtful book, entitled The Democratic Mistake. Sedgwick wrote with simplicity and self-restraint, and with the conciseness of one who was impatient of the superficial and the crude, and bored by over-expression and surplusage. For himself he was chary of emphasis, and chose to give the substance of his topic sifted and clarified by knowledge and consideration. As in his writings, so in his friends he cared for the pertinent and the essential, the wit and kernel of human intercourse, rather than its babbling and cachinnation.

Henry Osborn Taylor
1916 Century Association Yearbook