George Graham Vest (1830-1904) was a Missouri lawyer. His practice was limited to civil cases of little significance. Stacked up against the legal giants of the last century, George Graham Vest was a nobody.
A nobody until one day he walked into a Missouri courtroom and delivered an unusual argument in an unusual case. Vest represented a client suing a man who had wantonly shot and killed his dog. The facts of the case were presented in a routine manner. They merit no attention. It was the summation that lifted Vest from obscurity to immortality.
He stood before the jury box and made the usual opening remarks. Then he paused. When he began again, his voice took a richness never heard before and never heard after. These were his words:
… The best friend a man has in the world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name may become traitors to their faith.
The money that a man has he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it most. A man's reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees when success is with us, may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our head.
The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and poverty, in health and in sickness,. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince.
When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take win, and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.
If fortune drives his master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him, to guard him against danger, to fight his enemies. And when the last scene of all comes, and death takes his master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, their by the graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even in death …
George Graham Vest's words won him the admiration of the world as well as the case. They may have played a part in his becoming a United States Senator, a position of respect he held for twenty-four years.
But his service in the Senate proved to be as obscure as his career as a lawyer. He is remembered only for his tribute to a dog. No greater monument to his memory can be built; nor need it be.