Judge Thayer descended from a sturdy, intelligent and respectable yeoman stock.

And he has honored his heredity by his own intellectual and moral excellence.

Although my personal intimacy with him has never been close enough to enable me to describe the footsteps of his upward career with graphical exactness, or to enrich my memory with interesting anecdotes, I can bear witness in a general way to his good characteristics, especially in his youth while he was nearest under my observation, and to some extent those of his mature years.

He was an industrious, affectionate, and dutiful son from childhood to maturity.
He evinced early intelligence, rationality and moral principle of a superior type, availing himself by close application of every opportunity for acquiring useful knowledge, and did so, as the sequel proved, successfully.

He was always an independent, acute and logical thinker on a wide range of subjects, as well outside of his professional life as inside.
But his constitution practically confined his ambition and pursuits to the state of the world's affairs as manageable for the time being, rather than to expending his energies for the realization of theories greatly in advance of current public opinion.