Few are able to appreciate the pressure of the burden borne by one under conditions like these. With agencies moving in divers and remote directions, and yet moving toward a common end and purpose, one in Colonel Pollard's position had to dispatch business with electrical facility. A sudden juncture reached had to be promptly met. The busy brain of one in such circumstances had to be ubiquitous, directing, managing, suggesting, dictating, hour after hour, over a vast area of diversified interests. To lose one's poise under such conditions meant jar and jostle to the enterprises fostered, but to be able to grapple with problems which came trooping in every day, meant generalship of the highest order. These forces were happily combined in Colonel Pollard. He could turn from one interest to another with ease and facility, and his constructive genius would readily grapple with a grave situation, attended by a flash of suggestiveness that was phenomenal. To him official labors came easy, for he was built for a station like this.
For many years Colonel Pollard lived in Montgomery an honored citizen, and most fortunate for the young employes who came within the circle of his influence, he proved how one laden with grave matters could still be polite and courteous, and thus preserve universal respect, however unfavorable the environment.
Worthily in the muster roll of the prominent men who have contributed to the greatness of Alabama, must appear the name of Judge Samuel Farrow Rice. For many years he was conspicuous in the public affairs of the state and was in some respects a remarkable man. A native of South Carolina, Mr. Rice was trained for the bar in the law office of the distinguished William C. Preston. He came to Alabama in 1838, and from that time till his death, was identified with the history of the state. His first service was that of an editor of a paper in Talladega, from which county he was twice sent to the lower house of the legislature. After this, for a period, he abandoned politics and was devoted to the practice of law, being at one time a partner to John T. Morgan.
Mr. Rice was not without congressional aspiration, which he sought to gratify several times, but was always defeated. Four different times did he sustain defeat in congressional races. General McConnell defeated him in 1845, Mr. Bowdon in '47, Alexander White in '51 and Hilary A. Herbert in '78. But he was never soured by defeat, and always accepted it in a jocular way. No one enjoyed a joke more at his own expense than Judge Rice. This was illustrated by the good nature with which he learned that an old rustic in the cow country of southeast Alabama declined to support him at one time because, as he said, "Rice ain't got no stubbility."