WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS 
1848-1908 


REUNION OF THE ALUMNI 

NOVEMBER, 1908 


BALTIMORE 

THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 

1909 


LIBRARY 

fe 

THE 

JOHNS HOPKINS 
UNIVERSITY CIRCULAR 

New Series, 1909, No. l JANUARY, 1909 Whole Number, 212 


IN MEMORIAM 
WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS 

1848-19O8 


A meeting commemorative of Dr. William Keith 
Brooks, Henry Walters Professor of Zoology in this 
University, who died November 12, 1908, was held in the 
Donovan Room, McCoy Hall, Sunday afternoon, Decem- 
ber 6, at 4 o'clock. President Remsen presided and spoke 
of Dr. Brooks's early connection with the University 
and of his career as an investigator, a teacher, a colleague, 
and a man. Addresses were delivered by Professor B. L. 
Gildersleeve, Dr. H. M. Hurd, Professor W. H. Howell, 
Professor E. A. Andrews, and Dr. Caswell Grave, and 
they are printed in the following pages. 


4 William Keith Brooks 


PROFESSOR GILDERSLEEVE 

As one of those who knew Dr. Brooks longest, I have 
been requested to say a few words about the rare man, 
the chosen spirit, whose presence was a light to this Uni- 
versity, whose work will abide forever as a precious 
possession ; and it is all ours, for this was his intellectual 
and spiritual home. But, after listening to President 
Remsen's analysis of his varied activity, and to Dr. Hurd's 
vivid description of the man as he lived and moved, I 
realize my utter incompetence to deal with so complex a 
subject, and the feeling returns that first came to expres- 
sion upon the announcement of his death, the vain regret 
that, although we had lived and worked so long within 
the same academic walls, I had not known him better. 
It is the same feeling that comes over one when one thinks 
of all the music that might have lifted the soul to higher 
regions and yet has died unheard. But Dr. Brooks had 
fixed his residence far from the haunts of most of us, and, 
in any case, it is a sad fact that only a few in this body of 
seekers after truth ever come into close personal contact. 
In the rush of the life that we must lead if we are to 
be faithful, we only get glimpses of what is going forward 
in the minds and hearts of our colleagues. We are like 
trains moving on parallel tracks. We catch sight of some 
face, some form that appeals to us, and it is gone. Yet, 
in the measure of my understanding, there was no one of 
our number that I admired more than I did Dr. Brooks. 

The very first lecture I heard him deliver, when he came 
here a young man, revealed to me at once his uncompro- 
mising demand of scientific evidence and his marvellous 
power of generalization. His popular talks, simple in 
their form as simple could be, opened vistas of startling 
significance to those who had learned to think at all. His 
thoughts did not so much wander through eternity as 
explore eternity with a measuring-rod. To outsiders like 


Professor Gildersleeve's Address 5 

myself who were not familiar with the patient processes 
of his scientific research, the word "genius" served to 
explain everything. He seemed to us as one of those 
rarely-gifted beings, in whom child-like sensitiveness is 
paired with immediate insight, nay, is one with it. And, 
if those who had not the specialist's knowledge of his 
sphere of work attributed too much to intuition, because 
he saw so much of creation's handiwork that we did not 
see; still there has never been a great scientific genius 
without vision ; and so it came about that in the solemn 
hour of his obsequies I thought not so much of the toil- 
some path by which he had reached the mount of vision, 
as of the wonderful verse that tells of the angels of the 
children, for in some things his intimates said he was as 
a child, and of that other wonderful verse about the open 
face with which are beheld the great secrets of the uni- 
verse. No one can grapple with the great problems that 
he hias set forth in his scientific system and fail to recog- 
nize in him a profound thinker. No one that ever came 
into personal relations with him can have failed to take 
knowledge of his pure and lofty and kindly spirit, and so 
I, too, have felt the touch of his master mind and have 
divined the essential sweetness of his noble nature. I am 
not a stranger to the grief that reigns in this gathering of 
his associates, his pupils, his friends, and I am grateful 
for the privilege that has been accorded me of adding to 
the wealth of these memorial services my poor tribute of 
admiration and affection. 


6 William Keith Brooks 


DR. HENRY M. HURD 

It has seemed to me proper to speak of the personal 
side of Professor Brooks's character. Others can better 
estimate his scientific work, and I would ask your indul- 
gence when I present some details of a personal character. 
Many others here, in fact, have known him much longer 
than I, and all are much better fitted to do justice to his 
special attainments. I made his acquaintance soon after 
I came to Baltimore, about eighteen years ago, and I 
have wondered ever since how it came about, he being one 
of the most retiring of men and we two not being thrown 
together in our work. I am sure, however, that he made 
the first advances out of pure kindness of heart to me, 
a stranger in a new field of work, and our relations for 
many reasons became intimate. I learned to know him 
best when, some time afterwards, at a Commencement 
time, when his family had left the city, he came to reside 
with me for a week or two. He was busy with his draw- 
ings and I was amazed at his method of working and the 
amount which he accomplished. At times he rose at 
dawn and worked with little interruption until late in 
the day. At other times he would work for a few hours, 
then lie down for an hour's rest without removing his 
clothing, and afterwards, upon awaking, renew his work, 
to lie down again when exhausted. This habit of continu- 
ous, yet interrupted, work I think must have been due to 
his congenital heart trouble, which did not permit of too 
long periods of work without what may be termed a rest- 
ing stage. Generally, after an evening's work he came 
from his room, and for an hour or more he would converse 
in a most graphic and illuminating way upon the topics 
which were uppermost in his mind. He told me of his 
new studies in morphology and his views as to the future 
of the cultivation of the oyster. He gave vivid descrip- 
tions of his work in Nassau, Jamaica, and the West 


Dr. Hurd's Address 1 

Indies. He described the skulls and linguistic remains 
of the Lucayan Indians, or spoke of his animal pets and 
his love for them. He had the rare faculty of conveying 
scientific knowledge in simple language and could interest 
all who heard him. He seemed to have given careful, 
deliberate thought to every subject which came up for dis- 
cussion. I remember that he had very decided views as to 
education, and he spoke of his desire to organize classes in 
nature study long before it became a fad in elementary 
schools. I also never forgot his views as to the training 
of animals, which I afterwards saw carried out at his own 
home in a very practical manner. His kindness to 
animals, especially parrots and dogs, and his considera- 
tion for them were remarkable. He never allowed them 
to be punished, and had theories that bad temper, bad 
habits, and even ferocity on their part grew out of incon- 
siderate treatment. If a dog killed a chicken, he had the 
dead chicken hung about the puppy's neck until it became 
offensive to him as well as to others. If a young dog 
gnawed a book or a shoe, he had the mutilated articles 
similarly dealt with. He believed that all animals should 
be reasoned with and told of their faults with quietness 
and composure. The result was a wonderful degree of 
sympathy between him and his pets. The same was true 
of his flowers. They were his companions, his joy, and his 
pride. In his eyes no one could have a higher pleasure 
than to go through his hot house to inspect his beloved 
plants. 

His was a complex character of strength and simplicity. 
His views as to matters essential were philosophical and 
statesmanlike in their breadth and to him seemed axio- 
matic, and he held them tenaciously and could not depart 
from them. He could, on occasion, as in his plea for the 
preservation and study of the oyster, stand inflexibly for 
them for twenty years and never think of change or even 
of compromise, for they were founded upon careful obser- 
vation, sound study, and impregnable deductions. He 


8 William Keith Brooks 

uttered them and reiterated them year after year, until at 
last he found them accepted even by the tardy legislators 
of Maryland. The same was equally apparent in his con- 
tention that the Chesapeake Bay should not receive the 
sewage of Baltimore until it had been rendered innocuous 
by sedimentation and bacterial decomposition. He stood 
alone for a time in this view, but the city of Baltimore 
eventually accepted it and is now acting upon it. His 
very strength gave him an appearance of simplicity. He 
acted in all matters with the directness and simplicity of 
a child. These very qualities gave him at times an appear- 
ance of helplessness. One felt instinctively that he must 
be guarded and helped and protected and shielded from 
the consequences of his own apparent lack of worldly 
wisdom, forgetting after all that his was the truest wis- 
dom. His mind was attuned to the verities of science, and 
he listened to the internal voice and not to the voice of 
the people. He rejoiced in the opportunity to publish his 
book, "The Oyster," because, in rewriting and publishing 
it, he received a promise from the University that his 
monograph on "Salpa" should be worthily published a 
book which he believed to be far more important. He had 
wonderful powers of observation and was quick to see the 
bearing of any isolated fact. I remember on one occasion 
he noticed a flock of Mother Carey's chickens upon Lake 
Roland, near his residence in the country. He immedi- 
ately telephoned to two members of his family, who had 
left his house a few minutes before to go to Old Point, 
not to make the journey, as a severe storm was impending, 
and his invalid wife was thereby saved a severe and trying 
experience upon Chesapeake Bay that night, when a fear- 
ful storm raged with much destruction of shipping. He 
knew from his previous experience that when Mother 
Carey's chickens sought an inland water, the fact pre- 
saged a storm of no common severity. 

He had a beautiful home life. His devotion to his wife, 
long an invalid and very helpless, was most touching, and 


Dr. Hurd's Address 9 

his tenderness to all who belonged to his household was a 
marked characteristic. He was fond of his neighbors and 
friends, devoted to his pupils, and helpful to his students. 
Even his servants were members of his family, and no one 
mourned over his death more sincerely than his faithful 
man-servant. 

It was evident w r hen death came that the machinery of 
his organization was completely worn out. It is rare that 
one with such a congenital heart defect grows to man- 
hood. It is, indeed, wonderful that he should have com- 
pleted more than sixty years of fruitful activity. This 
must have been due to his knowledge of his limitations 
and his intuitions as to the best method of utilizing his 
energies. His last year of life was one of intense suffer- 
ing and weariness, notwithstanding the ceaseless devotion 
of his family to his comfort. It is a relief to think of him 
at last at rest. 

His theory of life was simple and evolved from true 
wisdom. He did those things which he was fitted to do 
and which he enjoyed doing, and his mind was full of con- 
tent, because he did not attempt more. Many of us are 
bound to the iron wheel of necessity, duty, or responsi- 
bility, and revolve helplessly w r ith it and not according to 
our own volition. We spend our lives in routine servitude, 
always anticipating and never securing the freedom to 
live our own lives and think our own thoughts which we 
desire. Our departed friend was peculiarly happy in that 
he lived his true life and developed in accordance with his 
special gifts. He has left an example for our imitation 
and the record of a life devoted to science. "To learn what 
is true in order to do what is right," was its guiding 
motto. 


10 William Keith Brooks 


PROFESSOR HOWELL 

Just twenty-nine years ago, as an undergraduate stu- 
dent, I first made the acquaintance of Dr. Brooks. Since 
that time it has been my privilege to be brought close to 
him in many ways, as a student, a colleague, and a friend. 
The great respect and esteem which I soon learned to feel 
toward him as a teacher, has deepened into a lasting 
admiration and affection, as I have learned to appreciate 
his unique character and his great intellectual qualities. 
His death has occasioned, I believe, an unusual feeling of 
sadness among his old students, partly because of the 
affectionate regard in which he was held, and partly, 
perhaps, because it was recognized by most of us that 
physically he was not a robust man, and that in the acci- 
dents of life he was liable to be stricken down at any 
moment. The very concern that this thought occasioned 
has served to intensify our sorrow for his death. It is as 
though our worst fears had been realized all too soon. 

In speaking of him before this company of friends it is 
not necessary to refer to his personal qualities. We all 
recognized him as a man different from others, a man 
with peculiarities, yes, oddities of manner, which set him 
apart from the average conventional individual; but we 
all know that his peculiarities were of that lovable and 
gentle sort which arise essentially from the absence of 
what we may call worldliness, and which therefore serve 
only to call forth a greater response of kindly and pro- 
tective affection from all generous hearts. Indeed, I have 
always fancied that I could detect in the attitude of 
Dr. Brooks's students toward him a certain kind of chival- 
rous relationship, a pact, as it were, founded upon 
principles different from those which usually control the 
conflict of selfish interests in the intercourse of men. 
They sat at his feet, intellectually speaking, and they 
regarded him without question as their master, but in 


Professor Howell's Address 11 

things material they believed that, if the necessity should 
arise, it was their part to guard and protect his unsus- 
picious and gentle nature from, possible injustice. They 
have always shown an especial willingness or eagerness 
to proclaim his great work, because, I believe, they felt 
that he himself was liable to ignore completely and uncon- 
sciously all the various devices, legitimate and illegiti- 
mate, of self-exploitation. 

The simplicity and purity of Dr. Brooks's character 
found an especially favorable environment in the quiet of 
academic life. While these qualities may not have been 
wholly recognized or appreciated by those who knew him 
slightly, or by those who value only the militant virtues, 
yet in the intimacy of the laboratory life they appealed 
strongly to his better students, and formed, I have no 
doubt, a considerable part of the uplifting influence which 
he exerted upon the character and work of his men. 

As a teacher Dr. Brooks had a remarkable gift for expo- 
sition. His method was peculiar and unusual, but 
very attractive and effective. In lecturing he used 
no notes of any description, and certainly nothing that 
savored of the oratorical manner, but the clearness, the 
orderliness, and the attractiveness with which he could 
present a subject was really unrivalled, so far as my 
experience goes. He seemed to have such a complete con- 
trol of his mental processes, he thought so well and so 
clearly and expressed his thoughts in such appropriate 
language, that every student with a spark of interest in 
the subject was delighted ; it was a treat to hear him 
lecture. 

I remember that, while serving on the faculty of the 
University of Michigan, I came to know very well some of 
the Hopkins men who were in the departments of ancient 
and modern languages. In recalling their student days 
at the Hopkins one of their pleasantest memories seemed 
to be the talks that Brooks gave before the scientific asso- 
ciation of the University. It would appear that, when it 


12 William Keith Brooks 

was known that Brooks was to give a paper, it was a 
custom for men in all the graduate departments to attend 
the meeting, so much did they appreciate the charm and 
clearness with which he could present the problems of 
his subject. I recall also that one of my colleagues in the 
medical department dates his determination to enter upon 
o biological career from a lecture that was given by 
Dr. Brooks. To him that lecture had the seductiveness of 
the music of the piper of Hamelin it made him see the 
blue waters and smell the salt air of the ocean. 

In many ways it seemed to me a great pity that, in the 
organization of the courses in the biological department, 
Dr. Brooks was not brought more into contact with the 
beginning students; his talents for exposition and his 
great breadth of scientific vision would have had such a 
stimulating and elevating influence. Doubtless this 
kind of work was in the nature of the case more or less 
impossible for him: his more serious mission was, of 
course, with his special students, and the necessity that 
he was under of leading a restrained and quiet life from 
a physical standpoint limited greatly the extent of his 
active work in teaching. 

Upon has advanced students Dr. Brooks exercised with- 
out doubt a strong and enduring influence, which they 
hasten to acknowledge gratefully on every occasion. The 
means by which he exerted this influence I do not feel 
capable of analyzing satisfactorily. He paid very little 
attention to his men in their daily work, and difficulties of 
technique interested him perhaps not at all. I feel quite 
sure that, in many cases, the routine work for the Ph. D. 
degree was accomplished with but little direct supervision 
on his part. Yet, so far as I know, none of the numerous 
men who were trained in his laboratory and who now 
occupy important chairs in the subject in other colleges, 
fail to attribute to him a great influence for good upon 
their intellectual development. I assume that this influ- 
ence was due in part to the simple truthfulness of Ms 


Professor Hoicell's Address 13 

character and his intellectual sincerity. Indeed, the 
biological students of the days that I am recalling were 
very fortunate in having two such teachers as Martin and 
Brooks : these men had, or rather I should say they lived, 
such high ideals that unconsciously their pupils imbibed 
from them a distaste for petty and selfish methods. But 
Brooks's particular influence was due chiefly, I imagine, 
to the fact that all of us recognized in him a certain inde- 
pendence and profundity of thought. He was interested 
in the large problems of biology. Concerning these prob- 
lems he thought continually and deeply and along lines 
of his own. Those who were brought into close associa- 
tion with him as students, appreciated this fact and at 
once accepted him as an intellectual guide and master. 
Matters of laboratory technique they might have to 
acquire from other sources, but from him they obtained 
the stimulus to real thinking. As an undergraduate 
student I was thrown into somewhat intimate relations 
with the graduates in the biological department. I recall 
that, although some of them differed but little in age and 
in amount of training from Brooks, yet without exception 
they regarded him as an older and wiser man, and paid 
that deference to his attainments which all subsequent 
generations of his students have been glad to acknowledge. 
For all the former students of the biological labora- 
torv the death of Dr. Brooks will mark the end of a defi- 

*/ 

nite era in the history of the department. The work of 
this laboratory will go forward, I have no doubt, under 
new hands with as great success as in former years, but 
it is a sad thing to realize that the period of Martin and 
Brooks has gone by, that a definite chapter in the history 
of this laboratory has been completed beyond revision. 
The old students look back upon this finished work with 
pride; they can wish no greater prosperity to the biologi- 
cal department than to hope that the influence of these 
two great and beloved teachers may be perpetuated here 
forever. The methods that they used, the problems that 


14 William Keith Brooks 

interested them may be supplanted by others of more 
modern type, for in biology, as in the other sciences, the 
points of view change rapidly, and senescence as regards 
theories and modes of thought is a process that comes on 
with remarkable rapidity. But the spirit and ideals 
which Brooks and Martin inculcated and exemplified can- 
not be improved upon, and I hope that they will ever 
characterize the work of this laboratory. 


PROFESSOR E. A. ANDREWS 

As the one of Professor Brooks's students who has 
longest remained closely connected with him, as student, 
assistant, and associate, and as one who has owed pecu- 
liarly much to his helpful kindness, I feel unable here to 
express my full debt of gratitude to so pure a friend. 

Coming with the traditions of a Yale student to the 
Johns Hopkins University, some twenty years ago, and 
knowing the fame of Professor Martin's books, I was sur- 
prised to find in him a man young in years, and in Dr. 
Brooks one old in thought. At that period Brooks ap- 
peared to the new student a sphinx-like character, with 
long, bushy beard, and ever in company of a huge 
St. Bernard dog that followed him to the laboratory. 

It was then that Professor Brooks was making such 
good use of the opportunities offered by the new univer- 
sity in the founding of the Chesapeake Marine Laboratory, 
which first realized the dreams of Louis Agassiz, with 
whom, at Penikese, Brooks had studied. At Crisfield, 
Hampton, Fort Wool, Beaufort, and later in the Bahamas 
and in Jamaica, the work of Brooks and his men played 
no small part in the advance of scientific zoology. And 
happy are they who now, from universities throughout 
the land, look back upon those days of stimulating con- 
tact with Nature and her loving admirer and interpreter, 
their master, William Keith Brooks. 


Professor Andreios's Address 15 

But time presses and I must limit my remarks to a brief 
mention of a few of the published writings of Professor 
Brooks, the zoologist. Leaving the practical aspect of his 
work aside, as that has been recalled by one most fitted 
to do it justice, the work of Professor Brooks was of so 
fundamental a nature that it can scarcely be dealt with 
without serious study. Born ten years after Darwin first 
put on paper his theory of evolution by natural selection, 
and ten years before that theory was published, Dr. 
Brooks was naturally most deeply affected by the great 
wave of acceptance of natural selection as the means of 
evolution. 

His first book, "Heredity," printed after ten years of 
thought and discussion, was an ingenious attempt to 
reconcile Darwin's subsidiary hypothesis of "pangenesis" 
with the conflicting facts of Galton. It is a book full of 
new points of view and novel thought, and, though the 
author was led by discovery of later facts to abandon the 
applications there made, the book will remain as an 
important stage in the growth of our thought upon the 
means of evolution. 

As an illustration of the long-continued interest in 
problems and the tenacity of purpose which were charac- 
teristic of the mind of Professor Brooks, may be selected 
a brief mention of his study of those little-known, but 
beautiful, marine animals, the Salpas. First, in 1875, in 
the laboratory of Alexander Agassiz, Dr. Brooks dis- 
covered that the remarkable phenomenon of "alternation 
of generations," discovered in these salpas by the poet- 
naturalist Chamisso, in 1814, did not really exist there at 
all. While the point here involved may be difficult to ex- 
press without too technical treatment, it was this. Pro- 
fessor Brooks discovered that the animals supposed to 
make the eggs did not do so, but merely took care of the 
eggs that were put into them full-formed. He simply said 
the producers of eggs must be females. Granting the facts 
the conclusion seems evident, though investigators of 


16 William Keith Brooks 

salpas are still of different minds. This discovery was 
but one in a long series of difficult observations upon the 
anatomy and embryology of the salpas, that occupied Pro- 
fessor Brooks for twenty years and more. In fact, the 
publication in 1893 of his great quarto monograph of 400 
pages and 50 plates did not end his interest in these 
salpas. It was a source of deep regret to him that his 
plan to write the manuscript of a last investigation of 
salpa, for which he had completed a long series of illus- 
trations, could not be carried out this past summer. 

Professor Brooks's work was at the seaside and upon the 
ocean, on the eggs and young of marine animals, for 
they seemed to offer solutions of the fundamental prob- 
lems of morphology. In brief, his task was the testing of 
the theory of evolution by the study of lower animals. 
Over and beyond the accumulated facts that will remain 
irterwoven in the fabric of human knowledge, there was 
ic all that he did the spirit of genius in point of view and 
interpretation. His philosophical bent and his love for 
Nature were the prime motives for his labors. 

His last book, "The Foundations of Zoology.," contains 
many of his long-matured thoughts and will stand as his 
chief monument. The viewpoint there taken seems a diffi- 
cult one; but it is characteristically balanced, profoundly 
philosophical, and full of reservation of judgment where 
human experience fails to supply facts. 

For text-book making Professor Brooks had little zest, 
yet his "Manual of Invertebrate Zoology" was a quite new 
conception and has no peer nor successor. 

Tradition has it that, in the inception of this university, 
there was a hope that Professor Huxley might hold the 
chair of Biology. What different history that would have 
made! But is it not true that, in the life-work of William 
Keith Brooks, the Johns Hopkins University had the 
services of a mind even superior to that of Thomas 
Huxlev? 


Dr. Grave's Address 17 


DR. CASWELL GRAVE 

The debt owed to Dr. Brooks by the State of Maryland 
for the studies made by him of her most valuable resource, 
the oyster of the Chesapeake, for his long-continued 
efforts to create a proper realization on the part of the 
State, as a whole, of the possibilities of this resource, and 
for his suggestions of methods for husbanding it, is recog- 
nized and appreciated by so few persons that I esteem it 
a great privilege to have the opportunity on this occasion 
to speak of the work of Dr. Brooks on the oyster and of 
its far-reaching importance and results. 

After the publication of his book, "The Oyster," in 1891, 
Dr. Brooks's personal activity in the work of arousing 
interest in the oyster question ceased, but there were not 
lacking men, consciously or unconsciously inspired by 
Dr. Brooks, to take up the work. Such was the retiring 
disposition and modesty of Dr. Brooks that his name 
gradually ceased to be closely associated with the agita- 
tion of the question which went on. Some of the measures 
advocated by Dr. Brooks were entirely dropped, while 
others were modified in order that the time of their adop- 
tion by a hesitating public might be hastened. To give 
due credit to Dr. Brooks for his pioneering work in this 
field, it is not at all necessary to take from the credit of 
those who have borne the brunt of the fight in later years. 

Dr. Brooks established the Chesapeake Marine Labora- 
tory in 1878, at Fort Wool, Virginia, his purpose being to 
afford opportunities for the study of living marine 
animals for himself, his associates and students. It was 
at this time and place that Dr. Brooks began his study 
of the oyster, and so interested did he become in it that 
he was encouraged by the University to give his entire 
time to the subject during the following season, and to 
this end, in 1879, the Chesapeake Marine Laboratory was 
transferred to Crisfield, Maryland, this locality affording 


18 William Keith Broolcs 

the best opportunity at that time for the study of the 
oyster and the problems connected with it. In 1880 a 
paper entitled "Development of the American Oyster" 
was published by Dr. Brooks, embodying the results 
of his observations both; at Fort Wool and at Cris- 
field. This paper was an important contribution to 
science, to philosophy, and to political economy. It con- 
tained a detailed and exhaustive account of the method of 
reproduction of the American oyster, the first ever pub- 
lished. Hitherto it had been taken for granted that the 
American oyster did not differ in this respect from the 
European species. In addition to the above, many obser- 
vations concerning the anatomy of the oyster were 
described. The bearing which the recorded observations 
had upon philosophical questions then being discussed 
throughout the scientific world, were clearly set forth. 
The causes for the gradual decline of the oyster industry, 
which had then begun in Maryland and Virginia, were 
discussed and recommendations for legislation were 
made, based upon the results of his own study, the object 
of which was to place the industry upon a more satisfac- 
tory basis. This paper was well received everywhere, and 
gave to Dr. Brooks a prominent position among men of 
science, especially in Europe, a position which became 
permanent as a result of his later purely scientific papers. 
In recognition of the value of the contribution, the Societe 
d'Acclimatation of Paris voted a medal to Dr. Brooks in 
1883. 

The discussion of the oyster problem within the State 
of Maryland, immediately following the publication of 
this paper and provoked mainly by it, created such an 
interest in the Chesapeake and its resources that the 
General Assembly of 1882 established a commission 
charged with the consideration and recommendation of 
ways and means to "Perpetuate the Oyster Beds of the 
Chesapeake." Dr. Brooks was appointed chairman of 
this commission by the Governor. Released from active 


Dr. Grave's Address 19 

duties in the University, he gave his entire time for eigh- 
teen months to the study of the economic side of the oys- 
ter question. A laboratory for conducting experiments 
in the propagation of oysters was established at Hamp- 
ton, Virginia. Surveys were made of the oyster bars in 
order to determine their actual condition. Careful studies 
were made of the oyster industries of European countries 
and Northern States, special emphasis being placed upon 
methods which have been employed elsewhere to bring 
exhausted or depleted oyster beds to a satisfactory state 
of productivity. Many of these methods were tried on a 
small scale in the Chesapeake. In 1884 the report of this 
work was published, in a quarto of 200 pages. In addi- 
tion to descriptions of the above lines of investigation, it 
contained recommendations for legislation. Nearly all 
of the recommendations were disregarded by the Legisla- 
ture, partly because of the effect of a minority report by 
the dissenting member of the commission, but mainly be- 
cause the measures recommended were far in advance of 
the times. 

Dr. Brooks saw clearly now that the oyster question 
was not an economic one to be worked out in a scientific 
way, but that it was a social problem, the solution of 
which could only result after long years of discussion 
before, and consequent education of, the general public. 
Such a campaign of education he undertook to carry 
on by frequent public lectures on the oyster, by discus- 
sions in the newspapers, and, finally and more effectually, 
by the publication, in 1891, of a popular treatise, entitled 
"The Oyster." This book is described by Dr. D. C. Oilman 
as "scientific enough to be accurate, not so scientific as 
to be hard of understanding." It marked a very long step 
in advance. Its immediate effect was to bring to the aid 
of the cause men of large influence in public affairs. The 
book, written so clearly, covering fully the subjects of 
oysters and oyster culture, was read with enthusiasm and 
profit in every State and couutrv where ovsters are 


20 William Keith Brooks 

grown, and it continues still to be the best treatise on 
these subjects. 

The pressure of public sentiment in favor of a correct 
and final solution of the oyster problem for Maryland, 
along substantially the lines suggested by Dr. Brooks, 
grew stronger and stronger, year by year, and in 1906 
Dr. Brooks had the satisfaction of seeing the Hainan 
Oyster Culture Law enacted. No one rejoiced more than 
Dr. Brooks when the State took this first step toward cre- 
ating the conditions under which it may be possible, 
finally, to realize a part at least of the vision he had seen 
of the vast potential resources of the Chesapeake. 


PROFESSOR WILLIAM HAND BROWNE 

Dr. Browne, who could not be present at the memorial 
meeting on account of the grave illness of a member of 
his family, has written the following appreciation of his 
close friend, Dr. Brooks : 

I regret deeply that an imperative duty will prevent 
my attending the meeting to commemorate our departed 
colleague. 

As Dr. Brooks and myself usually travelled to and from 
the city by the same train, we naturally had much talk 
together ; and I was constantly struck by the wide extent 
of his information, and the clearness of his thought on 
every subject that arose. Were it an obscure passage in 
Shakespeare, a novel of Dickens or Thackeray, the Ber- 
keleian philosophy, or an item in the morning paper, he 
had always something to the point, and often something 
illuminating, to say about it. Of many pregnant remarks 
which took hold of my memory, I will repeat but one. The 
subject of the supernatural having been broached, Dr. 
Brooks said : "The term 'supernatural' is due to a mis- 
conception of nature. Nature is everything that is." 


Professor Browne's Tribute 21 

An anecdote which he once told me of himself is charac- 
teristic of his way of thinking. When a boy and, I sup- 
pose, a small boy his teacher once asked him: "If the 
third of six be three, what will be the fourth of twenty?" 
Young Brooks answered, "Five." The teacher, thinking 
that he had not understood the question, repeated it. 
"I don't see," said the boy, "that altering the value of six 
alters the value of twenty." 

Dr. Brooks was fastidious about the language of any- 
thing he wrote for publication, holding an obscure, 
pedantic, or clumsy style in abomination. He often dis- 
cussed various forms of phrasing, and arrangement of 
clauses in a complex statement. Above all things he 
aimed at being perfectly lucid, and would read to me 
taking me as representing the average mind passages 
from his manuscripts, to see if I found them absolutely 
clear. 

In losing Dr. Brooks, the University has lost one of its 
strongest and brightest minds, while I personally grieve 
at the loss of an endeared friend. 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
PROFESSOR E. A. ANDREWS 

[Reprinted from "Science," December 4, 190S] 

At sunrise November the twelfth there passed peace- 
fully away, at his home "Brightside," on the shores of 
Lake Roland, one of the foremost of the few greatest of 
American zoologists. 

William Keith Brooks was born March 25, 1848, in 
Cleveland, Ohio, though his ancestors for seven or eight 
generations lived in New England, coming to Massachu- 
setts from England about 1634. He owed his early educa- 
tion in part to the excellent public school teachers of 
Cleveland, and in part to such elements of his boyhood's 
environment as his native bent led him to pick out and 
assimilate. Among such influences were collections of 
fossils, stored in a neighbor's barn, and the wonder of the 
flocks of carrier pigeons that still came over the lake to 
be destroyed by clubs and guns on the bluffs, darkening 
the air till school could no longer "keep." 

More significant yet were the home-made aquaria, and 
the back-yard pond that was sometimes visited by a 
migrating carrier pigeon and more often the source of 
rare delight in the study of the habits of aquatic insects. 
And it was there that was learned an indelible lesson of 
the power of reflexes and mechanisms, by the observation 
of a dragonfly that had lost most of its machinery except 
that of the head, yet continued to chew and swallow food, 
which, like the water drunk by Munchausen's bisected 
horse, passed steadily out into the open void. 

He was not given to athletic sports, though winning a 
prize for excellence in calisthenics. Contemplative and 
studious, he was sent by his father to Hobart College. 
After two years he entered Williams College where a love 
of natural history was fostered by the society that sent 
22 


Biographical Sketch 23 

out an expedition across South America, and be received 
the A. B. degree in 1870. At one time he tried life in his 
father's counting house. Here he exhibited characteristic 
interest in the solution of problems and distaste for such 
mechanical drudgery as had only practical and not theo- 
retical ends in view, by the invention of a calculating 
machine to lessen the amount of unprofitable manual 
work. 

To get university education despite lack of funds he 
became a teacher in De Veaux College, 1870-1873, where 
he profited by communion with nature as presented 
along the rapids below the falls of Niagara. There he 
entered upon a second marked period in necessary prep- 
aration for his life-work. He learned the boy mind and 
the simple way to teach by arousing interest in the truths 
of nature. Some others profited by this later when 
he was induced to give private lessons in natural history 
to boys in Newport, and the same bent always made his 
university lectures the opposite of that ill-digested verbi- 
age that is sometimes heard. It was then that he became 
so strongly impressed by the writings of Bishop Berkeley 
as never to be oblivious of the relation of observational 
science to the fundamental character of the ego. 

He was drawn by the fame of Agassiz to his first ex- 
perience with marine life at the famous experiment, the 
Penikese school, where he shared the discomforts and 
delights of the beginnings of that hastily materialized 
ideal. Sailing to that island by fishing vessel the poetic 
strain in his composition long treasured the glimpse of his 
point of departure, the then picturesque hamlet of South 
Dartmouth, much later recognized, for its rare atmos- 
phere, by the artist, Tryon. 

At Harvard College, he received the degree of Phi. D., in 
1875. He had the stimulus of contact and friendship with 
Hyatt and McCrady and the environment of the museums 
of Agassiz and of the Boston Natural History Society. 
With Hyatt's aid he added to his own studies of the 


24 William Keith Brooks 

embryology of pond snails such intimate knowledge of the 
large collections of gasteropod shells that he could dis- 
tinguish and identify them in the dark. Through McCrady 
he became inspired by the beauties of form and problems 
of life-history of the medusae that McCrady's studies at 
Charleston were revealing. 

In 1875, he, with Albert H. Tuttle and Theodore B. 
Comstock, opened a summer school in Cleveland, with 
some twenty-five, chiefly school teachers, in attendance, 
with lectures, excursions, and laboratory study of both 
local and marine animals and plants. 

With the opening of the Johns Hopkins University, 
Dr. Brooks saw an opportunity to devote himself to the 
study of zoology untrammelled by tradition and with the 
freedom to express the genius that was in him. Appointed 
fellow, he was at once made instructor, and having no 
administration routine was enabled to give himself wholly 
to investigation not that he was lacking in initiative and 
practical expedients. By personal representation he 
obtained from prominent citizens a nucleus of support 
for the founding of the Chesapeake Marine Laboratory, 
the first school for study of marine life to take the field 
opened by Agassiz's initial experiment. He also induced 
the civic authorities to open a public aquarium in Druid 
Hill Park, though this was subsequently abandoned, 
since the city had not then grown sufficiently mature to 
feel the need of such mild expression of intellectual 
interest and means of instruction. 

His summer schools in the Chesapeake, at Crisfield, at 
the old fort on the Kip Raps off Old Point Comfort, and at 
Hampton, at first provided instruction for elementary 
students and school teachers as well as opportunity for 
research by naturalists, but later this latter side was the 
one exclusively developed. His study of the fauna of the 
Chesapeake soon made it evident that the fundamental 
problems of marine biology could be more profitably 


Biographical Sketch 25 

attacked at some point on the ocean shore farther south, 
and it revealed also the hitherto unknown fact that the 
practical problems here in pressing need of solution could 
be solved by common-sense application of scientific prin- 
ciples. 

Professor Brooks's discovery that the eggs of the Ameri- 
can oyster could be fertilized outside the body suggested 
the development of an oyster industry along the lines in 
use by the fish-hatching stations, and led to the establish- 
ment of the Maryland Oyster Commission. As leading 
and working member of this body, Professor Brooks made 
an extensive survey of the oyster beds of Maryland and 
concluded that the State had there a vast means for 
development, which needed but the application of good 
business management to rescue it from its condition of 
neglect. From that date, 1882, Professor Brooks lived in 
the belief that the people of Maryland would utilize the 
great natural gifts of the Chesapeake by legislation that 
would remove the oyster industry from a mere hunt to 
the level of scientific agriculture. To this end he stimu- 
lated popular interest and sought to appeal to those of 
slow comprehension both by popular lectures and by his 
popular book, "The Oyster," which was issued in 1891 and 
reedited later. With characteristic persistence of pur- 
pose he was loath to let the truth, be swamped by popular 
conservatism and ignorance, and became so determined to 
see the State enter upon the enjoyment of the fruits of 
his labors that the oyster question and its ultimate solu- 
tion played no small part in keeping Professor Brooks in" 
Baltimore, when alluring opportunities for enlarged 
activities were offered at a more northern university. 
However, he was temperamentally more at home in the 
non-nervous community of his adoption than in the bustle 
of the strenuous life of denser populations. 

This interest in the practical value of zoological work 
was sustained by several of his students, who, following 


2G William Keith Brooks 

Professor Brooks's lead, made advances in the culture of 
the oyster, in New England, in New Jersey, in Oregon, in 
Louisiana, in the Carolinas and in Maryland itself. For 
at the eleventh hour a good beginning was made, and 
Brooks's disciple. Professor Caswell Grave, the zoological 
member of the Shell Fish, Commission of Maryland, has 
utilized the new legislation for a most promising realiza- 
tion of Professor Brooks's dreams of scientific knowledge 
and control of the vast natural resources of the State. 

But the philosophical problems of biology always took 
first place in Brooks's mind, and it was at Beaufort, N. C., 
that he found marine life presenting the problems best 
suited to his patient and enthusiastic labor. The yearly 
work of his laboratory, established in the old Gibbs house 
(that boasted the distinction of being built of cypress and 
put together with copper nails), added much to the facts 
of marine embryology and to the number of now well- 
known investigators. 

Upon that foundation was ultimately builded the 
present well-known marine station of the Bureau of 
Fisheries at Beaufort, embodying a dream that Professor 
Brooks could not himself realize as the university became 
no longer able to maintain the "Chesapeake Laboratory." 

Financial embarrassments of the university led to the 
abandonment of steam launch and sloop and discontinu- 
ance of the university's summer school at Beaufort, but 
from year to year, when it was possible, temporary sta- 
tions were established by Professor Brooks and his men ; 
in the Bahamas, at Green Turtle Cay, at Nassau, at the 
Bimini Islands ; and later in Jamaica at Port Henderson, 
and again at Port Antonio. 

Meantime, as director of the United States Fish Com- 
mission Laboratory, at Woods Hole, in 1888, and while 
upon expeditions of the Grampus, he had opportunity to 
renew his acquaintance with the fauna of the North 
Atlantic and to explore the Gulf Stream. 


Biographical Sketch 27 

From this varied experience of marine life arose those 
contributions to the embryology and life histories of non- 
vertebrates that will long endure as a monument to the 
industry, keen observation and no little artistic skill of 
Professor Brooks. His chief observations were made upon 
the hydromedusae and the mollusca and Crustacea, and 
notably upon those exceptional kin of the vertebrates, the 
pelagic tunicates, the salpas. 

Among these contributions to the facts of marine life 
might be recalled his papers upon gasteropods and lamelli- 
branchs, beginning in 1875, with a communication to the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science; 
the papers on Lingula, on the development of the squid, 
on squilla and the other stomatopods, on lucifer with its 
exceptional cleavage, on the macrura; and a series of 
papers upon salpa, culminating in 1893, after a continued 
interest from the first publication upon this animal in 
1875, in his great monograph upon salpa, a quarto volume 
of nearly four hundred pages and fifty-seven plates. From 
his trips to the Bahamas came also his monograph on the 
skulls of the Lucayan Indians. 

While some of this work appeared in various journals, 
in the publications of the Philosophical Society, the 
National Academy, the Philosophical Transactions, and 
in the results of the Challenger Expedition, much of his 
earlier work came first to light in " Studies from the 
Biological Laboratory;" but later he assumed editorship 
of the work in his laboratory in a series of well-illustrated 
quartos published by the university, as "Memoirs from 
the Biological Laboratory." 

Professor Brooks made some contributions to system- 
atic zoology, but his work was chiefly embryological and 
it is well represented by his monograph upon salpa. This 
i& not merely an account of the embryology and organ- 
ology of salpa, but creative, philosophical thought upon 
such problems as the probable origin of salpa, the origin 
oi the chordates, the origin of pelagic animals, and 


\W "v 

# ^Ok-%^ S 


28 William Keith Brooks 

discovery of the ocean bottom and its effects upon the 
evolution of animals. 

As is well known, Brooks's work was inspired through- 
out by his interest in the intellectual problems presented 
by animal life as well as by his love of their forms and 
activities. And it was this tendency to the philosophical 
application of zoological facts that was expressed in his 
later essays and lectures and finally in his book "The 
Foundations of Zoology." He was not a writer of text- 
books, yet his "Handbook of Invertebrate Zoology" shows 
his original and novel treatment of what was then an 
almost unexplored field in text-book writing, the study 
by the student, at the seashore, of the life-histories and 
eggs and larvae of marine animals as a basis for the philo- 
sophic study of morphology. And with, a more fortunate 
choice of publisher the book might have long continued 
to widen the sphere of his influence. 

Dr. Brooks married, in 1877, Amelia Katherine Schultz, 
of Baltimore. His happy home life furnished the environ- 
ment for the development of his very domestic social 
needs and the loving care of his devoted wife tided him 
through many difficult contests between his over-zeal for 
work and his physical restrictions. But, in the spring of 
1901, after long years of suffering, lightened we hope for 
a time by the appreciation that came to Professor Brooks 
when his students requested him to sit for the portrait 
that they presented on his fiftieth birthday, and which 
came more for her comfort than for his, Mrs. Brooks 
passed away from life, to be followed, for us too soon, by 
the man whose life we rejoice in, whose death we mourn. 

To the students who were taken so freely into that home 
life a hope of attaining the best that life has to offer, 
despite financial restrictions, was held forth, and there 
are many who recall the delightful evenings of reading 
and talk when they met at his house on terms of equality 
and free intercourse. His two children he strove to edu- 


Biographical Sketch 29 

cate with freedom from too much of the burden of 
inherited custom and regretted the unavoidable interfer- 
ence of some who knew but one orthodox way for the 
saving of souls. As an example of the thoroughness with 
which he sought to apply the best to the problem of educa- 
tion, may be cited that he would have none but "Wind- 
sor and Newton" colors for the boy who was entering 
upon that period of color-love that all go into and most 
through, fearing .lest the mind would be injured by 
muddy and overlapping tints, and not kept clear as he 
sought to hold his own. That his two children should 
have what he had so hardly won, the higher education, he 
freely spent himself. His son, as student in mathematics, 
received the degree of Ph. D. at the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity, and is now an actuary. His daughter was gradua- 
ted at Vassar and was able to comfort the last days of her 
father, who had had clean-cut ideas as to the highest mis- 
sion of the perfect woman. Their inheritance is that 
education and the privilege of such parentage and nurture. 

The condition of Professor Brooks's health was long a 
source of anxiety to his friends who knew of his heart 
trouble. As years passed the problem of continuing hard 
work with increasing bodily handicaps became very diffi- 
cult. He felt that he ought not to take a period of rest 
and absence on account of the needs of his children, 
thinking to w r ork to the end. 

In 1908 difficulty in breathing added to his burdens and 
his machinery was most seriously out of order. He con- 
tinued to come to his lectures and worked earnestly to 
complete a final paper on salpa, for which the drawings 
were finished and which he planned to write out in the 
summer. This, he said, would probably be his last piece 
of serious microscopic research, since trouble with his 
eyes made the employment of immersion lenses too diffi- 
cult; and his mind was eager to digest the facts of his 
long experience and the recent work of others. But his 
strength was not equal to the task. Sudden attacks con- 


30 William Keith Brooks 

fined him to his home, but yet his will brought him back 
to his laboratory, till one last day, February 12. After 
preparatory rest, driven by his conscientiousness, he 
forced himself to attend an oral examination of a candi- 
date for the degree of Ph. D. Then walking to the train 
that brought him home, he was there overcome by a 
serious collapse. He was persuaded to go to the hospital 
and, after most severe attacks there, rallied ; but in nine 
long months that followed he scarcely left his wheel-chair. 

When he returned to his home he got such comfort as 
might be from the advent of spring, the passing of summer 
and the long lingering of autumn, amidst scenes so 
familiar and dear. Despite his critical state he was 
deeply interested in such news as came to him from the 
university. His last official act was a strong, successful 
plea for another when his own interests might well have 
absorbed his attention. His was real friendship growing 
out of his own wide sympathies. 

While having some strength to correct the proofs of 
papers in press, he felt most keenly his inability to put his 
last work upon paper, and till this work was done he 
would not deem it right to retire or seek a pension. The 
end was imminent, but could not be predicted. His mind 
was still interested in books and objects of nature, down 
to a week from the end. Back of the weakness of organs, 
which he deplored, lay indomitable will and soul, masked 
not absent. Finally came stuporous death. After ser- 
vices in Trinity Church^ his friends, the faculty and his 
students, followed the body to its resting place, on the 
brow of a hill overlooking a broad valley, in the cemetery 
of the county s>eat of Baltimore county. 

In person, Professor Brooks was of short stature and 
with ruddy abundant flesh, but yet with small refined 
boning. Early photographs show him a strikingly thought- 
ful, quiet but resolute man, with the seeing eyes that 
remained to the last. Later, when first he came to Balti- 
more, Brooks was a noticeable, short man, with bushy 


Biographical Sketch 31 

beard and square, thoughtful brow, very slow of speech, 
lacking in all superficial conversational art, content with 
his own thoughts and the worship of his college com- 
panion and long most faithful friend, his great St. Ber- 
nard dog, "Tige." 

To many he is known only from Corner's portrait, 
which recalls to his older students his characteristic, 
Buddha-like, quiet and peaceful absorption in thought, 
till some inner conclusion or strong outer compulsion 
caused the peculiar rising glance of the eyes that saw so 
much and seemed to question so strangely one's inner 
self. 

Born with a physical heart that failed to become com- 
pleted as in the average man, he learned to conduct his 
life within the limits set by his peculiar physical organ- 
ization and avoided all intense muscular efforts and sud- 
den movements. Owing to these habits he was often mis- 
understood. Yet on right occasion he could exchange his 
slow rate of living for strong effort. With sympathy for 
all suffering he once lifted his great St. Bernard dog, 
"Jupiter," when too tired to longer follow the carriage, 
and thus he received a severe strain that cost him weeks 
of pain. Knowing both the physical and the financial 
handicaps of life's race we can appreciate his saying : 

"The only necessary law of progress that I can discover 
is that it is necessary to fight pretty hard for everything 
worth the getting, and that it is no light or easy task to 
keep what has been won."* 

Brooks was no friend of conventionalities, and at times 
might extend his absorption in the essentials of thought- 
life to some neglect of many superficialities that others 
highly prized. In the stress that comes, at times, to those 
who live in the country and journey daily, some factors 
of his dress, such as a necktie, might at times be forgot- 
ten, but if the loss were discovered, replaced by quick pur- 
chase through the faithful laboratory janitor, who 


*Address at Western Reserve University, 1899. 


32 William Keith Brooks 

honored, and, with good cause, loved the man whose kind- 
ness expressed itself in deeds not made public. 

Professor Brooks was very fond of good reading and 
familiar with the classics of English literature and 
though he was not able to acquire a library he did get and 
keep at hand his favorite authors not for their bindings 
but for their thoughts and modes of expression. His 
enviable use of English came in part from his reading but 
was primarily a habit of mind. 

For one of his dogs that chewed up Shakespeare and 
Tennyson, he had only praise, as exhibiting the tastes of 
a gentleman, but the other that destroyed cheap novels, 
was a worthless rascal. An even more characteristic 
judgment was expressed when one of his students told 
him that it required three generations to make a gentle- 
man, and he replied that he thought a gentleman was one 
who had consideration for the feelings of others. 

In later years he developed a strong love of music, and 
when it became impossible to work through the evenings, 
as of old, he passed away many an hour in the enjoyment 
of classical music that mechanical devices have made 
reproducible by one who has had no leisure for musical 
education. Beethoven's fifth symphony, the overture to 
Tannhiiuser and some fugues of Bach were favorites of 
his. 

His love of flowers led him to make what use he could 
of a city window and when fate brought him a residence 
outside the city, a great solace to him was the diminutive 
greenhouse he was finally able to indulge in. Denied the 
opportunities that Darwin had, he could not carry on the 
experiments upon the breeding and heredity of plants that 
he wished, but when, too late, he had some little space he 
did such work as circumstances allowed. But it was 
largely as a source of pleasure and relaxation that he 
reared his favorite flowers. His attitude of mind towards 
all forms of life was expressed in the following sentence : 


Biographical Sketch 33 

"As for myself, I try to treat all living things, plants 
as well as animals, as if they may have some small part 
of a sensitive life like my own, although I know nothing 
about the presence or absence of sense in most living 
things ; and am no more prepared to make a negative than 
a positive statement."'*' 

Brooks was not an experimenter, but an observer of 
natural processes, from which he endeavored to interpret 
logically. He saw too many facts to be long satisfied with 
the sharp cut result that seemed to follow from experi- 
mentally severing some portion of the phenomena from 
the rest. He was a recorder of nature and a philosophic 
reasoner about the outside universe as it appeared to his 
consciousness. 

While there was a grain of truth in the remark of an 
artist who said that Brooks owed his success to the hand 
drawing he was able to make so well, his long labors with 
the painfully slow methods of pen stippling contributed 
to success, not so much from artistic skill as from the 
leisure to think which this calm, sedentary occupation 
afforded. 

If directness be one hundred per cent, of genius, Brooks 
also has this claim to be regarded as a genius, for labora- 
tory paraphernalia were always means and not ends to 
him, and while he enjoyed the perfection of a lens or a 
microtome, or a typewriting machine, or the brilliance of 
a selective staining fluid, technique was always reduced 
to its simplest terms in his work. With customary per- 
tinacity he continued to use a simple friction tube, when 
a larval student would have none but a bright complexity 
of screws, however ill made. However, when his work 
demanded it, he would use all the refinements of Zeiss's 
apochromats, and he wished that samples of all makes of 
instruments might be in the laboratory in order that 
students might learn to use and select what was fitted to 
their work. From a spirit of patriotism he sought to aid 


t " Foundations of Zoology," 1899, p. 17. 


34 William Keith Brooks 

American instrument makers at a period when their 
product was but the poor things that now lie wrecked 
from attempts to use them. 

He was sure to surprise with unexpected thought. The 
canals of Mars, if really due to the work of organisms, 
were, he suggested, on the basis of what we know here, 
more likely formed by social arthropods than by man-like 
beings, as they would be work carried on by great co-ordi- 
nate efforts through long periods. 

His interest in the topics of the day was deep and real, 
but hie was not a man to serve in public life. He contri- 
buted to the welfare of society by doing the best possible 
as a trained specialist. 

In the question of the admission of women to universi- 
ties made for men he took his stand upon the basic bio- 
logical facts as he saw them, but, finally, with his usual 
effort to be fair, thought that the experiment might be 
tried as one way of finding the proper solution. 

Born a decade before the appearance of the "Origin of 
Species," Brooks's intellectual life unfolded during that 
remarkable period of an overwhelming acceptance of the 
doctrine of evolution by means of natural selection. Most 
of his hard-earned facts were brought to the support of 
evolution as revealed by embryology. Yet the defects in 
Darwinism were long considered by him, and, after ten 
years of thought upon the problems of heredity, Brooks, in 
1883, put forth in his first book, "Heredity," many ingeni- 
ous thoughts that led him, then, to an attempt to reconcile 
the subsidiary hypothesis of Darwin, the pangenesis hypo- 
thesis, with! the opposing facts of Galton. This attempt 
to make pangenesis acceptable as the basis of an under- 
standing of heredity will always rank as an interesting 
contribution to the history of thought upon this subject, 
though, as Brooks expected, his special views have not 
been accepted. This book was put forth as a stimulus to 
research, "to incite and direct new experiments," he said. 
Its main interest lies in its revelation of the best that 


Biographical Sketch 35 

could then be done toward the solution of problems that 
yet await suchi experimental evidence as alone may make 
their solution possible. 

The lectures and essays that grew into his book, "The 
Foundations of Zoology," published in 1899, and again in 
a revised edition, show Professor Brooks's breadth and 
depth of philosophical thought, and it is upon this work 
that his claim to a place amongst our immortals will 
largely rest. 

But the estimate of Brooks as a leader of philosophical 
zoology can best be left to the perspective that time will 
bring, and to the minds of another generation biased 
neither by love of Professor Brooks as a man nor, on the 
other hand, by an absorption in the activities of our pres- 
ent transition period of zoological methods and ideals. 
What we can most surely appraise at the present 
moment is the work of Brooks as friend and teacher, an 
inspiration and example. Men who have worked in close 
contact with Brooks now hold commanding positions in 
the intellectual life of the world: the influence of their 
living presence is exerted in Japan, and in England, in 
South Africa and in Canada, and through his native 
country from Maine to the gulf and from ocean to ocean. 
On March 25, 1898, sixty of these students and friends 
contributed with genuine feeling to celebrate his fiftieth 
birthday. It was truly an unique personality that had 
added to their rational enjoyment of life and helped in 
their own struggles for ideals. 

These students of a pioneer in the field of American 
embryology have naturally followed his lead and their 
observations have been an extension and elaboration of 
his work, whether in the same field or in newer ones 
recently opened. His philosophical mind left its impress 
upon their ways of thought in whatever part of zoology 
they labored. The old problems of heredity are now 
attacked by new methods, but some of the foremost inves- 
tigators are bound to Professor Brooks, more or less 
intimately, by nurture got when he was a stimulating if 


36 William Keith Brooks 

not also a formative part of their environment. Thus 
William Bateson, the present leader in studies of varia- 
tion and heredity, coming to the Chesapeake laboratory 
to continue embryological studies on Blanoglossus and 
the origin of the vertebrates, first heard the problems of 
heredity, from Brooks, in long and intimate discussion 
and exposition. 

Professor Brooks's religious beliefs remain unknown to 
me, but the view-point of his intellect may be inferred 
from the following extracts from the "Foundations of 
Zoology" : 

"If any believe they have evidence of a power outside 
nature to which both its origin and its maintenance from 
day to day are due, physical science tells them nothing 
inconsistent with this belief. If failure to find any sus- 
taining virtue in matter and motion is evidence of an 
external sustaining power, physical science affords this 
evidence; but no one who admits this can hope to escape 
calumny ; although it seems clear that the man of science 
is right, . . . for refusing to admit that he knows 
the laws of physical nature in any way except as observed 
order. 

"Many will, no doubt, receive with incredulity the 
assertion that the ultimate establishment of mechanical 
conceptions of life has no bearing, either positively or 
negatively, upon the validity of such beliefs as the doc- 
trine of immortality, for example. The opinion that life 
may be deducible from the properties of protoplasm has, 
by almost universal consent, been held to involve the 
admission that the destruction of the living organism is, 
of necessity, the annihilation of life. Yet it seems clear 
that this deduction is utterly baseless and unscientific; 
. . . if it be admitted that we find in nature no reason 
why events should occur together except the fact that 
they do, is it not clear that we can give no reason why 
life and protoplasm should be associated except the fact 
that they are? And is it not equally clear that this is no 
reason why they may not exist separately ?" 


Biographical Sketch 37 

Those who were with him during long periods of work 
continued despite illness know his control, those few who 
saw him seized with bitter pain know his fortitude. 

Beneath his passive exterior much went on that rarely 
came to the surface and he had strong antipathies and 
emotions held in check by a strong will and philosophical 
balance. That he could take risks will be recalled by 
those whom he, as licensed pilot, brought safely into har- 
bor, though the keel of the schooner scraped the bar in 
the trough of the heavy ground swell. 

His stern sense of duty drove him to many tasks he 
neither liked nor felt he had the natural bent for. His 
conscientiousness and punctilious regard for justice and 
honesty brought him into antagonism with many customs 
and with persons of less sharply defined honesty. 

In many excellencies he was a child to whom wisdom 
of experience had come ; his spirit retained the simplicity 
of the child and a child's interest in the outer world as 
something apart from self, and did not readily acquire the 
conventional content with mere getting and eating. 

Many have warm hearts for the clear teacher and wise 
friend who lived much on a higher plane of work and 
thought, above many petty considerations of immediate 
expediency. His faults but add to the charm of that 
large, luminous picture of virtues that the recollection of 
him calls up in our minds. 

Who again will teach us, as Brooks did, that "that hard- 
est of intellectual virtues is philosophic doubt, and the 
mental vice to which we are most prone is our tendency 
to assume that lack of evidence for an opinion is a reason 
for believing something else."* 

May the Johns Hopkins University treasure as ever 
living the example of Brooks, the naturalist one of the 
two members of her illustrious faculty of whom their 
great leader, Oilman, said they pre-eminently were "men 
born for lives of research." 


""Science or Poetry," 1895. 


REUNION OF THE ALUMNI 

NOVEMBER, 1908* 

A reunion of former students of the University was 
held in Baltimore, on the 19th, 20th, and 21st of Novem- 
ber, 1908. The principal features were a "smoker" at the 
Johns Hopkins club ; a meeting in commemoration of 
President Oilman; a "tea" given by the Alumni Associa- 
tion ; class dinners ; a football game at Honiewood ; and a 
reception by the President and Board of Trustees of the 
University. 

The reunion was the unexpected development of a 
movement begun last spring, when the general Athletic 
Association appointed a committee to consider the possi- 
bility of stimulating the interest of former students, 
and to arrange for an athletic reunion, if this should be 
deemed advisable. The committee consisted of the follow- 
ing persons: George L. Radcliffe (A. B., 1897, Ph. D., 
1900), chairman; Ronald T. Abercrombie (A. B. ? 1900, 
M. D., 1904) ; Theodore E. Straus (Proficient in Elec- 
tricity, 1894) ; Joseph T. England (A. B., 1902) ; James 
Baily (1909). During the summer the members of the 
committee were constantly in touch, by correspondence 
and otherwise, with many of the older alumni. These dis- 
played a keen interest in the proposed gathering, but two 
facts soon became apparent. One of them was that a 
very large number of the alumni were not attracted espe- 
cially by the prospects of an athletic reunion, but looked 
forward eagerly to a meeting embodying class and other 
social features. The second point was that all of the 
former athletes were desirous that the reunion should 
embrace other features in addition to the athletic ones 


*Prepared by Mr. George L. Radcliffe, Chairman of the General 
Committee. 

38 


Alumni Reunion 39 

contemplated. As a result, its scope was much enlarged, 
and plans were considered for a general reunion in which 
athletic events should not occupy the greater part of the 
time. The committee then offered to turn over the entire 
matter to the Alumni Association, but the latter requested 
the committee to continue the work begun, offered its 
hearty co-operation, and promptly arranged to take 
charge of several of the principal features. Efforts were 
made to enlist the support of the President and Board of 
Trustees of the University, and of other bodies and inter- 
ests closely allied with the University. The enthusiasm 
and spirit of activity which met this attempt encouraged 
the committee to at once make the needful arrangements. 
President Kemsen gave an emphatic endorsement of the 
idea and assured the committee of his desire and inten- 
tion to assist in every way. The Board of Trustees 
appointed the following committee to co-operate with the 
alumni, viz : Messrs. Waldo Newcomer, Thomas J. Mor- 
ris, Blanchard Eandall, and Miles White, Jr. As soon as 
the President of the Johns Hopkins Club, Mr. George 
Cator, heard of the proposed reunion, and long before any 
arrangements were made for it, he pledged the support of 
the club, and promised that it would take any part de- 
sired, and that, if the club should not feel able to pay the 
expenses incurred in doing so, he personally would pay 
them. 

The proposition to hold class reunions awakened great 
interest and enlisted the support of many of the old 
alumni. The general committee, in co-operation with 
Mr. Horace S. Whitman (A. B., 1901), who acted as 
general chairman of the class reunions, appointed a 
special committee for each class as follows : 1879, G. W. 
McCreary; 1880, H. F. Eeid; 1881, J. H. Johnson; 1882, 
Edward Ingle; 1883, H. W. Williams; 1884, G. D. Penni- 
man, J. Williams Lord; 1885, John Glenn, Jr.; 1886. 
Allan McLane; 1887, E. H. Bayard, Edward Duffy; 1888, 
Walter Jones, A. L. Lamb, A. L. Browne; 1889, Waldo 


40 Alumni Reunion 

Newcomer, W. T. Watson ; 1890, Vernon Cook, S. M. Cone, 
William Whitridge; 1891, A. J. Shriver, G. W. Dobbin; 
1892, L. L. Stevens, T. D. Penniman, T. R. Brown ; 1893, 
H. S. West, M. A. Soper; 1894, B. H. Griswold, W. S. 
Baer, J. P. Thorn ; 1895, H. W. Buckler, W. S. Bansemer ; 
1896, W. D. Lilly, A. C. Binswanger, J. E. Shaw; 1897, 

F. H. Baetjer, A. J. Underbill, F. A. Hancock ; 1898, C. S. 
Hodges, L. H. Fowler ; 1899, W. M. Krager, J. M. Mullen, 

G. W. Knapp, J. H. King, Maurice Lazenby ; 1900, W. L. 
Smith, J. P. Hill, Frederick Foster; 1901, J. E. Tyler, 
A. R. Bird, J. S. Briscoe ; 1902, W. E. Hoffman, Jr., W. C. 
Schmeisser, Aubrey Pearre, Jr. ; 1903, R. C. Hoffman, Jr., 
J. W. Bryan, H. N. Baetjer, L. M. R. Willis; 1904, B. F. 
Cator, Sifford Pearre, R. G. Dulany; 1905, Robertson 
Griswold, W. A. Baetjer, A. S. Bowie, L. A. Dill; 1906, 
W. C. Smith, Joseph S. Hill, Carlyle Barton ; 1907, Wallis 
Giffen, C. F. Pietsch, W. E. Bird; 1908, J. P. Wright. 
Nearly every class, beginning with the first (1879), was 
represented at the conference which followed the first 
notice sent out by Mr. Whitman. In a very short time 
the special committees of the different classes had suc- 
ceeded in getting in touch with their respective class- 
mates. 

For two months before the reunion, a letter, or some 
form of appeal to the alumni, was issued once a week, 
on an average, and in almost every instance from a differ- 
ent source. Thus, the general letter of the committee was 
followed in succession by letters from the Alumni Asso- 
ciation, the Johns Hopkins Club, the class committees, 
the athletic board, the musical committees, individual 
alumni, etc. In addition to the general committee and 
the special class committees referred to above, the follow- 
ing committees were active : Faculty, Professor Renouf ; 
Alumni Association, A. J. Shriver; Johns Hopkins Chib, 
J. N. Ulman ; Reception, R. C. Hoffman, Jr., T. R. Brown ; 
Tea, Philip Ogden; Registration, B. F. Cator; Finance, 


Alumni Reunion 41 

T. E. Straus; Hopkins Folk-Lore, J. H. Edmondson; 
Statistics, G. E. Barnett; Publicity, C. A. Marshall; 
Musical Clubs, J. G. Peters, W. M. Krager, J. W. Bryan ; 
Glee Club, J. H. Eager, Jr. ; Prize Song, J. H. Eager, Jr., 
F. J. Clunet, Edward Ingle; Transportation, R. M. Diggs; 
Photographs, Reginald Opie; Poet, J. McG. Trippe; Post- 
Graduate Athletic Degrees, W. S. Symington, Jr., S. S. 
Janney, A. C. Ritchie; Class Banners, Hullabaloos, etc., 
H. L. Russell ; Chief Marshal of Rooters, S. P. Harwood ; 
Student Trophies, W. J. Sneeringer; Decorations, W. W. 
Pagon; Non-local Press, J. S. Briscoe; Hospitality, J. M. 
Holmes; Roster of Teams, James Baily; Roster of 
Students, G. A. Stewart; History of Lacrosse, R. T. Aber- 
crornbie, W. C. Schmeisser; History of Track Athletics, 
J. T. England; History of Football, J. A. Sayler, Jr.; 
History of Baseball, T. G. Campbell ; History of Gymna- 
sium, G. C. Keidel ; History of Hockey, G. B. Scholl. 

The reunion began with a "smoker" at the Johns Hop- 
kins Club on the evening of Thursday, November 19th. 
The large home of the club was crowded during the entire 
evening with hundreds of former Hopkins students. The 
following day at three o'clock the alumni gathered in 
McCoy Hall to commemorate the work of the late Presi- 
dent Gilrnan. The meeting was presided over by the 
President of the Alumni Association, Dr. J. Whitridge 
Williams. Addresses* were made by Professor Charles 
M. Andrews, Dr. Fabian Franklin, Professor William H. 
Howell, and Charles Morris Howard, Esq. Later in the 
afternoon, under the direction of Professor Philip Ogden, 
tea was served in the Donovan Room. 

Friday night was devoted to class dinners, every class 
giving a dinner, although, because of their small size, 
several of the older classes met at a single table. The 
attendance was surprisingly large, fully five hundred of 


"These addresses are printed in subsequent pages of this Cir- 
cular. 


42 Alumni Reunion 

the former collegiate students being present. These 
included many who had come from a distance, as well as 
practically all the alumni living in Baltimore. For 
instance, over two-thirds of the living members of the 
class of 1884 were present. All the dinners were given at 
the Hotel Caswell, with the following exceptions : "1889" 
was entertained at the Stafford by Mr. Waldo Newcomer; 
"1891" dined at the University Club ; "1892" at Wegner's ; 
"1893" and "1901" at the New Carrollton. Some of the 
classes had been meeting annually, but many of them had 
not met since graduation. Alumni organizations were 
made or perfected, and arrangements made for class re- 
unions in the future. In the course of the evening a mes- 
sage was sent to President Eemsen by each class, signed 
by every member present, conveying to him their best 
wishes and expressing confidence in his management of 
the University and in its future achievements. 

Saturday afternoon, on "Hopkins Field," at Homewood, 
a football game was played between the Johns Hopkins 
team and its traditional rival in football, the eleven of St. 
John's College. The attendance was estimated at six 
thousand and was entirely unprecedented in the history 
of the University. The appearance of the classes with 
their banners, grotesque costumes, and bands, and many 
of the other features, are not likely to be soon forgotten 
by those present, and seemed to indicate clearly the inten- 
tion of the alumni to attend and support athletic events 
of the Hopkins as never before. At this game many of 
the alumni saw for the first time the spacious concrete 
stand and the carefully-constructed athletic field recently 
completed. 

Saturday evening, at eight o'clock, the President and 
Board of Trustees received the alumni in McCoy Hall, 
which had been decorated with class banners and with 
many relics of historic interest to the alumni. President 
Remsen, in his speech of welcome, expressed his pleasure 


Alumni Reunion 43 

at having the alumni with him again, and his hope that 
in the future many opportunities would be afforded for 
similar reunions. He referred briefly to the general work 
of the University, stating that its efficiency had at no 
time been impaired, but, on the contrary, had steadily 
gone forward. Mr. R. Brent Keyser, President of the 
Board of Trustees, spoke of the work of developing Home- 
wood, now going on, and referred to the many things which 
had already been done to bring about the future removal 
thither. Dean Griffin expressed his pleasure at meeting 
again so many of his former students. The reminiscences 
and general remarks of Messrs. Arthur Steuart and 
George Dobbin Penniman, who were called on from the 
alunini by President Kemsen, were very interesting. Mr. 
James McConky Trippe (A. B., 1896) read a poem, which 
he had written for the occasion at the request of the re- 
union committee. 

Many features of minor importance figured in the re- 
union, but they will not be dwelt upon in detail here. 
From the many enthusiastic letters written to the general 
committee by the alumni throughout the country, and 
from the encouragement received generally, the committee 
looked forward with pleasure to the coming reunion and 
hoped that it would prove the means of bringing together 
many former students of the University, but they did not 
dare hope for the outpouring of interest and enthusiasm 
which resulted. No effort was made, either before the 
reunion or during its progress, to focus the attention of 
the alumni upon any special plan for the welfare of the 
University, since the committee believed the wisest thing 
would be to attempt nothing more than to afford to the 
alumni opportunities for coming together and being 
together. It is needless to say that there was, however, 
on the part of the committee, always the hope and desire 
that this reunion would strengthen, in the mind and heart 
of every alumnus, the intention to do everything in his 


44 Alumni Reunion 

power for the promotion of the interests of the University. 
Any movement in the future, which will have this end in 
view, should receive some help and impetus from the 
meeting of the alumni last November. 


ADDRESSES COMMEMORATIVE OF DR. OILMAN 

DELIVERED BY ALUMNI IN McCOY HALL 

NOVEMBER 20, 1908 


CHARLES M. ANDREWS, PH. D. 
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY 

I deem it an especial privilege to be allowed to take 
part in the exercises this afternoon, honoring the memory 
of Dr. Oilman and recalling the aspects of his life which 
relate to the upbuilding of this University. We did not 
think, when but nine months ago we voiced in a formal 
resolution our regret at his absence from the yearly 
banquet, that before another year had passed we should 
gather to pay tribute to his memory. His absence from 
our dinner of February 22 was not due to ill health, and 
when we took action on that occasion expressing our re- 
gret that, at the last moment, he found himself unable to 
be present, it was but the putting into formal words the 
feeling of loyalty and affection which we all had for him. 
It is, therefore, with peculiar pleasure that I read here, 
to-day, the last communication that the Alumni as a body 
received from him, his answer to my letter conveying to 
him the resolution of the Association. He wrote as 
follows: "I thank you and through you the members of 
the Alumni Association for the kind expression conveyed 
to me in your note of yesterday. Such tokens of regard 
are among the most gratifying incidents of advancing 
years, and this, the latest, I value among the pleasantest 
that I have ever received." Dr. Oilman valued very highly 
the good-will of the Alumni of the University and was 
proud of the loyalty which they had for him. I recall his 
pleasure when, last February, he received a telegram of 
greeting from an association of the Western Alumni, 

45 


46 Alumni Reunion 

addressed to "the true Founder of the true American 
University." 

It is in a sense appropriate that a representative of the 
department of history and political science should have 
some share in discussing the part that Dr. Oilman played 
in the academic life of this University. I only wish that 
the opportunity might have fallen into more worthy 
hands. One of Dr. Oilman's earliest interests was in the 
field of history and was almost coincident with his 
interest in education. It is significant that one of his 
very earliest writings, contributed to Barnard's Journal 
of Education, in March, 1856, when he was but twenty- 
four years old, was on "scientific schools in Europe con- 
sidered in reference to their prevalence, utility, scope, and 
desirability in America," and that his earliest public 
address, of which I can obtain knowledge, was "A Histori- 
cal Discourse, delivered in Norwich, Connecticut, Septem- 
ber 7, 1859, at the Bi-Centennial celebration of the Settle- 
ment of the Town." This address, delivered in the home of 
his ancestors and promoted to no small extent by his 
father's enthusiasm for historical inquiries, is a work of 
124 pages, founded on extensive historical research and 
bearing witness to a wide familiarity with early New Eng- 
land history. This interest in history and in historical 
studies Dr. Oilman never lost, though he could only turn 
to it occasionally or in connection with other subjects to 
which he gave more attention. Even at the time when he 
was delivering his historical sketch, at Norwich, he was 
acting as chairman of the Visiting Committee of the public 
schools of New Haven, and published two papers, one con- 
taining suggestions respecting a course of study for 
children between the ages of six and twelve years, and the 
other on common schools and the English language, both 
issued in 1860. 

Thus, at the very outset of his career, Dr. Oilman indi- 
cated the two interests that were to dominate him during 
the years that followed. The interest in history expanded 


Daniel Coit Oilman 47 

into a larger devotion to many subjects more or less 
closely related such as geography, especially physical 
and political geography, the title of the chair which he 
held for many years, till 1872, in the Sheffield Scientific 
School ; political science, in which he dealt with the rela- 
tion of the State to education, morality, and philan- 
thropy ; social science, in which he concerned himself with 
a wide group of subjects relating to social organization 
and the ethical functions of citizenship, not only preacb- 
ing the duty of understanding and answering the great 
questions of the day, but himself putting these doctrines 
into practice by accepting membership in societies and on 
commissions such as the American Social Science Asso- 
ciation and the National Civil Service Reform League 
of many of which he became president or vice-president ; 
and lastly, oriental languages and archaeology, serving for 
thirteen years as the president of the Oriental Society 
and for a number of years as vice-president of the Archae- 
ological Institute of America. 

In his activity as speaker and lecturer within the Uni- 
versity, I suppose that Dr. Oilman stood more closely in 
touch with history and political science than with any 
other single phase of the University's academic life. I do 
not mean that he gave it thereby preference, but I do 
mean that his own interest, outside of the field of educa- 
tion, lay, as we have already seen, with the subjects that 
that department represented. Outside the University he 
was a member of the American Historical Association 
and of the Massachusetts Historical Society; he was a 
member of the United States Commission on the Venezuela 
boundary, which had a problem to solve that was essen- 
tially historical and geographical ; he was one of the seven 
members appointed to draft the new charter for the city 
of Baltimore, and the table at which the charter was 
drawn stands to-day outside the door of the historical 
seminary in this hall. Within the University he was fre- 
quent in his offer of service to the department. He became 


48 Alumni Reunion 

the first president of the History and Political Science 
Association, then a semi-public gathering holding its 
meetings in the old hall of the University. He occasion- 
ally attended meetings of Dr. Adams's seminary, and T 
can recall a number of talks which he gave upon the im- 
portance of geography in the study of history, illustrated 
by maps which were hung upon the walls of the seminary 
room. In 1889 he delivered in the same room a course of 
lectures on social science, of which a syllabus was pre- 
pared and distributed to all the members of the class, 
one of which I have preserved from that day to this. In 
the introductory outline he disclosed the unity of his 
interests. Social science was not law, not political 
economy, not history, not religion, but it was closely 
related to all these; it was to be studied by methods that 
were common to other sciences, by observation and com- 
parison, and by historical, statistical, biographical, and 
philosophical inquiry, while in the working out of the 
methods involved he laid particular stress upon a study 
of the historical development of the actual conditions of 
society. In these lectures, as in others, he was constantly 
emphasizing the necessity of taking an historical view of 
every subject, realizing that man has been gradually 
becoming what he is and that it is not possible to ignore 
these historical processes any more than it is possible to 
ignore the importance of man's geographical surround- 
ings. In a review, written as far back as 1867, he says, 
"Never, probably, in the history of the country was it 
more desirable that the study of History, Law, Political 
Economy, Philosophy, Literature, and all these humani- 
ties should be kept up and that young men should learn 
to value the lessons of the past and to take counsel from 
the thoughts of the wise men of every age and country." 
But I should give a very inadequate idea of the trend of 
Dr. Oilman's academic interests did I seem to imply that 
history gained any undue attention from him. I think 
that he felt more at home in history and the social 


Daniel Colt Oilman 49 

sciences than in other subjects, but it was inevitable that 
the demands of his position as president of a university 
and his naturally inquisitive and embracing mind should 
lead him to pay keen attention to all aspects of education 
and scholarship, however remote they might be from the 
phases that were peculiarly his own. As early as 1871, 
appointed by the Commissioner of Education to investi- 
gate and report on the condition of the various scientific 
and agricultural schools in the northern States east of the 
Kocky Mountains, he made an elaborate report on these 
schools and indicated therein a deep appreciation of the 
value of a scientific research and the need of technical 
training, subjects that became to him matters of increas- 
ing importance as years passed by. He urged in this 
report, and he urged constantly afterward, that the prose- 
cution of the most rigid scientific inquiry involved no 
hostility toward literary and classical training. The next 
year he read a paper before the American Geographical 
Society, reviewing a decade of geographical activity and 
showing familiarity with the work of the departments of 
the National Government, involving subjects such as 
geology, hydrography, topography and surveying, botany, 
paleontology, and ornithology, in all of which he had a 
deep and pervading interest. Even when delivering an 
address to the members of the graduating class of the 
Naval Academy in 1876, in his official capacity as one of 
the board of visitors, he combined an historical sketch 
with an encomium upon the scientific attainments of the 
naval service and the contributions of eminent naval 
officials to science in general. The more one reads of 
Dr. Gilman's earlier papers, the more is one impressed 
with the fact that no phase of modern education and 
modern progress lay outside the range of his eager mind, 
and that, even before he had begun his great task of 
founding and building this University, he had already dis- 
closed in his printed work a breadth of view, a complexity 
of intellectual interests, a grasp of the multiple phe- 


50 Alumni Reunion 

nomena of modern education and social organization that 
were to characterize his career as president of the Univer- 
sity. 

I do not here speak of his interest in medical progress. 
That will be done by one who is an expert, and I should 
not presume to anticipate what he may have to say. But 
I do recall the astonishment with which I listened, on 
the occasion of the opening of the hospital, to an address 
by him which seemed to handle with amazing facility 
aspects of medical progress which might well be deemed 
beyond the grasp of a layman. And I recall also the 
address which he delivered in 1898, on the occasion of the 
opening of a new home for the Medical Society of Connec- 
ticut, in my native town of Hartford, an address which 
clearly showed that if he was not one of the medical 
fraternity, he was certainly at home among them, and if 
he could not speak with the knowledge of a professional 
he, at least, could show how an outsider looked at the 
progress of their science and estimated their advances. 
It is worthy of note that on that occasion his chief 
interest lay in the history of medicine, the progress of the 
science from Harvey to the present time, but it is also 
worthy of note that in the course of his address he dis- 
closed an intimate knowledge of instruments and methods 
that were employed in furthering the cause of medical 
science. One would have thought that he had lived among 
the doctors. 

Next to this wide and embracing desire to make all 
fields of intellectual and scientific activity his own, 
Dr. Oilman's greatest gift to this University on its 
academic side was the unqualified approval of the highest 
scientific ideals. In his earliest writings, in the sixties, 
we find him laying down certain very important criteria, 
which; were far from being generally appreciated at that 
time. "Where there is a university organization," he 
wrote, "the constant effort should be made to educate men 
of science, able to investigate, competent to teach, pro- 


Daniel Coit Oilman 51 

ficient in specialties. . . . We observe a tendency, 
already manifest in a considerable degree, to mark out on 
paper long lists of 'chairs' which it is proposed to fill. 
But in our opinion it is not half so important what the 
professorships are as who the professors are. It is the 
men who make the college, not the titles of the catalogue. 
A corps of instructors, young, manly, thorough, truth- 
loving, able to teach, speak, and encourage, will do more 
to give character and success to a foundation than a corps 
of older men who may have been titular professors for a 
quarter of a century, but who are not possessed with the 
spirit of modern inquiry." How splendidly he lived up to 
this faith, enunciated ten years before this University was 
opened, and how splendidly this faith found its fulfilment 
is a matter of record. Two natural consequences of great 
significance in the academic life of this University have 
followed the application of this ideal, when after 1876 it 
became the guiding principle governing the attitude of 
the president toward the staff with which he surrounded 
himself. First, that the highest standards in methods of 
teaching and of research found sympathetic approval and 
hearty support at Dr. Oilman's hands, and no instructor, 
enthusiastic, truth-loving, and ambitious, ever met other 
obstacles in his path than those which arose from the 
natural difficulties of his task; and secondly, because of 
the fact that Dr. Oilman manned this University at its 
outset with a harmonious body of instructors, each able 
to do something beyond his specialty and eager for the 
general good, a spirit of peace and fraternal good-will has 
hovered over its government and administration from its 
foundation to the present time. How much these two 
great results have contributed to the effectiveness of the 
work here done, both for teaching within and for scholar- 
ship without, only those familiar with the limitations 
and dissensions prevailing all too frequently in American 
colleges can estimate. To Dr. Oilman is due the establish- 
ment of these academic traditions, which I hope may 


52 Alumni Reunion 

never be reversed as long as the Johns Hopkins University 
shall endure. 

I have but one word more to say, and that concerns 
Dr. Oilman's own attainments in the world of scholar- 
ship. He lived amid surroundings where the truest ideals 
of scholarship reigned, he viewed with the highest satis- 
faction the attainments and productions of those who were 
with him or about him, he incited the younger generation 
to efforts that culminated in thorough and painstaking 
work, he discouraged self-satisfaction with any result, no 
matter how highly applauded, but his busy life gave him 
no opportunity to leave behind him any monument in 
printer's ink which represented prolonged research or 
marked important advance in any field of scientific 
endeavor. His monument is of another kind. He gave 
himself to the building of a home for scholars, to the pre- 
paring of the soil in which; the seeds of scholarship found 
rich nourishment for prolific growth, in creating an atmo 
sphere which stimulated the scholar to develop the best 
that was in him and to embody his efforts in a form 
admired of the scientific world. But if Dr. Gilman never 
actually entered into that narrower field, to which too 
often the term scholarship is limited, he was a man of 
scholarly attainments in the larger world where culture 
and the humanities hold important place. He was a 
scholar of wide and versatile learning, to whom little that 
concerned the uplifting of the human race was foreign ; 
he was learned with an intimate knowledge of what the 
laboratories, the seminaries, the exploring expeditions, 
the archaeological investigations, and the scores of other 
fontes of scientific knowledge were pouring forth for the 
advancement of learning; he possessed the scholarly 
power of co-ordinating the results which others attained 
and of showing the significance of these results for civi- 
lization in general. His was a type of scholarship which 
is all too rare, and the world would be poor indeed were 
it to suffer eclipse. Minute and painstaking research, 


Daniel Colt Oilman 53 

deep insight into the laws and operations of nature, criti- 
cal exposition of the texts with which philology and 
history are concerned, would fail of half their purpose did 
they not contribute to the knowledge of men like Dr. 
Oilman, who, by understanding, appreciation, and encour- 
agement, are able to interpret the educational significance 
of the great advances in the scientific world. Dr. Oilman's 
scholarship was the sum of the best that science in all its 
aspects was able to produce, and the influence of such 
scholarly acquirements and such scholarly ideals upon the 
community of the learned and the unlearned is beyond our 
calculation. 


WILLIAM H. HOWELL, PH. D. 

DEAN OF THE MEDICAL FACULTY 

Whenever, since Mr. Oilman's death, I have attempted 
to formulate for myself an estimate of his services, I have 
finally summed it all up in an expression of his own, which 
I heard him use on the occasion of the memorial exercises 
to the late Professor Rowland. I remember the occasion 
well. As he advanced to the edge of this platform to open 
the exercises, looking silently at his audience for a few 
seconds, he began his remarks by the simple sentence, 
made impressive by his manner, "A great man has fallen 
in our ranks." I am confident that this estimate, applied 
to him, is shared by every one in this audience and by all 
of our fellow alumni of the Johns Hopkins University. 
He was a great man, and above all a great college presi- 
dent. He was a great president by virtue of the fact that 
he was a man of ideas and high ideals which reacted like 
a stimulus upon all who were brought into contact with 
him; he was a great president because of his masterly 
genius for organization; but he was a great president 
chiefly, in my judgment, because he possessed in such 
large degree the rare power of getting the best out of 


54 Alumni Reunion 

those wh:o worked with him and under him. He led and 
guided them by the all-constraining force of his enthu- 
siasm, his sympathy, and his tact. The kind of executive 
who drives things before him by the mere force of his per- 
sonality, is liable, in accordance with the law of action and 
reaction, to create round himself an atmosphere of oppo- 
sition and discontent. Such an executive may be needed 
in some of the affairs of life, but he is not the type most 
suited to develop the greatest efficiency of a university 
faculty. This University was most fortunate in possess- 
ing in Mr. Oilman a leader and executive who, by reason 
of a happy combination of genial qualities of mind and 
heart, was able to inspire a general and enthusiastic spirit 
of co-operation among his official subordinates. We must 
never forget, nor allow others to forget, that the great 
success which this University attained, almost from the 
beginning, was in large part, in chief part, due to him. 
The creation of a university of a new type was not a game 
that played itself. On the contrary, there was oppor- 
tunity in abundance for mistakes and disaster, and if, 
instead, there came, on the academic side, a train of suc- 
cesses and renown, we owe it largely to his ability and 
experience as a leader and administrator. 

I have been asked to speak of Mr. Oilman, especially in 
regard to his connection with the medical school. In 
truth the medical department owes as much to his wise 
and stimulating leadership as its older comrade, the 
philosophical faculty. It is well known that the subject 
of medical education interested Mr. Oilman deeply. What 
circumstances gave this direction to his thoughts I am not 
able to say from personal knowledge. I know only that 
it antedated his connection with this institution. That a 
special interest existed is evident from his published ad- 
dresses, as well as from the record of his services while 
President. In his inaugural address the subject of the 
formation of a worthy school of medicine comes up first, 
and the hope is expressed that at no very distant day a 


Daniel Coit Gilman 55 

medical faculty may be organized. So also, in describing 
the purpose and aims of the biological department, which 
constituted a novel feature in the newly-established uni- 
versity, he laid great emphasis upon its importance in re- 
lation to the study of medicine. Indeed, from the begin- 
ning of the University there was organized a pre-medical 
course along the lines which had been laid down by Hux- 
ley, a course which, in its general features, has since been 
endorsed and imitated by many of the leading schools of 
the country. As a matter of fact medical education among 
us at the time of the founding of the University was in a 
deplorable condition. Deprived of adequate financial sup- 
port and without the uplifting aid of an academic connec- 
tion, most of our medical schools had sunk to a very low 
level. They demanded practically no educational prepara- 
tion on the part of their matriculates, and they made little 
or no effort to give their students an adequate training in 
the theory and science of medicine. The training, in fact, 
resembled that of an apprentice rather than that of a 
candidate for admission to a learned profession. Mr. 
Gilman, with his wide interest in education in general, 
must have been impressed, as many other thoughtful men 
were, with this very undesirable state of affairs. With 
the prevision characteristic of a great leader, he seems to 
have selected medical education as one of the great oppor- 
tunities which the new university might utilize to do a 
needed service to the country at large. For reasons over 
which he certainly had no control the realization of his 
plans was deferred for some seventeen years. It was not 
until 1893 that the medical school, as we now know it, was 
founded. It was and is a graduate school in the sense that 
it accepts as students only those who are college graduates. 
At the time of its foundation its requirements for 
entrance seemed almost absurdly high. It was supposed 
that only a few students each year would be willing to 
meet these requirements, considering that in the other 
leading schools the conditions for entrance were so mucl 


56 Alumni Reunion 

less difficult ; and the idea that our standards would ever 
be adopted generally by other schools was scarcely reck- 
oned among the probabilities. Yet, to-day, this school 
has 300 students upon its rolls, and for many years past 
there has been a steady approximation on the part of 
other good medical schools toward the standards estab- 
lished here. Many agencies have undoubtedly contributed 
to the great improvement in medical education which has 
taken place in this country during the last generation 
volunteer organizations among high-minded physicians, 
the effective action of our State Boards, etc., but I 
believe it will be admitted that the actual example held 
before the eyes of the medical public, in the successful 
experiment carried out here under Mr. Oilman's direction, 
has been the most potent influence of all in strengthening 
the weak faith of those who doubted the feasibility of such 
a reform. 

Many speakers and writers have commented upon the 
timeliness of the foundation of the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity. The University was started at a time when the 
country was ripe for the opportunity to obtain genuine 
graduate instruction. Certainly the same observation 
may be made with even more justice in regard to the 
appropriateness of the movement inaugurated by the 
foundation of the medical school. The country was pre- 
pared, indeed had been prepared for some years, for a 
development of this kind. Mr. Gilnian and his colleagues 
had the wisdom to understand this, and the courage to 
make the experiment on a scale befitting the reputation of 
the University and worthy of the unique opportunity 
afforded by the existence and close affiliation of that 
splendid sister institution, the Johns Hopkins Hospital. 

Mr. Oilman's devotion to the affairs of the medical 
school in its early history was unfailing. He gave to it 
on the administrative side an ideal organization which 
has been the envy of other schools, and which will eventu- 
ally, I believe, be generally adopted. The central feature 


Daniel Coit Oilman 57 

of this organization is that it places all power in the 
hands of a small but representative body, composed of the 
heads of departments, the president, and the superinten- 
dent of the hospital. Over the deliberations of this body 
he presided constantly during his incumbency, and it is 
needless, for those who knew him, to add that he was a 
most admirable presiding officer. Courteous, considerate, 
and informal he invited a free expression of opinion from 
all, but he knew well the art of controlling gently but 
firmly all tendencies to useless and diffuse discussion. 
The routine business was dispatched with promptness, 
while matters of importance from the standpoint of policy 
or precedent were treated with care and circumspection. 
A more harmonious and effective board it would be hard 
to imagine, and, indeed, how could it have been otherwise 
with a man like Oilman as presiding officer and a man like 
Welch as dean and secretary. Our foundations were well 
laid, and I am sure that the great success of the school, 
acknowledged everywhere, was a source of the deepest 
gratification to Mr. Oilman. It may be fairly claimed 
that it constituted his second great contribution to the 
educational development of this country. I hope that the 
future historian of medical education in the United States 
will not make the mistake of supposing, because Mr. Oil- 
man wasi not a member of the medical profession, that 
therefore hisi connection with this medical school was in 
any sense perfunctory. On the contrary, it was real, it was 
vital, and it was continuously maintained. And through 
it all those who were associated with him must have been 
greatly impressed by the fact that in this, as in the other 
great enterprises of which he formed a part, there was no 
thought of self. He was working for a great purpose, the 
nobility and importance of which were constantly present 
to his own mind and were by him transmitted to his asso- 
ciates and colleagues. 


58 Alumni Reunion 


CHARLES MORRIS HOWARD, A. B. 
OF THE BALTIMORE BAR 

It is not easy in brief compass adequately to portray 
Mr. Oilman, or to describe his useful activities. Fortu- 
nately, this has already been done and ably done. 

On the occasion of the University's twenty-fifth anniver- 
sary, in 1902, many eminent scholars gathered here and 
did justice to this great University. To do it justice was 
in itself to do it honor. To do it justice was also neces- 
sarily to recognize the power and wisdom of Oilman. Its 
twenty-five years of life were the twenty-five best years of 
his life, its trials were his trials, and its triumphs in a 
large measure his triumphs. 

And again, one week ago last Sunday, those who knew 
him best and who had labored with him and were most 
capable of judging him, gave eloquent utterance to his 
services and work. When men like Remsen, Gildersleeve, 
and Welch unite in ascribing to Mr. Oilman a large 
measure of the success of their several departments and 
of the success of the University as a whole, it is evident 
that these are no conventional panegyrics, but the simple 
truth. Just as it is clear that this University at its 
foundation represented a striking and important depar- 
ture in educational methods, and since its foundation has 
stood for searching investigation and high ideals; just as 
it is clear that an unique institution was created, which 
at once took its place in the very front rank, so it must be 
clear that the man who had the creative part in this pos- 
sessed extraordinary genius, tact, and tenacity. It is not 
necessary for the alumni to record his abilities and high- 
minded devotion to humanity by anything that they may 
say here. It is sufficient for them to know these qualities 
and appreciate them. 

Genius he certainly possessed in many lines. As an 
assembler of men of ability he possessed extraordinary 


Daniel Colt Gilman 59 

aptitude. He had an almost unerring instinct as to men, 
a power of human diagnosis. But the possession of 
mental endowments alone is not the basis for the tributes 
that have been accorded to Mr. Gilman. His real claim 
upon us and his generation rests upon the way in which 
he employed his gifts. He might easily have used his 
great organizing ability in the pursuit of wealth or power. 
But, fortunately for the country, he placed it at the dis- 
posal of his countrymen. He possessed the ten talents, 
but he neither converted them to his personal ends nor 
hid them in a napkin. They were held in trust. When 
humanity is thus made the beneficiary of an active and 
productive life, it is natural as well as just that it should 
strive to pay, in part at least, its debt of gratitude when 
these activities are interrupted by death, although, words 
even at their best are but a poor exchange for deeds. For- 
tunately, the forces which hie organized and the plans 
which he perfected will not stop, and their beneficent 
effects will be felt in the centuries to come. 

In Mr. Gilman the idealist and the man of affairs were 
happily blended. We sometimes hear the practical and 
the theoretical man contrasted, as if they involved a con- 
tradiction, but this is not true. Both may co-exist and in 
a life such as his they must of necessity co-exist. Such a 
man must have glimpses of the divine philosophy, which 
is said to be as musical as is Apollo's lute. His ears must 
be attuned to hear the music of the spheres, but this fine 
cultivation does not render him the less practical, if the 
humanities are of the heart as well as of the head. He is 
guided by the higher things, but it is this life which he is 
seeking to improve. The function of the idealist has been 
well described by the late Carl Schurz, when he said 
"Ideals are like stars. You will not succeed in touching 
them with your hands, but, like the sea-faring man on the 
desert of waters, you choose them as your guides and 
following them you reach your destination." No man not 
an idealist could have established this University, whose 


60 Alumni Reunion 

duty it is to seek the truth and proclaim it freely. Nor 
could any but a man of the finest practical sense have 
solved its problems. Truly he has built his own monu- 
ment, like Sir Christopher Wren. If you seek it, look 
around you. 

Fellow alumni, I think that eulogy from us is super- 
fluous. There is only one effective way for us to show our 
genuine appreciation both of Oilman and of whatever is 
best in the University, and that is to emulate its high 
ideals and help to realize them in this world. If all the 
alumni of this distinguished University will seek after 
truth, battle for the right, and habitually ally themselves 
to those things that are worthy and of good report, 
Oilman will need no eulogist ; for his life-work will then 
have borne fruit and his labor will not have been in vain. 


FABIAN FRANKLIN, PH. D. 
OF BALTIMORE 

To speak about President Oilman to an audience of 
Johns Hopkins alumni is to me a difficult task. It is easy 
to speak of him and his work to outsiders, for one has, 
with them, the feeling that they may not know what the 
work here accomplished thirty years ago really was, nor 
what his part in achieving it. It is always with a glow 
of pride and enthusiasm that one repeats the many-times- 
told tale of the making of the Johns Hopkins University, 
when occasion offers for reciting it afresh to the outside 
public; and surely no occasion for recalling that memo- 
rable history could be more appropriate than that pre- 
sented by the passing away of its presiding genius. But 
in speaking to Johns Hopkins men I cannot escape the 
feeling is something like that which led to the gradual 
known to them as well as to myself ; that to recapitulate 
it would be to perform at most a conventional duty. The 
feeling is something like that which led to the gradual 


Daniel Coit Oilman 61 

decline and disappearance of the Fourth of July oration 
a phenomenon which does not by any means necessarily 
argue a decay of patriotism; it seemed as though every- 
thing that could be said about the achievement of our 
country's independence was so familiar to every American 
that the renewal of it on each recurring anniversary could 
be nothing more than a matter of form. 

And, yet, it is possible that, in feeling thus about the 
events which formed the central fact in President Gil- 
man's life, I may be laboring under one of those illusions 
that so frequently attend upon advancing years. The men 
who in their early manhood took part in the work of the 
opening years of the Johns Hopkins, are now at just that 
age when they are beginning to grow old, and still have 
not left off the habit of instinctively classing themselves 
among the young. It is only by a conscious effort that I 
can make myself realize that the time which has passed 
since the foundation of the Johns Hopkins University is 
as long as that which intervened between the war of 1812 
and the Mexican War, and more than twice as long as 
that which separated the Mexican War from the great 
Civil War. The events of the Civil War are vivid recol- 
lections of my own boyhood, and yet there was never a 
time when the Mexican War did not seem to me to belong 
to a remote past a thing to be read about in history- 
books, like the Revolutionary War or the Protestant 
Reformation. And so it may be that, to many of the 
younger men before me to-day, the state of things in the 
college and university world of America before 1876 is 
almost as much a matter of mere book-learning as was to 
me the massacre at the Alamo or the storming of 
Chapultepec. 

If we are to appreciate just what it was that constitutes 
the undying merit of President Oilman's work, we must 
first of all re-create that time in our minds. We must go 
back to a time in which, leaving out exceptional cases, 
the goal of the American student's ambition was fully 


62 Alumni Reunion 

reached when he was handed his A. B. diploma; when the 
lower ranks of the teaching staffs of our colleges were 
habitually recruited from among those who had just com- 
pleted their studies in the senior class; when in almost 
every department of learning and science always except- 
ing of course cases of genius or of phenomenal industry 
and energy our country was content not only to have the 
work of research and discovery done for us by other 
nations, but to lag decades behind the times even in the 
acquisition of the results; when, excellent as were many 
of our colleges in producing fine types of the "gentleman 
and scholar," the name university in the European 
sense could be applied to any of our institutions of learn- 
ing only by a great stretch of courtesy. Every year a 
little stream of students found its way across the Atlantic, 
and every year a little stream of them came back from the 
inspiring and stimulating experiences of Germany, to 
diffuse a certain amount of knowledge of higher stand- 
ards, and a certain amount of aspiration for higher 
achievement; but, though this process had been going on 
ever since the time when Longfellow and Bancroft were 
youths, the things that the German universities stood for 
remained, for the great majority of ardent and aspiring 
young American scholars, nothing more than a distant 
dream; while even the men who, in a foreign land, had 
drunk for a while at the living fountain, soon lost, under 
the pressure of absorbing routine duty, the taste of those 
refreshing waters, and were fain to be content with ful- 
filling the exacting functions of the college instructor. All 
men of light and leading in our college world felt that 
such acquiescence in palpable inferiority, such failure to 
strive for the upper heights of intellectual effort, was 
deplorable and discreditable; but the trammels of pre- 
cedent, the absence of any appreciation of the situation, 
or interest in its betterment, on the part of even the 
educated public, seemed to make any hope of a marked 
advance extremely remote. 


Daniel Colt Oilman 63 

From the moment that Mr. Oilman was called to the 
presidency of what was to be the Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity, there was one idea that was absolutely central in his 
mind. It was not worth while to take this munificent 
bequest of Johns Hopkins and do with it once more what 
had been done so often; make one more college, or one 
more so-called university, to do work which could be done 
as well, or better, by existing institutions. The contribu- 
tion of the Johns Hopkins University to the nation's 
intellectual resources must be in the nature not of a mere 
addition to quantity, but of an advance in quality. It 
must be given such a character as to place America on a 
new plane of scholarly and scientific achievement ; it must 
undertake the task of creation and not merely that of 
instruction. I have said that this idea was dominant in 
his mind ; but the thought may occur to you that the idea 
was a simple one, and might have been adopted by any 
one. What made the real distinction of Mr. Oilman was 
not the novelty of the idea, but the spirit that vitalized 
the idea and converted it into a working reality. To do 
this may seem now to have been easy ; but to those of us 
who were in at the birth of this University, it was plain 
enough that the qualities which were necessary to the 
achievement, and which Mr. Oilman displayed in so 
remarkable a degree, were qualities that are extremely 
rare. Optimism is not, perhaps, a rare quality; but the 
kind of optimism which constantly expects success, and 
yet which knows that success can only come through care- 
ful planning and full calculation of opposing forces, is 
very rare. Courage may not be rare ; but in Mr. Oilman's 
courage there was a certain cheerfulness and serenity that 
made it both enduring in himself and infectious as to 
others. Firmness and the power of command and discipline 
may not be rare ; but they are not often found in connec- 
tion with such quick perception of the qualities of one's 
co-workers as to insure harmonious and willing co-opera- 
tion. All these things, and more, Mr. Oilman had; and 


64 Alumni Reunion 

it was because he had them that the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity, though launched in strange waters and with no 
assurance of a safe voyage except what lay in the head 
of the pilot, made straight for port from the very first. 
Before the event, no one could have thought it possible 
for a young institution to make so profound an impres- 
sion on the whole intellectual life of the nation, and to 
attain such recognition throughout the world, as did the 
Johns Hopkins in the first five or six years indeed, in the 
first two or three years of its existence. 

I shall not detain you to give any particulars of that 
early history ; it is only the essential character of it that 
I have wished to recall to your minds. It was a time of 
hope and pride and enthusiasm ; a time of delightful work 
and of that peculiarly grateful companionship which 
comes from the sense of being partakers in the beginnings 
of a new and great work, a work that is to mark an epoch. 
But throughout that time of enthusiasm there was a man 
at the head who knew how to prevent enthusiasm from 
running to waste; who, as has been so well said by Pro- 
fessor Gildersleeve, was the taskmaster of us all. Many 
a thing was done against the grain, not because Mr. Gil- 
man demanded that it be done, but because, as the occa- 
sion required it, he made one and another feel that it 
ought to be done. And this brings me to the mention of 
the last of the qualities on which I shall dwell at any 
length. It was as essential as any of those on which his 
success here was based, and it was perhaps as rare as any 
of them. I do not refer to his extraordinary gift in the 
selection or in the management of men, to his untiring 
industry, or to his remarkable capacity for detail. What 
1 mean is the extraordinary comprehensiveness of his 
active interests. Plenty of men have a curiosity to know 
something about science, and something about history, 
and something about art, and so on. And I am not affirm- 
ing that President Oilman had a knowledge of a great 
number of subjects that was of exceptional accuracy or 


Daniel C>oit (ttlman 65 

exceptional profundity. What I do say is that he had a 
sort of sympathetic intuition for the larger aspects of any 
department of human effort, whether in the domain of 
iBtellect or of action, which caused him to seize with 
avidity on every important development and to give to it 
the most hearty interest, the most intelligent co-opera- 
tion, the most ungrudging support. It was the genuine- 
ness of interest thus arising an interest quite different 
from that of the mere administrator that gave to his 
work as our "taskmaster" that quality which so 
peculiarly distinguished it. 

I shall not attempt even to indicate the many lines of 
important and beneficent achievement in which Mr. Oil- 
man did signal service ; that has been done many times in 
the past few weeks. Nor shall I endeavor to point to less 
conspicuous good works, beyond saying that his ear was 
ever open to any appeal, not only for the betterment of 
the community and for the succor of the needy, but for 
any cause, large or small, that represented a worthy 
desire or aspiration. I may perhaps permit myself, in 
conclusion, to mention a little incident which, while at 
this moment it comes back to my mind and heart with 
peculiar force, is thoroughly characteristic of the man and 
throws a real light on one of the great sources of his 
many-sided usefulness. A number of years ago, when 
there seemed to be danger that the Mercantile Library 
would be abandoned for want of support, I expressed to 
Mr. Oilman my deep regret that such a thing should be 
possible. I said that it was a great resource for people 
of quiet tastes, and mentioned as an illustration that it 
was one of the very few places to which my mother took 
pleasure in going. It was several months after this talk 
that matters came to a head in regard to the library, and 
we all know that the saving of the library was chiefly due 
to the energetic exertions of Mr. Oilman, aided by the 
generosity of Mr. McCoy. It never occurred to me that 
what I had said to Mr. Oilman had anything to do with 


66 Alumni Reunion 

the matter, or even that he remembered it at all. One day, 
meeting Mr. Oilman, I told him what a splendid thing I 
thought he had done in saving the library. "I was think- 
ing of your mother when I was doing it," he said. Seed 
that was dropped in his mind fell on fruitful ground. 
Opportunity to do good works and the actual doing of 
them so far apart, alas, for most of us were to him the 
nearest possible of neighbors. And so it came about that, 
whatever other titles he may have to remembrance, he 
deserves pre-eminently that most enviable of all epitaphs, 
"Well done, thou good and faithful servant." 


MINUTE ADOPTED BY THE CLASS OF 1889 

The Class of 1889 of the Johns Hopkins University, in 
reunion assembled at the Hotel Stafford, in Baltimore, on 
November 20, 1908, desire to record herein their feeling of 
personal grief and loss at the departure from this earthly 
scene of their valued counselor and friend, Dr. Daniel 
Coit Oilman. 

Entering the ranks of the student body as they did 
when the University was still comparatively young, they 
have watched with unabated interest through many years 
the rapid growth and expansion of their well-beloved 
Alma Mater under his skillful guidance. 

And now filling honorable positions in life as ministers, 
physicians, teachers, lawyers, and business men, they feel 
that no small portion of their success has been due to the 
great personal interest which President Oilman took in 
their welfare while they were students under his guidance, 
as well as later when he watched their individual careers 
with honest pride in their achievements in the varied 
fields of their activity. 


Daniel Colt Oilman 67 

They miss the familiar face so well portrayed in their 
own class book, from the halls of that University which 
was so long his fondest care, and they wish herein to 
express formally their steadfast loyalty to the memory of 
him whom in life they loved to honor as their leader. 

The Class of 1889, 

WALDO NEWCOMER, President. 
GEORGE C. KEIDEL, 
HARRY C. JONES, ^ Committee. 
LEGH W. EEID, 


CURRENT NOTES 

The one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan 
Poe was celebrated by the University and the Poe Memorial As- 
sociation of Baltimore by public exercises in McCoy Hall, on the 
evening of January 19. A lecture on the life and works of the 
poet was delivered by Professor William P. Trent, of Columbia 
University. Short addresses on various phases of Poe's career 
were made by Reverend Oliver Huckel and Mr. John P. Poe, of 
Baltimore, and an original poem was read by Miss Lizette Wood- 
worth Reese. 


MR. C. HOWABD WALKER, of Boston, gave two lectures in McCoy 
Hall, January 21 and 22, on "Recent Developments of Architec- 
ture in America." 


PROFESSOR A. V. WILLIAMS JACKSON, of Columbia University, 
gave a course of lectures on the "Religion of Persia," in McCoy 
Hall, at 5 o'clock, January 26, 27, 28, February 2, 3, 4. This 
course is one of the annual series arranged by the American 
Committee for Lectures on the History of Religions. 


DR. FABIAN FRANKLIN, of Baltimore, will give twelve public 
lectures on "The Central Doctrines of Political Economy," in 
McCoy Hall, at 5 o'clock. The dates and topics are as follows: 
February 10, "The Method and Spirit of Political Economy"; 
February 12, "The Idea of the Margin in Political Economy; the 
Theory of Value"; February 17, "The Law of Diminishing Pro- 
ductiveness and the Doctrine of Rent"; February 19, "The Prin- 
ciple of Population; Malthus and his Critics; Past and Future"; 
February 24, "Savings and Interest; Labor and Wages; Enter- 
prise and Profit" ; February 26, "The Teachings of Henry George" ; 
March 17, "Money"; March 19, "Foreign Trade; the 'Balance of 
Trade'; Free Trade and Protection"; March 24, "Monopoly"; 
March 26, "Some Ethical Questions"; March 30, "Specimen 
Fallacies"; March 31, "A Retrospect." 


The Percy Turnbull Memorial lectures will be given this year 
by Professor Ramon Menendez Pidal, of the University of 
Madrid. They will be delivered in French. The general subject 
will be "L'epopee castillane a travers la litterature espagnole." 
The special topics and dates are as follows: March 5, "Leg 
origines de 1'epopee"; March 8, "Castille et Leon"; March 9, "Le 
poeme du Cid"; March 11, "Le Cid et Chimene"; March 12, "Le 
romancero"; March 15, "Le theatre des xvi et xvn siecles"; 
March 16, "La matiere epique dans la poesie moderne." 


68 


PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES 

Scientific Association 

December 2, 1908. Modern Methods in Geophysical Research. 
A. L. DAY. 

January 13, 1909. Genetic Science. J. M. BALDWIN. 

Electrical Operation of Steam Railways. J. B. WHITEHEAD. 

February 3, 1909. The Grafting of Epithelial and other 
Tissues of the Body. W. S. HALSTED. 

Recent Views concerning the Aurora Borealis. J. A. ANDER- 
SON. 

Philological Association 

December 18, 1908. Two hundred and fiftieth regular meeting. 

Professor GILDERSLEEVE in the chair. Attendance, 65. 
A Retrospect of the Work of the Association. B. L. GILDER- 

SLEEVE. 

A Brief Review of the History of the Association. E. H. 
SPIEKEB. 

January 15, 1909. Two hundred and fifty-first regular meeting. 
Professor GILDERSLEEVE in the chair. Attendance, 30. 

Ancient Egyptian Temple Ceremonial. C. JOHNSTON. 

On the Origin of the Construction, "Er hat schreiben kon- 
nen." W. KURRELMEYER. 

Historical and Political Science Association 

December 18, 1908. Parliaments in the 13th and 14th Cen- 
turies. Professor E. P. CHEYNEY. 

Howe's Life and Letters of George Bancroft. C. P. GOULD. 

Lownhaupt's Investment Bonds: Their Issue and Place in 
Finance. E. R. SPEDDEN. 

Cooke's The Commerce Clause of the Federal Constitution. 
K. SINGEWALD. 

January 15, 1909. The Making of Economic Literature. Pro- 
fessor S. N. PATTEN. 

Beer's Origins of the British Colonial System. E. R. TUENEE. 
Daggett's Railroad Reorganization. F. T. STOCKTON. 
Taylor's The Science of Jurisprudence. W. F. DODD. 


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