TIMOTHY ABBOTT CONRAD. 263 



deal with this phase of Conrad's personality is a rather delicate 

 matter. As his nephew, I might say too much ; as his biographer, 

 I wish not to say too little. 



Conrad was of small stature, thin and homely, yet he had, as 

 an intimate friend recently said, a refined countenance. There 

 was a kindly light in his eyes that words can not describe nor the 

 cunning of the artist depict. I have said " homely " ; this on his 

 own authority, for in his poem The Watermelon he declares : 



"The poet may sing of the Orient spices, 

 Or Barbary's dates in their palmy array, 

 But the huge rosy melon in cold juicy slices, 

 Is the Helicon font of a hot summer day, 



" Where I bathe the dry wings of the spirit, and sprinkling 

 Sweet drops on the pathway of dusty old Care, 

 I hold Father Time from his villainous wrinkling 

 Of features that never had graces to spare." 



As a conversationist, Conrad had few superiors, but a weak- 

 ness of his voice made it difficult for him to be heard, and it was 

 only when with two or three intimate friends that this quality 

 shone out. He avoided large gatherings and never spoke in pub- 

 lic. He had a keen sense of humor and was an inveterate punster. 

 His memory was " very bad " scientifically, says Prof. Dall, but it 

 was remarkably good so far as poetry was concerned, and when 

 walking alone in the country he would repeat aloud long pas- 

 sages from the works of his favorite authors. His fondness for 

 poetry led him to writing verses, some of which were printed in the 

 Philadelphia papers as early as 1828 ; and his latest effort bears date 

 of 1874. In 1848 Conrad published The New Diogenes, a Cynical 

 Poem. This is well described in the subtitle. It consists of 

 some twenty-five hundred lines of fault-finding. The edition was 

 very small and is not yet exhausted. In 1871 the writer undertook 

 to bring together the scattered short poems, and found thirty-two 

 of these, mostly in the corners of newspapers and two in manu- 

 script. The little volume was " privately printed." It bears the 

 title, A Geological Vision and Other Poems. Trenton, N. J., 1871. 



In his non-scientific writings Conrad invites a comparison 

 with Thoreau, but, while loving the outdoor world as devotedly, 

 he always had an eye to physical comfort, and preferred, at the 

 end of a long tramp, a good bed at a tavern to sleeping out of 

 doors. So too, probably, did Thoreau, but then to say so does not 

 sound so prettily in a book. 



Timothy Abbott Conrad died in Trenton, K J., August 9, 1877, 

 the last of the prominent group of early Philadelphia naturalists, 

 who paved the way for the more philosophical biologists of the 

 present day. 



