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 



