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 



