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- 



