292 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



There is a Hall of Fame not built by the hand of man. It is the 

 memory of mankind. In many of its galleries this man's bust could 

 with justice be placed. Diplomacy would claim him as of her greatest. 

 For him would be the laurel of administrative wisdom. Among states- 

 men he would be welcomed; and who of the masters of English prose 

 shall in that hall of fame be more secure of grateful remembrance, 

 and who more certain of a place among men of science. 



As an investigator of nature and of nature's laws he is materially 

 represented here by right of eminent achievement. Let us as men 

 of science feel proud that Franklin's fame as a philosopher did much 

 to win for Franklin the diplomatist such useful consideration and re- 

 spect as led to final success. 



Many of those you honor to-day had moral and temperamental pe- 

 culiarities which more or less influenced their lives and are common 

 to men of science. Most of them cared little about making money; 

 still less about keeping it. Franklin, on the contrary, dreaded poverty; 

 was careful in business, made fruitful investments and died rich; 

 nevertheless, like the typical man of science, he refused to make money 

 out of his discoveries, or by patents to protect his inventions. In him 

 the man of science, unselfish, free from money greed, seemed to exist 

 apart from all those other men who went to the making of the many- 

 minded Franklin. In another way he was singularly unlike such 

 typical men of science as Henry, in physics, and Leidy, in natural 

 history. When Franklin made a discovery his next thought was as 

 to what practical use it could be put. If he made some novel ob- 

 servation of nature, he asked himself at once how he could make it 

 serve his fellow men. The great reapers of the harvest of truth com- 

 monly leave the inventor to make practical use of their unregarded 

 thought. 



Leaving the wide land to do justice to Franklin, the model citizen 

 and great diplomatist, here we crown him with the assured verdict of 

 posterity Franklin, the man of pure science. Here we welcome him 

 to this goodly fellowship of those who communed with nature and 

 read the secrets of the Almighty Maker. 



Alexander von Humboldt 



By Baron SPECK VON STERNBURG 



GERMAN EMBASSY, WASHINGTON, D. C. 



In this immortal man, whose bust you have gathered to unveil, 

 the world reveres its greatest master since the days of Aristotle. His 

 genius covered all that man ever thought, did and observed in nature. 

 There is no branch of human knowledge into which his mind did not 



