comstock A NECROLOGY OF NATURE LOVERS 387 



solitude." He so loved the beauty of the world, and was so in- 

 timate with the secrets of Nature that, though more than eighty 

 when he died, he dreaded death and he could not bear the thought 

 of being separated from the scenes, the wild creatures, the trees, 

 and the flowers that he loved. He said "If I could count on an- 

 other fifty years or one hundred, I should be happy." He did 

 not write easily, but his style was admirable, his English perfect 

 and he knew how to fasten and hold the interest of his readers. 

 He never took pride in authorship; when a book was printed, he 

 turned his back upon it, for it had no more interest for him. 

 Although he was to his friends a man of mystery never caring to 

 speak of himself, yet in that remarkable book "Far Away and 

 Long Ago" he gives the world complete self -revelation in the 

 autobiography of his childhood. In this story of a child born 

 and reared on a plantation in Argentina we find constant evi- 

 dences of his intense love of the beautiful in nature; and we trust 

 that although he has been taken from the world he loved, he has 

 found another world as beautiful and full of interesting life which 

 shall be his for eternity. 



Irene Hardy 



Irene Hardy was not a naturalist, but she was a careful observer 

 and gave sympathetic understanding to her environment in the 

 natural world. She was born in Ohio in 1841 and grew up with 

 that reverence for education which characterized the American 

 people of her day. She gained her early education in common 

 schools and later was a student at Antioch College which in those 

 days was as much of an innovation in the way of colleges as it is 

 today under its recent recrudescence. Later Miss Hardy went to 

 the Pacific Coast, and as a teacher of English in the Oakland High 

 School, she won for herself an enviable reputation; incidentally 

 she studied with Edward Rowland Sill who was Professor of 

 English at the University of California. 



Soon after Stanford University was established, she was called 

 to that institution as a member of the staff of the Department of 

 English; and those who were fortunate enough to receive their 

 training in her classes have given her the highest tribute that a 

 teacher may receive. 



Miss Hardy had the eyes of an artist and quite uninstructed, 

 she made admirable sketches of the scenes which she loved. A 



