ACADEMY OP SCIENCES] BIOGRAPHY 17 



pression on him; so long as he could stand, he would do his work. It is a pleasure to reflect 

 that his students, if they did not prove themselves altogether worthy of his efforts in their 

 behalf, did at least give him their admiring attention and their love. 



Near the beginning of the year 1919 he underwent a surgical operation, too long delayed. 

 About 10 days before his death, which came on January 10, 1919, I heard of his serious illness 

 and called his house by telephone for further particulars. Sabine himself at once answered me 

 in a voice so cheerful and strong that my fears might have been dissipated if I had not remembered 

 that on a previous occasion, after going home from the laboratory unmistakably ill, he had 

 answered my inquiries in the same way. This was, in fact, his method of censoring health 

 bulletins relating to himself. 



A day or two later, not venturing to use the telephone again, I called at his door and asked 

 for Mrs. Sabine. Being told that I could not see her, I left my name and was turning away, 

 when I was called from within the house, and Sabine, who had heard me at the door, came 

 halfway down the stairway from the second story to meet me. Finding that he really wished 

 to have a talk with me, I went to his room. He must have known his condition to be one of 

 great danger, but evidently he was not submissive to the ordinary rules of the sick chamber. 

 Most of the time while I was with him he reclined, half sitting, on a couch, apparently taking 

 whatever position was most tolerable, and I knew it would be useless to offer advice. In his 

 care, or lack of care, for his own health he was now, as he had been during all the 30 years of 

 my acquaintance with him, a defier of precept, a law unto himself. 



Any time for the past year or two, looking upon his spiritual, still youthful, face, and noting 

 the smiling obstinacy with which he followed a course of toil that must end his life too soon, 

 one might be tempted to think of him as some elfin being that had taken human form in benevo- 

 lent caprice, but was now planning departure and adventures new. Not that he ever, save 

 in the very ecstasy of pain and weakness, showed any symptom of world weariness. He was 

 full of affection, full of the zest of life, full of plans for future years. He told me that he never 

 enjoyed his work of teaching more than during the fall just past, so trying to most of those 

 who remained in academic life, and he had been looking forward joyfully to the prospect of 

 resuming his work of research, especially that part of it which was to be carried on in the special 

 laboratory built for him by his friend Colonel Fabyan, at Geneva, III. 



From his ancestry he should have had long life, and he probably counted too much on this 

 inheritance. He had lived through more than one tremendous crisis of illness, and he seemed 

 to feel that he could brave off any attack of disease. But even if he had seen death unmis- 

 takable in his path, he would not have halted or turned aside so long as the war lasted. In 

 fact, he had been repeatedly warned that a surgical operation was needed to save his life, and 

 had replied that he could not stop for this while his country was in danger. 



With all his high courage and resolution, however, and a clearness of head likely to take 

 him in safety through difficult passes, he was no seeker of danger for its own sake, no sportsman, 

 in the ordinary sense, no player of rough games. Indeed, during his early years at Harvard, 

 the slightness of his figure, the delicacy of his face, the deferential courtesy of his manner, 

 may have raised in the minds of some the question whether he was fitted for the not always 

 easy task of teaching and controlling a large class of possibly boisterous undergraduates. But 

 this solicitude was quite gratuitous. He was the son of a woman who, at 70 years or more, 

 described her own way of crossing the proverbially dangerous streets of Paris thus: "I have 

 no difficulty; I wait till the street is fairly clear and then I walk across, looking neither to the 

 right nor to the left." So Sabine, telling how to deal with an incipient lecture-room disturbance, 

 said: "It is perfectly easy; all you have to do is to survey the audience and look every man 

 in the eye." 



I suppose, however, that he was rarely obliged to use even this measure of discipline. 

 For young men were drawn to him; he spoke in a low, though clear, tone, and they kept still 

 in order not to lose his words; they clustered about him after his lectures, partly to hear more 

 and partly, I suspect, for the mere pleasure of being near him. They took his advice about 

 their studies and their life work, and they could not have done better. 



