336 PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



In the conduct of his household he would owe no man anything. 

 Throughout a long life he was frugal and skilful in keeping his savin °-s. 

 His wants being simple, he thus earned the satisfaction of feeling 

 during the last twenty years of his life that he was fairly independent 

 in money matters, — a great satisfaction to a reserved and self- 

 respecting man. 



Faithful, constant, candid, independent, — these seem to me some 

 of the high qualities of Joseph Lovering. 



I ask leave, Mr. President, to second the resolutions you have 

 offered. 



After President Eliot, the Corresponding Secretary, Pro- 

 fessor Josiah P. Cooke, addressed the Academy : — 



I have been asked to speak of our late President as a teacher ; and 

 although I could wish that the duty had fallen to one who could por- 

 tray more forcibly his remarkable ability as a college and public lec- 

 turer, I feel that there is a certain fitness in the assignment, since I 

 have held intimate relations with him, first as pupil and afterwards 

 as associate, for more than fifty years. My acquaintance with him 

 began much earlier than his with me ; for, when quite a youth, I was 

 a constant attendant at his earlier lectures before the then recently 

 established Lowell Institute, which were at that time given in the Odeon 

 on Federal Street, near my father's home. From those lectures, con- 

 tinued several years in succession, I gained my earliest conceptions of 

 Mechanics, Electricity, and Astronomy. I can remember many of 

 the experimental illustrations as clearly as if the lectures had been 

 given yesterday, and it is a striking evidence of the lecturer's definite- 

 ness of statement and aptness of illustration that a young boy should 

 have been interested and instructed by lectures on subjects so abstruse. 

 These lectures were given on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, 

 when there was a half holiday at school ; and I remember they were 

 well attended, although they were repetitions of lectures on the pre- 

 vious Tuesday and Friday evenings. At this time the elder Professor 

 Silliman was charming the Lowell Institute audiences by his brilliant 

 lectures on Chemistry, but Mr. Lovering did not suffer from the com- 

 parison ; and if the fascination arising from the fluency and wealth of 

 illustration of the elder man gave the bent to the boy's mind, he never 

 questioned who was the more instructive lecturer. 



At this time, from eight to ten years after his. graduation from col- 

 lege and three to four years after his appointment as Hollis Professor 

 at Cambridge, Mr. Lovering did not give me the impression of a 



