410 SERENO WATSON. 



A second journey was to Guatemala. This study of the tropics 

 was botanically profitable, but it impaired his health. By a curious 

 coincidence he passed considerable time in iuvestigating the Flora of a 

 country from which his classmate, Captain Donnell Smith of Baltimore, 

 has obtained such interesting botanical results. 



His third journey was to Europe. I had the great pleasure of ac- 

 companying him, and of seeing his delight at the gardens of the Old 

 World. But he shrank here, as always, from even the slightest sacri- 

 fice of any time for merely social matters. With two exceptions, he 

 declined all the attentions which were tendered him. 



Foreign distinctions were beginning to be bestowed upon him in the 

 last years of his life. He had for some time been a highly valued 

 member in our American academies and associations. But dis- 

 tinctions and honors of all kinds were to him almost a matter of 

 indifference. He accepted the honors less for himself than from a 

 regard for the feelings of others. Nothing was more foreign to his 

 nature than any scramble for priority ; hence his reclamations are few. 

 He was averse to holding any office ; but when he was forced to submit 

 to this infliction, he surrendered at discretion, and performed his duties 

 not only acceptably and faithfully, but gracefully. 



No one who came in contact with him could fail to see how warm 

 and deep were his sympathies. The writer had the great privilege of 

 seeing Watson almost every day for about twenty college years, and 

 he can bear willing testimony to the truth of the following words, 

 written by one of the classmates of 1847, Professor Jesup of Dart- 

 mouth College : — 



" His was one of those true and gentle natures that can always be 

 trusted. He dreaded most of all to be a source of anxiety to his 

 friends, not realizing that a fuller expression of his hopes and fears 

 and plans would often have afforded them vastly more relief than 

 pain. ... In the family he was self-denying and very thoughtful 

 of the interests of others, doing many a kind act, the recipient of 

 which knowing nothing of the source from which it came. . . . 

 He was a man of decidedly religious character, though he could seldom 

 be induced to take any public part in religious exercises. He was 

 fond of his church, and for years instructed a Bible class. 



" He seemed more deeply impressed than almost any one I hav 

 ever known, that life is short, and that the field is growing more and 

 more extensive every day. He believed that he must work, while 

 the day lasted and with no reference to any reward except the knowl- 

 edge that he had done what he could. I doubt whether he ever 

 thought of posthumous fame." 



