646 AUGUSTUS LOWELL. 



most for the institution and its trustee is that well-nigh without exception 

 each came originally at his instigation. Almost all the famous foreigners 

 in science, literature, or art who have been in this country have owed 

 their personal introduction to it to the trustee of the Lowell Institute. 

 Since from over seas these lecturers came, simply as a bond between 

 countries the Institute has played uo unimportant part. 



Mr. Lowell's tie to science was thus rather indirect than direct, but it 

 was none the less intimate if in a different way. By virtue of his office 

 he was brought personally in contact with the scientists of his day, and in 

 a most pleasant and withal domestic manner. For besides meeting them 

 at the lectures, of which he always attended the opening one and oftener 

 than not the whole course, he was in the habit of entertaining the lec- 

 turers during their stay in Boston at his house at dinner, sometimes more 

 than once. Many is the memorable evening he passed in consequence 

 with men who have made the worhi what it is. Such personal knowledge 

 of a man is as invaluable as it is invigorating. Even in an estimate of 

 the mind a side light of no mean value is shed on it by intercourse with 

 the personality. The man proves a footnote to his own writings. This 

 advantage of glosses on the text Mr. Lowell possessed ; and in various 

 aspects in as muph as he was thrown with these men in diverse relations. 

 Intercourse of the sort he enjoyed more or less for nearly half a century. 

 For, as I have said, before he became trustee he had been acting for his 

 father, and even before that had met the lecturers at his father's house. 

 During the second half of the nineteenth century he had thus been 

 familiar, not only with the century's best thought, but with most of its 

 best thinkers. And he passed away just as the century itself was 

 drawing to a close. 



Coincident with holding this responsible post in educational matters of 

 a general character Mr. Lowell filled a second position of a more direct 

 kind and not less important. For quite as long a term as he managed 

 the Lowell Institute was he associated with the government of the 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Entering the corporation of 

 that institution in the early seventies, he very soon took a leading part 

 in its policy. From that time the conduct of its affairs had been inti- 

 mately connected with him, much more so than the public is cognizant 

 of. For Mr. Lowell never put himself forward, having an innate aver- 

 sion to unnecessary publicity. Even on the few occasions when it was 

 indispensable for him to appear, he only did so, as those in his confidence 

 are aware, after great reluctance. 



Mr. Lowell was identified with this phenomenally successful institution 



