494 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



at the Boston Latin School, was due to a weakness of his eyes. Of the 

 ten 3'ears between his leaving college and the outbreak of the Civil 

 War, more than five were spent in two visits to Europe, and a year and 

 a half, in the interval between them, as a clerk in the counting house 

 of S. & E. Austin, Boston merchants. The second of his European 

 visits, from 1856 to 1860, was devoted largely to the study of music, 

 pursued to the extent of physical injury, and also to the end of reach- 

 ing the reluctant decision that his talents would not justify his becom- 

 ing a professional musician. It was then, however, that he deter- 

 mined, if he could ever compass it, to enrich the lives of his countrymen 

 with music as his own life had been enriched by the music of Vienna 

 and other European cities. 



The disappointed student returned to iVmerica only a few months 

 before the outbreak of the War of Secession. His immediate future 

 could not long remain uncertain. As an officer, first of the Second 

 Massachusetts Infantry and then of the First Massachusetts Cavalry, 

 he proved himself an admirable soldier. Serious wounds received in 

 June, 1863, incapacitated him for much of the second half of the war. 

 In December, 1863, he married Ida Agassiz, daughter of Louis Agassiz. 

 In the years immediately following the war he sought his fortune, 

 in company with his young wife, through oil in Ohio and cotton in 

 Georgia, but without success. In 1868 he joined the Boston banking 

 and brokerage firm of Lee, Higginson & Co., with which he was con- 

 spicuously identified for the remaining fifty-one years of life. 



By 1881 his labors and good fortune enabled him to realize the 

 dream of his young manhood through establishing the Boston Sym- 

 phony Orchestra. This he maintained, at a very large personal cost, 

 for thirty-seven years. The fortune which he spent upon it was the 

 measure of his devotion to his city, his country, and his kind. But it 

 was not expressed through this interest only, for his gifts to Harvard 

 College, through a long period of years, gifts devoted primarily to the 

 happiness and health of the student body, placed him among the great 

 benefactors of that institution. To friends and others in need he was 

 constantly holding out a helping hand. Though his name is most 

 associated with the art of music and with education, he gladly furthered 

 many another good cause, local and national. He was withal a 

 strongly individual figure, outspoken in praise and blame, much 

 swayed by his affections, endowed with many of the most lovable 



