DEPARTMENT REPORTS. 31 



vear and return to his home; but his health afterward so far recovered as to 

 enable him to pursue his studies at Ann Arbor during the winter of 187G-7, 

 and to spend the foliowinsc summer at Grand Rapids assistins: his old friend 

 and classmate, Peter Felker, in producing ' The Grocer's Manual,' a book 

 of no inconsiderable importance. The winter of 1877-8 he again spent at 

 Boston, pursuing his special studies, but was compelled to relinquish them in 

 the early spring by disease, which developed into pulmonary consumption. 

 Travel in the distant west failed to restore him to health, and he returned to 

 his home in August, 1879, to spend his last days amid scenes endeared to 

 him by early and long association, and surrounded by those whom he loved 

 dearest and best. He died February 4, 1880. Strange was a good, true man. 

 We liked him well. Gentle, kind, pure as his high ideal of life, faitiiful, reso- 

 lute, and with a noble purpose in his soul. We liked him well. 



"Less than a week after the death of Strange, John W. Porter, a member 

 of the same class, a man of somewhat different stamp, yet in whose life there 

 was much that was good, much that was of the best, died of the same disease 

 at Greeley, in the State of Colorado. The details of his early life I have not 

 been able to gather; replies to inquiries sent to various sources not having yet 

 been received. He was earnest and steadfast iu his student life, and honest 

 to a high and liberal endeavor. For some years after graduation he was en- 

 gaged in the sale of a publication knowu as the 'Illustrated Atlas of Michi- 

 gan,' and afterwards was similarly interested in Wisconsin in a like publica- 

 tion concerning that State. These enterprises it is understood were successful 

 in a business way, but a harsh stroke of fate prevented their continuance. 

 The dread disease, consumption, compelled its victim to seek a more congenial 

 clime. In the spring of 1878 he went to Greeley, Colorado, where he resided 

 until his death. The details of his life there also the writer has not yet been 

 able to ascertain. A clipping from the Colorado Sun of Feb. 14, 1880, four 

 days after Porter's death, serves to give an idea of the esteem in which he 

 seems to have been held in that community. The clipping is hereto attached, 

 portions of which it seems fitting to read as a part of this history: 

 " ' Died in Greeley, Feb. 9th, John W. Porter. 



" ' Nearly two years ago Mr. Porter came to our town from Michigan to seek 

 a season of rest from arduous work, and try the effects of the climate of Col- 

 orado upon his health, which for a year had been delicate. 



"' He at once made a deep impression upon those wiio formed his acquaint- 

 ance, not so much by his gentle courtesy, winning manners, scholarly bearing, 

 and wonderful personal magnetism, as by a certain simplicity and directness 

 of mind that must needs convince one that ho loved and pursued Truth with 

 his whole might, and was loyal to her with all the earnestness of his generous 

 soul. 



" ' It is a sad thought that his intellectual stores are, in a measure, lost to 

 us; stores accumulated through fierce stragglings with early poverty and 

 small opportunity. Let no young man or woman despair of success so long as 

 he remembers this example of one who, though lacking opportunity until of 

 age, so used his observation and his time as to secure a collegiate education, 

 and to wring a true success from what might have been the barren field of 

 defeat. 



" 'Let us hope that that power which decrees that no atom of matter and 

 no impulse of force shall ever be lost, but shall still exist somewhere in the 

 universe, has also decreed that no part of that crowning gift to man, the 

 soul, can ever become extinct, but shall follow the law of its development, and 



