CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 



THIRD YEAR IN THE FACULTY 



^r^O return to the story of my normal life at home, I got back from 



Jl the expedition of 1882 to learn the calamitous news that my dear 

 friend and teacher, Balfour, had been killed in the Alps, thus justifying 

 the fears that I had had on his account and which led me to beseech 

 him to give up such dangerous excursions. His death was a great loss 

 to science and his memory has been cherished by his friends and his 

 family to the present time. 



In London in 1888, I attended a soiree at the Royal Society's rooms 

 where the Rt. Hon. Arthur Balfour was also present. He was then the 

 Chief Secretary for Ireland in the Government of his uncle. Lord 

 Salisbury. Learning that one of his brother Frank's pupils was in the 

 room, he asked to have me introduced and then questioned me eagerly 

 about every smallest detail that I could tell him of his brother. 



My future Mother-in-law, Mrs. Post, had arranged to take her two 

 daughters and four other girls, cousins and friends, to Heidelberg for 

 a year, to live in the house on the Neckar in which my Mother and I 

 had been so happy. 



The fall term was an unexpectedly busy time for me, for the illness 

 and death of Professor Atwater made a gap in the schedule of the 

 Junior class, which I was called upon to fill, almost at a moment's notice. 

 I was no longer enslaved by having to mark absences in chapel, but 

 there was enough extra work to make up for that relief. I could allow 

 myself very little time for relaxations and could do almost nothing in 

 the line of research. At first, I was inclined to believe that, owing to 

 climatic or similar factors, I could accomplish much less original work 

 in this country than in Europe. The summer vacation of 1883, which 

 I spent in Princeton, taught me that the difficulty did not lie in the 

 climate, but in the constant interruptions of term time. Any climate in 

 which one is not incapacitated by bodily discomfort, is favourable to 

 research. 



C189] 



