Agnew.] 2,J4 IFeb. 6. 



spired the ardent, earnest and untiring enthusiasm with which he worked, 

 whether the objects of pursuit were small or great. There was withal a 

 singular thoroughness in all that he did, a determination to get at the 

 core, or as John Brown would say, the lion marrow of things. One of the 

 most formidable disabilities with which Dr. Beadle had to contend was 

 feeble health. He began life with a great soul in a delicate body, and on 

 several occasions was compelled to call a halt in order that the exhausted 

 energy of the overworked machine might be regained. Thrice was he so 

 near death that little hope was entertained of his recovery, much less of 

 being able to take up the toil of beloved work. 



A warm personal friend and admirer of Dr. Beadle, Prof. Benjamin 

 Silliman, the Elder, once said, "O Beadle ! if that soul of yours could be 

 shot into a robust body, what a power you would be in the world." None 

 but those who were very close to Dr. Beadle have any conception of the 

 fierce struggle maintained by this noble man against physical infirmities. 

 It was the frequent reopening of an old abscess cavity of the lung, which 

 occasioned the violent paroxysms of cough and profuse expectoration 

 which so often interrupted his speaking in the pulpit. I may also mention 

 a fact which was doubtless little suspected by his friends, and which 

 served to further complicate this constitutional weakness. He was the 

 subject of chronic Bright's disease, and that for thirteen years, or up to the 

 time of his death, the progress of this grave affection required to be kept 

 in abeyance by periodical treatment ; nothing indeed, but an imperial 

 dauntless will, and a perennial spring of vitality, which animated the tough 

 fibre of his slight frame, could ever have enabled this man to weather the 

 cross-currents and storms of so checkered a life, and to anchor in a haven 

 of sixty-seven. 



An inborn, insatiate ihirst for the acquisition of knowledge, associated 

 with a. remarkable versatility of tastes and capacities, led Dr. Beadle to 

 cultivate various departments of natural science. It was, however, more 

 particularly in the realms of conchology and mineralogy that he was most 

 deeply interested. His collections of shells and minerals formed one of 

 the most extensive and valuable private possessions of the kind in this 

 country, and scarcely was a vacation .passed without the same being en- 

 riched with numerous spoils from the mountain, and from the sea. 

 Several educational institutions of the county are indebted to his generosity 

 for large and valuable additions to their cabinets. Any one who may have 

 visited his rooms on Eighth street, will scarcely fail to remember, among 

 other rare specimens which lay on his table, a magnificent section of a 

 petrified palm tree, with its concentrically arranged laminse of variegated 

 silex answering to the original layers of ligneous matter. The circum- 

 stances under which Dr. Beadle came into possession of this valuable 

 piece are quite characteristic of the man. Dr. George M. Graves, in a 

 letter to the' Rev. Heber H. Beadle, writes that in 1864 he spent a month 

 in company with Dr. Beadle, and Dr. Thompson traveling from Cairo to 

 Egypt, over the French canal and through the desert to Mt. Sinai. At 



