iv OBITUARY NOTICES OF MEMBERS DECEASED. 



The future seemed to have only the vaguest prospects of any other 

 lot. His father indeed spoke of an ambition to see him a prominent 

 lawyer, while it was his mother's wish that he should become a 

 clergyman, although she feared that he would never be good enough. 

 In his own day dreams, he was a farmer, driving his own team, 

 although he appears never to have found himself in harmony with 

 this mode of life, being greatly mortified at his want of skill, particu- 

 larly in the art of driving oxen. 



At the age of sixteen, an opportunity presented itself which 

 seemed to offer a solution of the problem of a career for the future, 

 more in keeping with the tastes of a young man like Mr. Newcomb, 

 than the life of a farmer. This was an arrangement with a quack 

 doctor, Hershay by name, by which Newcomb was to live with the 

 former until of age, assisting about the house and office in whatever 

 way he could, in return for which the doctor was to teach him what 

 he knew of medicine. It cannot be said that the doctor failed to 

 carry out this part of the contract, but as a guide and example at 

 this formative period of a young man's life, nothing could be more 

 pernicious. On the only occasion when the doctor expressed himself 

 freely to his pupil, he gave his views as to the true secret of success 

 as follows, " The world is all a humbug and the biggest humbug is 

 the best man." As for Newcomb, it seems very unfortunate that he 

 should have wasted two years of his life with the petty drudgery of 

 this position, when he was so obviously receiving nothing in return. 

 The relation was, however, terminated by Newcomb, two years 

 before the expiration of the contract by the simple and effectual 

 process of running away. In due time, he joined his father at Salem, 

 Massachusetts, who had decided to try his fortune in the states, his 

 mother having died some years before. Before very long the young 

 man found himself in charge of a country school, at a place called 

 Massey's cross roads, and later at Sudlersville, Kent County, on the 

 east shore of Maryland. 



This may be considered as the beginning, though an humble one, 

 of a new order of things, the outcome of which was to be the 

 distinguished scientist as we know him, the recipient of the highest 

 honors and distinctions which the world of science and culture had 

 to bestow. 



