REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT, 1920. 5 



of bankruptcy. He often used to say that the object of the 

 Institution is to spend funds, not to conserve them. Thus he 

 consistently opposed the estabhshment of the Insurance and the 

 Reserve Funds of the Institution. He was so serenely confident 

 in the altruistic merits of its work that he saw no dangers even in 

 attempts to capitalize deficits. But he was equally serene in 

 the defeats he encountered in debates with his colleagues and was 

 always generously willing to concede that his judgment might be 

 at fault. His robust honesty, his obvious sincerity, his zeal in all 

 progressive enterprises, and his willingness to work unceasingly 

 for the public weal made him a national figure as well as one of 

 the first citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 



WilHam Churchill, Associate of the Institution in primitive 

 philology since 1915, was born in Brooklyn, New York, October 

 5, 1859, and died at the Garfield Hospital, Washington, District 

 of Columbia, June 9, 1920. While yet an undergraduate at 

 Yale University, from which he received the degree of bachelor 

 of arts in 1882, he began the arduous linguistic studies whose 

 later extension made him one of the leading experts of America 

 in philology. After a somewhat varied career, chiefly in the 

 Government service, including the positions of consul-general at 

 Samoa and at Tonga, he became one of the editors of the New 

 York Sun, serving continuously in this capacity from 1902 to 

 1915. But while this connection with a great metropoUtan 

 journal served as a vocation, his linguistic avocation was pursued 

 unceasingly, though in comparative obscurity even to the lead- 

 ing experts in contemporary philology. His field of research was 

 the Polynesian languages. With surprising numbers of these 

 he had become intimately acquainted during his sojourn in the 

 Pacific Islands. He had not only made penetrating studies of 

 these languages, but he had also made equally important anthro- 

 pological investigations of the races of men who had developed 

 and dispersed these languages. He was thus what the dominant 

 part of the intellectual world still calls, but quite inappropri- 

 ately^, a ^'narrow specialist," when the attention of the Institu- 

 tion was directed to his talents, in 1905, by some of his friends. 

 A visit to his library and an examination of his manuscripts and 

 methods of work revealed, even to a ''narrow speciaUst" in 



