760 A MEMOIR OF ELIAS LOOMIS. 



emigrant, and lie hoped in the near future to i)ublish an additional vol- 

 ume. For this he has left in manuscript many corrections and large 

 additions that will be of use to the future Loorais genealogist. 



Am I tarrying too long upon the vacation work of Professor Looinis'? 

 If so, I plead on this occasion that among these direct descendants of 

 Joseph Loomis there were enrolled more than two hundred graduates 

 of Yale College, and nearly one hundred more of our graduates have 

 married members of this numerous family. 



Professor Loomis was doubtless more widely known as the author of 

 mathematical text-books thau as a worker in new lields in science. 

 Shortly after coming to Kew York, he prepared a text-book in algebra. 

 The market was ready for a good book of this kind, and the work pre- 

 pared for it was a good one. It was followed the next year by a Geom- 

 etry. This was an attempt, and if judged by its reception and sale it 

 was a successful attempt, to combine in a school book the rigid demon- 

 strations of Euclid with the courses of thought in Legendre and in 

 modern science. The task is one of peculiar ditticulty, as the existence 

 and activities of the English Society for the Improvement of Geometric 

 Teaching now for near twenty years illustrates. Other booksfollowed the 

 Geometry from year to year, the whole forming a connected series from 

 arithmetic upward, so that the list of his works finally numbered near 

 tv;enty volumes. His experience in teaching, his rare skill in language, 

 liis clear conception of what was important, and his unwearied pains- 

 taking, combined to i)roduce text-books which met the wants of teach- 

 ers. About 000,000 volumes have been sold, benefiting the schools and 

 colleges, and bringing to the author a liberal and well-merited pecuniary 

 return. 



We ought not to omit — on this academic occasion — to speak of the 

 teacher. College graduates who have been under his instruction will 

 probably retain a more positive impression of the personal traits and 

 the character of Professor Loomis than of most of their other teachers.. 

 His crisp sentences, lucid thought, exactness of language, and steadi- 

 ness of requirement, more than made up for any apparent coldness and 

 real reserve. These characteristics of his riper years were peculiar to 

 him from the beginning of his life as a teacher. During his tutorship 

 he was thought to be strict as a disciplinarian, and this may have un- 

 favorably affected his influence with some members of the class of 

 1837, of which he was tutor. It was not so with all of them. Some of 

 you will recall what was said by a member of that class as he came to 

 commencement a few years since, occupying at the time the highest 

 ofiice which a lawyer in the line of his profession can in this country 

 secure: "If I have been successful in life," said Chief-Justice Waite, 

 " 1 owe that success to the influence of Tutor Loomis more thau to any 

 other cause whatever." 



There was in Professor Loomis so much of reserve, that to many per- 

 sons-he seemed (;old and witiiout interest in the lives of others. But 



