JOHN SHAW BILLINGS. 847 



and for many years spent his summers on a farm on the coast of 

 Maine; first at York Harbor, and afterwards at Castine, where he 

 combined study with the hard work upon his farm in which he 

 dehghted. 



The influence which Ames acquired over his students and over 

 the members of his own and of other Faculties, with whom he came 

 in contact, was only in part due to his great learning. He was a 

 man who combined the highest personal character with manners as 

 charming as they were simple. He doubtless sacrificed the possibilitj' 

 of extensive writing, to discussion with his pupils, and to helping 

 them in their needs of every kind, intellectual and personal. To 

 many of them he will always remain the ideal scholar and gentleman. 



In the Autumn of 1909, he suffered a slight cerebral hemorrhage 

 which was followed by others more severe, and on January 8, 1910, 

 he died at New Ipswich, N. H.^ 



Samuel Williston. 



JOHN SHAW BILLINGS (1838-1913) 



Fellow in Class II, Section 4, 1881. 



John Shaw Billings, elected an Associate Fellow of this Academy 

 May 24, 1881, was born in Cotton township, Indiana, the 12th of April, 

 1838, and died in New York City, March 11, 1913. He was the son 

 of James Billings of Saratoga, New York, and Abbie Shaw of Rayn- 

 ham, Mass. When he was about five years of age the family removed 

 to Rhode Island and five years later went back to Indiana. 



The narrow circumstances of the family did not permit the expendi- 

 ture of much money upon the boy's education. His native ability 

 and indomitable perseverance, however, procured for him a college 

 education, and he was graduated with distinction at Miami Univer- 

 sity in 1857. Charles Elliott, Professor of Greek in that University, 

 writing of him at this time, says that Billings was a young man of very 

 superior talents and extensive acquirements and possessed of a great 

 facilitv in communicating what he knew. This estimate was fullv 



1 The writer is indebted for much in this sketch to the Memoir prefixed to 

 Professor Ames's collected Essays. 



