6o Memorial of George Brown Goode. 



magazine lycnd a Hand, edited by Edward Everett Hale, entitled Wash- 

 ington's University the Nation's Debt of Honor. In this article he 

 computed that the bequest of Washington to the United States for a 

 national university would, at compound interest, amount, in 1892, to 

 $4,100,000, and he proposed that the National Government should 

 restore this sum as the nucleus of the endowment for the National 

 University. He acted as secretary of the executive committee, of which 

 the Chief Justice was chairman, which was laboring to this end, and 

 spared no effort to bring it to a successful conclusion. 



Another project in which he was interested and for which he labored 

 was a movement to fully open French universities to American students. 

 His interest was excited in this movement because he thought that 

 American science was becoming one-sided, owing to the fact that all of 

 the students who went abroad visited German universities. Of the 

 American committee, which, in cooperation with the French committee, 

 had this matter in charge, Doctor Goode was the secretary, and he had 

 the satisfaction of seeing this project brought to a successful issue before 

 his death. 



He had a strong interest in literature, and wrote in an excellent Eng- 

 lish style — clear, direct, and unpretentious. I have never met a mind in 

 touch with more far-away and disconnected points than his, nor one of 

 the same breadth and variety of writing, outside of the range of his own 

 specialty. He had fine aesthetic tastes and derived keen enjoyment from 

 everything that was beautiful in nature or in art. He knew all natural 

 sights and sounds, and recognized the note of every bird. He knew 

 good pictures and good prints, was familiar with all the processes of 

 graphic arts, and a good judge of them, both on the technical and the 

 artistic side. He loved a beautifully printed book and an artistic bind- 

 ing. All these tastes he utilized in the publications which he wrote or 

 edited. The work which he had in hand at the time of his death and to 

 which he devoted so nuich loving care, the History of the First Half 

 Century of the Smithsonian Institution, he aimed to make the expression 

 of all these tastes. To no writing which he ever did, did he bring a 

 higher literary expression than to the pages which he prepared for this 

 book. He was at infinite trouble in discussing such matters as the form 

 of the page, the style of the type, the quality of the paper, the initial 

 letters, the headlines and illustrations, and the binding, and when he 

 discussed any of these points w^th the expert craftsmen his knowledge 

 of the details was as full as their own. 



In spite of ill health and suffering, his overwrought nervous system, 

 and his occasional severe mental depression, he never allowed himself to 

 take a cynical view of human nature. He was a man who loved his 

 fellow-men, and to whom that love was repaid with a warmth to a degree 

 rare in this day. He made all other men's concerns his own. He sent 

 notes and suggestions to hundreds of scientific men, whose work profited 



