LIFE OF PROFESSOR CHESTER DEWEY, 239 



liad the control of liis faculties to the last, sustained by au unfaltering 

 trust in the blessed life hereafter. 



A few remarks further, and we close. All who knew Dr. Dewey were 

 impressed with the freshness and vigor of his mind even up to the latest 

 period of his life. I have often asked myself this question : How did 

 Dr. Dewey retain so fully his mental activity, and grow old so grace- 

 fully "? This result seemed to me due, in the first place, to his constant 

 eilbrt to keep abreast with the movement of modern discovery and 

 thought. He never was satisfied with falling back on past experience 

 or old attainments. He believed that morally, intellectually, and phy- 

 sically, man is making progress. He held it to be his duty as long as 

 he lived to contribute to that progress, and to be himself a vital part of the 

 movement. He was always at work ; always acquiring new ideas. Mor- 

 ally and scientifically, his mind and sympathies were with the future, 

 and not with the past alone. Hence, his brain never became inactive; 

 the currents of his intellectual life never grew stagnant and dull. His 

 topics of conversation were always of the present and the actual, or of 

 some new application, modification, or adjustment of the old and the 

 tried. 



Again, he kept up, in a wonderful degree, communion and sympathy 

 with the young. With them he established friendships and intimacies. 

 In these intimacies, his stores of knowledge and ripened wisdom were 

 poured out freely, while the young gave back to him the cheerfulness, 

 confidence, and hope natural to their time of life. He was always a 

 guide and helper to young and struggling men of talent. The number 

 of such who, by his impulse, advice, and encouragement, were led to 

 honor and success, was very great. No young scientilic laborer ever 

 failed to find a wise and sympathetic friend in Dr. Dewey. Nothing 

 gave him greater joj" than the rising distinction of some protege whom 

 he had started on the road to fame. His beautiful old age most emphat- 

 ically belied Horace's oft-quoted description of the aged man: 



" Difficilis queriilus laudator temi^oins acti 

 Se puero, castigator ceusorque minorum." 



No one was more warmly welcomed in society, by old and young, 

 than he. 



He kept his youth, too, through the simplicity, purity, and elevation 

 of his moral and religious life. His trust in the moral order was as 

 habitual and as firm as it was in the law of universal gravitation. 

 This gave steadiness to his moral action, and so abated the ordinary 

 friction and annoyances of life, that he seemed, to a casual observer, 

 almost insensible to their action. For fifteen years I was favored with 

 the friendship of Dr. Dewey. A large part of that time I met him daily 

 as a colleague. I was associated with him during the period (always 

 trying to an old man) when, at the age of»seventy-six, he ceased to dis- 

 charge the active duties of his chair ; and I can say, with perfect sin- 

 cerity, that to me and his colleagues he seemed incapable of injustice 



