JOHN HARRISON BLAKE. 665 



JOHN HARRISON BLAKE. 



In reviewing the printed matter, letters, completed manuscripts, and 

 note-books which furnish the material for a personal memoir of my father, 

 I have been impressed by the paucity of record of the achievements of an 

 active life extending over the greater part of a century. 



The reason for this is to be found in the character of the life itself, 

 looking rather to accomplishment than to recognition, and seeking to ex- 

 press the sense of an obligation for the privilege of living by doing the 

 work at hand simply and well. 



Of published papers there are but few, — the Transactions of this Acad- 

 emy, of which he was elected a member May 30, 1843, contain none, 

 other journals in the library of the Academy but five, and the records 

 of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers, of which he was one of the 

 founders and its first Secretary, an equally small number. 



Of letters, especially family letters, there are many, all clearly written, 

 containing information as to his travels and treating of the subjects in the 

 study of which he was most interested. 



Of the manuscripts, the majority, in the form of essays, were written 

 after his retirement from active life with the evident purpose of continu- 

 ing a companionship which has, to his son, the value both of a precious 

 memory and a continued inspiration ; the persistency with which this 

 purpose was pursued, under conditions of failing strength and sight, is 

 shown especially in one of them, begun in ink, continued in black and 

 then in blue pencil when the blue mark alone was visible to him, and 

 concluded by sense of touch. 



These essays cover a wide range of scientific subjects and bear witness 

 to an intellectual activity persisting to within the last three years of a 

 life which ended, as gently and as graciously as it had been lived, at the 

 age of ninety 3'ears. Through this life there had run one dominant pur- 

 pose, — that of usefulness; in it there had always been one keen pleasure, 

 — that of scientific research. The note-books, containing many valuable 

 records and memoranda, are the transcripts of a variously active profes- 

 sional life, — one series covers very nearly the whole of the early experi- 

 mental and constructive history of the manufacture of illuminating gas in 

 this country, another is a record of researches in the chemistry of arts 

 and manufacture, and another is devoted to mining, metallurgy, and civil 

 engineering. 



John H. Blake, the youngest son of Thomas and Mary Lowell Bar- 

 nard Blake, was born December 5, 1808, in the house still standing on 



