WILLIAM THOMPSON SEDGWICK 259 



Council of Massachusetts from its inception. He was a trustee 

 of Simmons College from its foundation in 1899. He was 

 chairman of the Pauper Institutions' Trustees of the city of 

 Boston in 1897-1899. He was a leading figure in the fight for 

 Civil Service Reform, president of the Boston Civil Service 

 Reform Association in 1900, and of the State Association in 

 1901. Finally, as curator of the Lowell Institute since 1897 

 he became perhaps more widely known to the citizens of Boston 

 than in any other capacity. He did not confine himself to the 

 abstract task of securing for Boston contracts with the most 

 brilliant teachers of American and European thought; he was 

 almost nightly on hand to act as a personal host and to give the 

 problems of heating and lighting and ventilation an individual 

 attention which made Huntington Hall famous throughout the 

 country. 



In all these works of public service Sedgwick was unwearied, 

 until the very day and hour of his death (January 25, 1921). 

 On Saturday he gave a dinner to some thirty of his colleagues 

 and pupils in honor of a former student who was going abroad 

 on a public health mission, and never was he more at his best 

 in wisdom and courage and enthusiasm. On Monday he was 

 at his office as usual; the writer will always cherish as one of his 

 most precious possessions a long letter written on this day, 

 about a projected journey, full of the sound counsel and the 

 detailed practical advice which ''The Chief" always found time 

 to give to his old students. On Tuesday evening he attended a 

 meeting in the interest of a plan for the formation of a state 

 university, walked home enjoying the keen, frosty air of the 

 Boston winter and on his arrival, after a word of cheer to Mrs. 

 Sedgwick, succumbed in a moment to an attack of an affection 

 of the heart which had for j^ears threatened but never shadowed 

 his life. He died without regaining consciousness, a "Happy 

 Warrior" in the fight against ignorance and suffering and disease. 



Sedgwick was a pioneer in American science and a zealous 

 public servant; but it was as a teacher that he stood supreme. On 

 the lecture platform, as in the intimacy of his laboratory, he had 

 the gift, as rare as it is beneficent, of seizing the imagination, 



