80 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
educational fields. For the reason of 
emphasis, it must be limited to those 
initial moments of preparation within 
the walls of the Arsenal in Central Park, 
and must recall the first personal impres- 
sions of a man who imbedded, as it were, 
his life and talent in this institution; 
it will revive the memory of an intimacy 
as it first began, under circumstances 
half humorous and half serious, in an 
environment that gathers from a remi- 
niscent affection for it, a charm both 
whimsical and sad. 
The Arsenal is externally to-day the 
same picturesque structure as it was 
then — the confession of what then 
implies need not be too curiously asked— 
but it has, I understand, undergone 
extensive renovation and I trust that 
that antique atmosphere which once 
assailed the visitor, has been modernized 
or banished. In spite of their remote ele- 
vation the top rooms of the old Arsenal 
were the most cheerful parts of the an- 
cient building, almost the most interest- 
ing, for there was the library from Dr. 
John C. Jay (with which came to the 
Museum his celebrated and _ historic 
collection of shells); there was Dr. 
Draper and his whirling, rotating, auto- 
matic meteorological recorders, and there 
too, an amazing southern colonel, Dr. 
Draper’s assistant, whose smooth loqua- 
city always gained a fine dignity by e 
slight — O! very slight — admixture of 
Vergilian phrases. As for instance, when 
he descended those abominably steep 
winding stairs that led up to the attic 
eyrie, he muttered, “Facilis descensus 
Avernt”” and when he painfully, under 
excruciating protest of rheumatism, 
climbed them he less contentedly ex- 
claimed, “ Hie labor, hoc opus est.’’ There 
too, after you had crossed a dim room, 
piled with boxes and desolate with dust, 
you found in a tower apartment, almost 
cheerful in its half comfortable seclusion, 
the Professor; found him, as I found 
him, studying plans, drawing forecasts, 
calculating possibilities for the great new 
structure that was growing in Manhat- 
tan Square at Seventy-seventh Street 
and Eighth Avenue, itself a new fact 
in the steady civilizing process of the 
city northward. 
My very first impression of Professor 
Bickmore, studying him with a keen 
sensitiveness to outward signs, was of 
admiration for his verbal facility. Al- 
most instantly he plunged headlong into: 
that incessant preoccupation of his mind, 
the new Museum building, its future, its 
uses, bow it should develop, how it 
would feed school, college and university, 
how it must rise to the occasion of its 
new responsibilities illustrating to zodl- 
ogist, botanist, geologist and engineer 
the vital facts of their prefessions, how 
to the plain man it would be a page of 
revealing wonders, to the artist a new 
incentive for his creative or copying in- 
dustry, how it should become focal in 
relation to all the scientific activities of 
the city, how pride in it would gather to 
its support financial adequacy and how 
it would expand commensurately with 
the new continent’s metropolis, until it 
outrivaled — so it seemed to me — the 
collective shows of all the world. 
Of course it quite took my breath 
away, and hopelessly incompetent to 
stem the flow of this splendid prophecy 
[Is it not to-day being fulfilled?], I sug- 
gested that he look at my letters. They 
were reassuringly signed by Egleston, 
Chandler and Newberry; the Professor 
did look at them, read them attentively, 
and actually became contemplative and 
silent. An instant later, almost eagerly, 
he invited me to luncheon. I have 
always felt that, coming from the School 
of Mines at Columbia, my application 
struck him favorably as significant of 
the approaching capitulation of that 
