492 MEMOIR OF DANIEL TEEADTTELL. 



that I might personally have the pleasure of expressing to you my o^n deep sense of the many 



and important services wliich you have rendered to the Academy, and to science and tlie arts, of 



which the younger members of the Academy, now taking our places, can have little conception, 



commencing as they did long before I, a Fellow of thirty years standing, became your associate 



and friend, while to-day the Academy has had pleasant and substantial evidence that, although 



unable to attend its meetings, your interest in its welfare and usefulness is unabated. 



Heartily wishing that it may please the supremely good Providence that orders the lives of 



men to preserve yours still to us, and render your later years happy ones, believe me, my dear 



Mr. Treadwell, very sincerely and faithfully yours, 



Asa Gray, President. 



"When Mr. Treadwell entered upon his duties as Rumford Professor he built for 

 himself on Quincy Street a house, which stands opposite Memorial Hall. Here he lived 

 till 1848, when it was purchased by President Sparks. His second house in Cambridge 

 he built on Concord Avenue, opposite the end of Craigie Street. It is a square house 

 with a hipped roof and sheathed walls, and standing but a little raised above the nat- 

 ural surface of the ground. Here be passed the remainder of his days. It is sur- 

 rounded by an ample garden, aud has a stable; near this were arranged, side by side, 

 the three cannon of his manufocture, given to him by the Steel Cannon Company 

 when it ceased operations. In the vicinity he found much that he desired ; near by 

 are the College Observatory, of which his friend Professor Joseph Winlock was then 

 the Director, and the Botanic Garden, where was another of his warmest friends, Dr. 

 Asa Gray. The country roads along which he so often rode for health and pleasure 

 are easily reached. The College Library is at a short distance, and his College friends 

 within an easy walk. Cambridge in its social aspects offered much that contributed to 

 his comfort. There are in this University town, not only men of science and litera- 

 ture connected with the College, but also others who find here a society congenial 

 with their tastes and habits. His intercourse with these gave him much pleasure. 



Mrs. Treadwell says of her husband : " The years he was about the gun were happy 

 ones with him. In the winter, after a very simple breakfast, he left home for the Mill 

 Dam about eight o'clock, with all the glee of a schoolboy, with his lunch and a bottle of 

 tea, and did not return till quite dark. In the evening he liked a game of Avhist, and 

 was always glad when a friend came in for a rubber. I do not think the non-adoption 

 of the gun by the Government, after the first disappointment was over, depressed him 

 so very much ; it certainly did not prevent his enjoyment of things abroad. But he 

 alwaj^s had a feeling that the gun would ultimately succeed, in one form or another, 

 aud through his invention." 



That he had such hope the following dedication on the fly-leaf of his paper on the 

 Hooped Cannon fully indicates : " ' Transported me beyond this ignorant present.' . . . 



