DAVID WORTH DENNIS— AN APPRECIATION. 65 



in winter time. The program for one day with snows less deep then in New 

 England was about as follows: Up at 4:30 a. m. in a room without fire; 

 faces washed out of doors; breakfast by candle-light or lamp light; milking 

 or preparing wood for fires, then to district school a niile away. In the eve- 

 ning, after supper, study for an hour; apples, cider, nuts; "speaking pieces" 

 from the lower steps of the stairway; game of blind man's buff; prayers; 

 to bed at nine o'clock. Such experiences have the making of sterling character 

 in them provided they come to such as have the heredity, the oversight, and 

 the companionship to make use of them. Professor Dennis had all these 

 three, and his close contact Avith nature begun thus with the beginning of 

 his life, was never broken. On the contrary, though in later life he of necessity 

 spent much time in the cities, and in the school-room, he found companion- 

 ship with nature wherever he might be. His class rooms were with him labor- 

 atories, his city home was surrounded with trees and birds; a visit to Panama, 

 to Europe or to Arizona, meant out door life in large measure, and mountain 

 climbing wherever mountains could be found. 



And he, too, "walked with Henslow." No one, probably, can tell how 

 many different names would, all told, have to be used in place of "Henslow" 

 if the names of all the men of enthusiasm were to be recounted with whom 

 Professor Dennis walked as a companion. Wherever he went he was drawn 

 to men of insight, of initiative, of great ideas. One can hardly make a mistake, 

 however, if one should name an early college teacher as among the first and 

 greatest to kindle this easily kindled soul. He has, I am sure, in the presence 

 of many here paid tribute to Joseph Moore and borne testimony to the 

 inspiring, stimulating influence which came to him as he took up at Earlham 

 College the studies which opened for him the way to his life work as a teacher. 

 Through Joseph Moore, David Worth Dennis became an intellectual and 

 a spiritual descendant of the great Louis Agassiz. Professor Moore had re- 

 ceived from Agassiz that quickening of which Professor Corson spoke in the 

 quotation already given; he had been introduced to that sympathetic relation- 

 ship with not only the animal kingdom but with all created things, inanimate 

 as well as animate, until he felt that even the specimens of rock by the road- 

 side are sacred because they are so really the work of God. Professor Dennis 

 could and did receive from Professor Moore in large measure this prophetic 

 spirit, this reverence for truth which came from the great personality of Agassiz. 

 And this touch of enthusiasm and inspiration and revelation came to add its 

 perfecting, vivifying influence to the power of heredity and to the effect 

 of a life which was open to the voices of nature, making thus complete the 

 conditions for the production of the truly great man who lived among us 

 so long, giving to us all so freely of the richness which he was constantly 

 able to draw from the daily experiences of life. 



As in the case of all men whose greatest power is found in their ability to 

 stimulate, to quicken, and to inspire, great difficulty is encountered when an 

 attempt is made to interpret Professor Dennis to those who never knew him. 



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