DAVID WORTH DENNIS AN APPRECIATION. 67 



a Columbia. The same method of making choices had guided me earlier in 

 my life. I had been in attendance at Spieeland Academy for one term. I 

 heard that Spieeland Academy was 'as good as Earlham College;' as soon 

 thereafter as possible I entered Earlham College. When there I chose largely 

 the classics; they were difficult, but I noticed that the best students were in 

 those classes. That was enough for me." 



As to other work and experiences while at college he says: "I took all 

 the sciences that were offered. I found that science awakened interest; 

 classics awakened my mind." 



His faith in the conclusions reached by scientific research is indicated 

 by the following prediction which he records, after having spoken of Mendel's 

 discoveries embodied in the well-known Mendel's law. This is his prediction: 



"By 1950 we shall be on the way to health, sanity and happiness because 

 his law, (Mendel's) will have taught us how to breed these things into the 

 human race." 



If the task I have were primarily biographical in its nature I should be 

 under obligation to report many facts which under the circumstances, need 

 not be recorded. It is, to be sure, of interest to us to knoAv that he was born 

 just as the la^t century was being half completed; and it would be of even 

 greater interests to us here to know the different stages by which he secured 

 his education, the positions of trust and honor which he held, the number and 

 titles of his published works, and such like data Avhich make up a record from 

 one standpoint of his life's achievements. These matters, however, important 

 though they are, I must leave for some one else to care for, to be presented 

 in another way. I have merely attempted to saj^ that we loAed him, that we 

 now do honor to his memory, and to show some of the reasons for his being 

 a man whose influence has gone out so widely in such a beneficent way. 



One other phase of his life's work should be mentioned, his distinctly 

 religious work. He was throughout his life a member of the Friends Cluirch, 

 and for j'ears a minister in that denomination. His religious work was not, 

 however, so far as he was concerned, separated from the other activities of 

 his life. He was accustomed to say that he could never draw the line between 

 teaching and preaching. "Those who hear my lectures." he once said, "tell 

 me that I am preaching; and some of those who listen to my sermons say 

 that I have been lecturing; and I suppose they are both right." One of his 

 associates in the work of teaching and preaching has said this of him and his 

 work: 



"Many who were anxious and fearful concerning the innovation of 

 scientific truth and theory upon the old established order of things, have 

 been comforted and reassured b,y his interpretation of modern thought and 

 ancient beliefs. He had been all his life a diligent reader of the Bible and at 

 the same time an enthusiastic student and observer of nature. That he could 

 solve all difficulties that arose between the old and the new, he did not imagine 

 or claim; but he did one thing of inestimable worth — he maintained with 



