David Worth Dennis — An Appreciation. 



Alden H. Hadley. 



Read at the Annual Meeting of the Indiana Audubon Society, May 10 

 and 11, 1917. Printed by the request of the Academy of Science. 



When the message came telling me that Dr. Dennis had passed away 

 there came over me an unspeakable feeling of sadness, a sense of personal 

 loss that nothing in this world would assuage or repair. Only two or three 

 weeks before those of us who had attended our State Audubon Society meet- 

 ing at Rushville had been privileged to hear him in one of his characteristic 

 bird talks, which he gave with all his old-time ardor and enthusiasm, before 

 a splendid gathering in the high school building. In the afternoon I had said 

 goodbye, little dreaming that I should see him no more on earth. I had 

 known for a good while that his life was hanging by a slender thread; how 

 slender none of us knew nor dared even guess. Yet during all these days 

 he had gone on cheerfully and undauntedly, giving and taking the best there 

 was in life. And is it not beautifully fitting my friends, that the final sum- 

 mons, which was the beginning of the end, should have come while he was 

 out under the open slcy, in God's great Out of Doors, watching the migrant 

 birds, which he loved so well to do. 



I said a moment ago that my first feeling, on learning of the death of the 

 man we all loved so well, was one of great sadness and loss, but as the hours 

 passed by there gradually came over me a feeling of a different sort; an al- 

 most overwhelming sense of the unspeakable greatness of human life at its 

 best; for as I went back in my mind over the life of David Worth Dennis, 

 so much of it as I myself had known for almost a quarter of a century, a 

 great feeling of exultation came over me and I felt like shouting a loud 

 trumpet note of victory, for his was pre-iminently the triumphant life. 



In attempting to write just a few words in appreciation of Dr. Dennis, 

 no one can realize more than I the difficulty of the task. It is hard to speak 

 worthily and yet with restraint of such a man. His days and his years were 

 so rich and so full and he touched life at so many points. I have tried hard 

 to picture to myself in some sort of Avay the influence of that life as a whole 

 and the more I have tried the more has my mind been baffled in the attempt. 

 Pascal has defined the universe as a sphere whose centre is everywhere and 

 circumference nowhere, and it has occurred to me that in the truest and deep- 

 est sense, and without exaggeration, some such definition as this is applicable 

 to the hfe of Dr. Dennis, in fact to the life of any great loving, throbbing per- 

 sonality that in its journey through the world attempts to "mold things just 

 a little nearer to the heart's desire." 



The thought has often come to me that there are few relationships in 

 life that offer richer opportunities for reward and that open up such far- 



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