74 PROCEEDINGS OF THE INDIANA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



for his whole life was one of service. It was characteristie of the man that 

 he never lost interest in his students, even though they were long gone out 

 from his classes, and there are large numbers of men and women throughout 

 the length and breadth ofourland now filling positions of trust and importance, 

 who owe such situations to his kindly interest and spirit of helpfulness. 

 This same spirit found expression in many other channels. He was intensely 

 interested in the efforts of science to alleviate human suffering and in its 

 heroic fight against disease. Consequently in his lectures we heard much 

 about Louis Pasteur and others of that group of men who have done so much 

 to lessen the sum total of human misery. Just prior to his death he was 

 actively engaged in an anti-tuberculosis movement in his own community, 

 and he was not only championing this cause by spoken word but by financial 

 support. 



I have said little or nothing in regard to the formal or official relation- 

 ships he bore to various organizations and institutions. This no doubt 

 has been done or will be done elsewhere, for it has been my sole purpose to 

 endeavor to give you a personal appreciation of the man as I knew him. I 

 know he took great interest and dehght in the welfare and work of our In- 

 diana Audubon Society of which he had been an officer ever since its organi- 

 zation in 1898. He was president of the society in 1912-13. And now 

 my friends I bring you just one other glimpse of the man whom we are 

 remembering today. 



One April day, not long ago. there came to my notice a common enough 

 little incident or rather a simple little drama that went straight to the heart 

 of nature and of life. In an upland field a man was plowing, and following 

 him were a lad of four and a maid of seven. It was one of those glorious 

 spring days when all nature seemed to be springing into newness of life. A 

 soft haze lay on the horizon. From out the near-by woods came the inter- 

 mittent calls and rapping of Avood-peckers and the songs of blue-bird and 

 robins. And up from some neighboring ponds and swales came the musical 

 piping of the hylas. A brown thrush was singing in a haw-thicket. To the 

 ))oy and the girl just released for this spring-time holiday all nature seemed 

 to l)e Hinging out her eternal challenge and invitation. All the wistful 

 wonder of t^lie world seemed mirrored in their eager ecstatic faces. Now 

 it was a wild-Hower with which they came swiftly running to their father, 

 now a great swelhng, showy, opening bud of the horse-chestnut, now a curious 

 pebble or a quill dropped from a flicker's wing. All these simple elemental 

 things brought them a joy and a delight that knew no bounds. Now here I 

 thought is the secret of perennial youth to keep untarnished this child-like 

 wonder and delight in these common elemental things of earth. I speak 

 without exaggeration when 1 say that more than any one I have ever known 

 David Worth Dennis has kept alive, all through the years, this keen and 

 simple and almost childlike love and wonder for the common every day 

 things of God's great Out of Doors. A ])ird-song, a wild-flower, a rare fern 



