34 Life and Character of Nathaniel Bowditch. 
his evening walk he was again always to be found in the library, 
pursuing the same attractive studies, but ready and glad, at the 
entrance of any visitor, to throw aside his book, unbend his 
mind, and meee in all the so OE of his light-hearted conver- 
sation. 
- There was nothing that he seemed to enjoy more peek this free 
inecelainsa of thought on bjects of common interest. At 
such times the mathematician, the astronomer, the man of sci- 
ence, disappeared, and he presented himself as the frank, easy, 
familiar friend. One could hardly believe that this agreeable, fas- 
cinating companion, who talked so affably and pleasantly on all 
the topics of the day, and joined so heartily in the quiet mirth 
and the loud laugh, could really be the great mathematician who 
had expounded. the mechanism of the heavens, and taken’ his 
place with Newton, and Leibnitz, and La Place, among the great 
ci in exact science. 'To hear him.talk, you would never 
have suspected that he knew any thing aboct science, or cared 
any thing about it.. In this respect he resembled his.great Scot- 
tish contemporary, who has delighted the whole world by his 
writings. You might have visited him in that library from one 
year’s end to another, and yet, if you or some other visitor did 
not introduce the subject, I venture to say, that not one word on .- 
_mathematics would cross his lips. He had no pedantry of any 
kind. Never did I meet with a scientific or literary man so en- 
tirely devoid of all cant and pretension. In conversation he had 
the simplicity and playfulness. and unaffected manners of a child. 
His own remarks “seemed rather to escape from his mind. than 
to be produced. by it.” -He laughed heartily, and rubbed his 
hands, and jumped up, when an observation was made that great-: 
ly pleased him, because it was natural for him so to do, and -he 
had never been schooled into the conventional proprieties of arti- 
ficial life, nor been accustomed to conceal or stifle any of the in- 
nocent impulses of his nature. ae 
Who that once enjoyed the privilege of Yisiting isin 3 in sits li- 
brary, can ever forget the scene? Methinks I see him now, in 
my mind’s eye, the venerable man, sitting there close by his old- 
fashioned blazing wood fire, bending over his favorite little desk, 
3 like one of the old philosophers, with his silvery hair, and 
at heh e, and pene countenance ; whilst 
' : ar 
