HIS EXTRA-PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS 105 



lectures. For example, the Indianapolis Daily Sentinel 

 declared, "(The subject) was presented in such a pleasing 

 and attractive form, and the facts, the experiments, and 

 the analogies from which his conclusions were drawn 

 were stated so clearly and clothed so beautifully that it 

 seemed to the hearer rather like the fanciful description 

 of the poet than the details of experimental philosophy". 

 The Cleveland Plain Dealer thus expressed its praise: 

 "(His theme) was treated with a mastery of facts, an 

 array of historical data, and a thoroughness and com- 

 pleteness of detail and all with a clearness, vigor, and 

 force of language highly instructive and deeply and 

 powerfully interesting. Without any of the graces of 

 oratory, or the beauties and effects of elocution, without 

 even the charms of an agreeable delivery. Lieutenant 

 Maury invested his subject with a degree of interest and 

 power of attraction that was such as to challenge the 

 admiration and rivet the attention of his auditors from 

 the opening to the close". The tour was evidently a 

 great success, but the exposure to the wintry storms so 

 damaged Maury's health as to bring on an attack of 

 rheumatic gout on his return home, a disease from which 

 he continued to suffer off and on until his death fifteen 

 years later. 



The following autumn, however, he was lecturing 

 again, this time in Alabama and Tennessee. While in 

 Nashville to address the State Agricultural Bureau, he 

 was invited by the Tennessee Historical Society to de- 

 liver in the Hall of the House of Representatives of the 

 Capitol his lecture on "The Geography of the Sea". 

 This was on October 12, 1859, and on the following day 

 Maury visited the House while in session and was wel- 

 comed by Speaker Whitthorne in the high-flown language 



