PROFESSOR WENDELL'S MEMORIES 393 



any one else. My own experience can hardly have been exceptional. It was 

 in 1884, I think, that, most unexpectedly to myself, they gave me an in- 

 structorship without limit of time. This made me a member of the College 

 faculty a body of which, until that time, my impressions had been the not 

 completely cordial ones prevalent among the students of thirty years ago. 

 I shall never forget the immense contrast of two consequent greetings. 

 One of our elder members, with whom I had long had some manner of ac- 

 quaintance, expressed the candid opinion that although I had now a right 

 to attend faculty-meetings it was highly improbable that they would have 

 any interest for me. Professor Shaler, whom I had never really known before, 

 and whom I supposed hardly to have known me even by name, came straight 

 toward me, the moment he first caught sight of me. He held out his hand, 

 with his own wonderful heartiness, and said some word of his gladness 

 that I was "one of us." It was almost, if not quite, the next Sunday when 

 you both welcomed me to your house, and when we had the pleasure of meet- 

 ing you for the first time. I was not yet thirty years old. The self-distrust 

 which has beset me all my life was at its strongest. What such a welcome 

 meant, at such a moment, it is hard to tell. The true encouragement of it 

 sank deep lasts still, stronger than ever now that the friendship which 

 thus began has passed into the ideal security of almost cloudless memory. 



If I had written cloudless alone, I should not have been quite true to the 

 full humanity of its breezy vitality. There rises another memory of a few 

 years later when in some discussion, the facts of which I have forgotten, 

 we found ourselves at variance and each expressed his own opinions with 

 somewhat unparliamentary freedom from reserve. At the end of the meeting 

 where this incident occurred, he looked angry, and I felt so. What is more, 

 I felt so for two or three weeks. Then, one day, his face broke into a smile 

 and he held out his hand again : " Wendell," he said, if I remember the words, 

 "my head used to be as red as yours." After that, the friendship on my 

 side stayed more delightful than ever, through the years that have grizzled 

 my beard into something far less fiery than his was then. There were mo- 

 ments when each of us failed to sympathize with the other ; but they passed 

 as swiftly as clouds that are only to make the sunsnine warmer. There 

 was never a moment when I could doubt for an instant that we could always 

 understand each other ; nor yet that if any need for friendship should arise, 

 there was no living man to whom I would turn more confidently than to him. 



Once, I remember, he found me somewhere in a state of obvious depres- 

 sion, and asked what the matter was, in a manner that might have seemed 

 almost blunt if it had not been so obviously kind. "Bills," I told him can- 

 didly. For the moment he said nothing. A day or two later he came to me 

 with a sympathy fraternal or paternal, if you prefer in its fulness of 



