T:'he Days of a Man 1:1906 



soman 

 offer 



It was in accordance with a special request of Mrs. 

 Stanford made before her death that this eminent 

 philosopher with a child's joyous attitude toward 

 every new experience had come to us. 



On the morning of the earthquake I received a 

 letter which at another time might have almost 

 persuaded me to leave Stanford for Washington. It 

 Smith- contained a final offer, through President White in 

 behalf of the Smithsonian Institution, of the secre- 

 taryship, vacant since the death of Langley.^ By 

 virtue of a tacit understanding that biologists and 

 physicists should alternate in the office (held succes- 

 sively by Henry, Baird, and Langley) it had been 

 kept open by the trustees for a number of years in 

 the thought that I might at last see my way to accept 

 it. Until I went to Stanford I had looked forward to 

 one day occupying a position in the Smithsonian or 

 in its outgrowth, the National Museum, as especially 

 congenial to my taste and offering a unique oppor- 

 tunity to help younger naturalists. But I could not 

 think of leaving the University until my work was 

 thoroughly established, certainly not when so much 

 of it lay in ruin; and I therefore requested that I 

 should be no longer considered as a possibility. 

 Other Shortly before, also, I had refused to have my name 

 proposals ^g^^j jj^ couuectiou with the presidency of a well- 

 known Eastern institution, orto permit a direct offer to 

 be made. Still earlier (1898), before Wheeler had been 

 sought, I gave the same answer to a committee from 

 the Board of Regents of the University of California. ^ 

 It being out of the question to carry on academic 

 work in rooms littered with plaster and often blocked 



1 See Vol. I, Chapter xxii, page 568. 



* Mrs. Phoebe Hearst and Judge William T. Wallace. 



n 174 n 



