CHAPTER XVII 



PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND HABITS: A RETROSPECT 



Personal Appearance Mode of Life Usual Occupations and Recreations 

 Continuous Ill-Health. 



NOW that we have followed this long and honorable 

 career from the nursery to the grave, an attempt 

 must be made to draw a portrait, so that in future years 

 those who ask how such a man appeared and what were 

 his daily occupations may to some extent at least be 

 gratified.* 



Dana was slender and not tall perhaps five feet nine 

 inches in height. All his motions were quick and nervous. 

 He gave the impression of incessant energy, forced some- 

 times to rest, but bounding back to his work as a ball re- 

 bounds from the wall which has interrupted its progress. 

 His eyes were deep blue, and his hair, light brown in 

 early life, was in old age abundant gray. His face was 

 bright and benignant, and he always had a friendly smile 

 for those who came to see him. His ways were simple 

 and direct, as if he had no time to waste in ceremony, 

 and his letters, in later life, were brief and pointed, yet 



* Two likenesses are given in this volume, one of them the copy of a 

 portrait painted by Daniel Huntington of New York, in May, 1857, when 

 Dana was invited to sit as one of a group of scientific men interested in the 

 laying of the first Atlantic cable ; the other, a reproduction of the very 

 latest photograph, taken in 1895. Each in its way is satisfactory. The 

 resemblance of Dana's face to that of Schiller, as it is represented in a well- 

 known engraving, has sometimes been noticed. There is a bas-relief like- 

 ness in the Yale collections. 



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