BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 47 



"A new name to me was the Loggia. These are rooms which 

 are open on the side to the fresh air where dangerous opera- 

 tions may be carried on or reactions which give off deleterious 

 gases. There were several of these rooms. The space allotted 

 for each student is small, and necessarily requires that only 

 one operation be carried on at once. The number of water- 

 baths, drying-ovens, combination-furnaces, is extremely limited, 

 and it would seem that the students must wait their turns, a 

 slow and time- wasting process, but impossible to be avoided. 

 Closed tubes are used for combustions. 



"The laboratory looked like a place, a home, which had 

 not the personal supervision of a head. I see where my weak 

 points are, and what is necessary for me to do to fortify my- 

 self by study. The beginners are made to work on some in- 

 organic compound first for qualitative study; then they are 

 hurried to organic chemistry. It is the worship of the benzole 

 ring. The assistant told me that it was all he cared for. Tie- 

 mann, the one who has synthetically made vanillin, was absent. 



"Hofmann's study in his house is quite a large room con- 

 taining family portraits. Over his desk is a marble female 

 bust. The furniture is black and gold, sofas and chairs cov- 

 ered with green. The carpet looks like chinchilla, a velvet one. 

 The chemical lecture-room of the university (Hofmann's) is 

 where the chemical society usually meets. I was present on the 

 opening night, October 10. . . . 



"Hofmann must be a most brilliant lecturer. I cannot help 

 feeling that the centuries of cultivation, and the early univer- 

 sity training, have established these men on a plane which we 

 cannot yet quite approach. The absolute familiarity and rec- 

 ognized mastery of the subject on the part of these men is what 

 the student would most profit by." 



She gives a brief account of an evening spent at the Session 

 of the Berlin Chemical Society, which she thought most inter- 

 esting : 



"Liebermann took me. It was not a very large attendance. 

 Hofmann presided. On his left sat Pinner; on the right Lieber- 

 mann. A notice of a defunct member was read, then Hofmann 

 introduced me to the members present by a very pleasant little 



