cook] FRED L. CHARLES 197 



upon the feeding habits of robins, and especially upon the care 

 of their young, doing, perhaps, as thorough-going a piece of 

 investigation along this line as has ever been made. 



In 1909 he was called to the University of Illinois as Assist- 

 ant Professor of Agricultural Education. He was selected for 

 this particular field because of the aptness that he had shown 

 in arranging lines of work for beginners. He was expected to go 

 into the country and aid rural teachers in starting work in their 

 schools in the Elements of Agriculture. It was also an important 

 part of his duties to meet rural groups in public meetings and 

 discuss with them the methods of introducing subjects into their 

 schools that would bear directly upon the improvement of rural 

 life. He found his life at the University very attractive and 

 entered into it with the greatest zeal. 



He assumed the editorship of The Nature Study Review 

 with the January number, 1910, following the first editor of 

 the magazine, M. A. Bigelow, of New York. It was a duty 

 that devolved upon him as Secretary-Treasurer of the American 

 Nature Study Society, to which position he was elected at the 

 winter meeting in 1909. How well he did his task all its 

 readers know. 



In 1904 he married Miss Elsie Davis and shortly after built 

 the unique cottage that is so easily recognized and that is known 

 in DeKalb as "The Charles House." It bore the marks of his 

 artistic individuality. There his two children were born in 

 1906 and 1908. He was intensely devoted to his wife and his 

 little ones with whom he lived in tenderest intimacy. Nothing 

 could come between him and the inmates of his beautiful home. 



Professor Charles was not a robust man. He was slight 

 of figure, possessed a marked nervous temperament and was 

 extremely sensitive to his physical and social surroundings. He 

 was greatly afflicted with insomnia, from which he suffered for 

 more than twenty years. While very reticent about it, he brooded 

 over it because of its interference with his ambitions and thus 

 added to the evil that he sought to mitigate. In consequence his 

 health was seriously impaired and his spirits correspondingly 

 depressed. The matter was graver in character than' even his 

 most intimate friends or the members of his family appreciated. 

 He died at his home in Urbana on the sixth day of May, 1911. 

 His untimely passing was sorely regretted by his friends every- 

 where. A great career seemed to be opening before him. It is 

 believed that he would have realized it fully if his life had been 



s P ared - John W. Cook. 



