ADDRESS OF PROF. A. GRAY. Ill 



life ardor for discovery and pure love of knowledge were unattended 

 l>v corresponding eagerness for publication. At the close ol that 

 very year, 1832, however, he did announce the drawing of a spark 

 from a magnet, that first fact in magneto-electricity, and, as he 

 supposed, a new one. But he had been anticipated. 



In May, 1830, Professor Henry married Harriet L. Alex- 

 ander, of Schenectady, New York, who, with three daughters, 

 survives. Two earlier children died in infancy, and a son in early 

 manhood. 



Plea-ant in most respects as his situation at Albany was, it was 

 not an unwelcome invitation which, in the summer of 1832, it 

 became the duty and the privilege of the most venerable of our num- 

 ber, then vice-president of the College of New Jersey, to give to 

 Professor Henry, offering him the chair of Natural Philosophy at 

 Princeton. Bv this early call that college secured him for her own 

 during the years most prolific for science. It was on a later occasion 

 that Sir David Brewster wrote: "The mantle of Franklin 

 has fallen upon the shoulders of Henry." But the aureole was 

 already visible to his fellow-workers in science; and Silliman, 

 Renwick, and Turkey urged his acceptance of the new position, 

 and congratulated Princeton upon the acquisition. 



The professorship came to him unsought. In his last address to 

 one of the learned societies over wl i ich he presided , Pn 'ft ssi >r II i : x i : y 

 mentions that the various offices of honor and responsibility which 

 he then held, nine in number, had all been pressed upon him; that 

 he never occupied a position for which he had of his own will and 

 action been made a candidate. It did not occur to him at that 

 moment to make one exception. When a pupil in Albany Academy 

 he once offered himself as a teacher of a country district school. 

 The school trustees thought him too young, but took him on trial 

 at eight dollars a month. At the beginning of the second month 

 they raised his pay to fifteen. 



