DISCOURSE OF DR. .1. C. WELLING. 1!).". 



his plans. He rehearsed to them his scientific experiments. lie 

 reported to them the record of each day's adventures. He read 

 with them his favorite authors.* He entered with a gleeful spirit 

 into all their joys; with a sympathetic heart into all their sorrows. 

 Ami while thus faithful to the charities of home he Mas intensely 

 loyal to his friends, and found in their society the very cordial of 

 life. Gracious to all, he grappled some of them to his heart with 

 hooks of steel. The friendship, fed by a kindred love of elegant 

 letters, which still lends its mellow lustre to the names of Cicero 

 and Atticus, was not more beautiful than the friendship, fed by 

 kindred talents, kindred virtues, and kindred pursuits, which so 

 long united the late Dr. Bache and Professor Henry in the bonds 

 of a sacred brotherhood. And this was hut one of the many similar 

 intimacies which came to embellish his long and useful career. 



His sense of honor was delicate in the extreme. It was not onlv 

 that "chastity of honor which feels a stain like a wound," but at 

 the very suggestion of a stain it recoiled as instantly as the index 

 finger of Mr. Edison's tasimeter at the "suspicion" of heat. 1 

 met him in 1S47, when, soon after his election as Secretary of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, he hail just been chosen to succeed Dr. 

 Hare as Professor of Chemistry in the Medical Department of the 

 University of Pennsylvania, at a salary double that which he was 

 to receive in Washington, and with half the year open to free 

 scientific investigation, because free from professional duties. It 

 was, he -aid, the post which, of all others, he could have desiderated 

 at that epoch in his scientific life, hut his honor, he added, forbade 

 him to entertain, for a moment, the proposition of accepting it after 



* Tin- following extract from a diary, kepi by o f his daughters, is descriptive 



of his habits under this he: id: "Had father with us all the evening. I modelled his 

 profile in clay while he read Thomson's Seasons to us. In the earlier part of the 



evening he seemed restless and depressed, but the influeni t the poet drove away 



the cloud, and then an expression of almost childlike sweetness rested on his lips, 

 singularly in contrast yet beautifullj in harmony with the intellect of the brow 

 abi ive." 



or take tliis extract from the same diary: "We were all up until a late hour, 

 reading poetry with tat her and mother, father being the reader. He attempted Cow- 

 per's Grave, by Mrs. Browning, hut was too tender-hearted to finish the reading of 

 it. We then laughed over the Address to the Mummy, soared to heaven with Shel- 

 ley's skylark, roamed the forest with Bryant, culled flowers from other poetical 

 held-, ami ended with Tain O'Shanter. I look for my task to recite a part or the 

 latter from memory, while father corrected, as if he were 'playing schoolmaster.'" 

 t:i 



