212 The U?iiversiiy of Calif or 7iia Magazine. 



every sort of audience, he lifted his charmed hearers up and 

 away into intellectual regions they had never hoped to see or 

 dared to encounter, making the ways seem easy, paths of 

 pleasantness and peace, like a mountaineer who, anxious to 

 get others onto commanding peaks, builds a trail for them, 

 winding hither and thither through the midst of toil-beguiling 

 beauty to summits whence the infinitely varied features of the 

 landscape are seen in one harmony, and all boundaries are 

 transparent and become outlets into celestial space. 



Joseph I^e Conte was not a leader, and he was as far as pos- 

 sible from being what is called "a good fighter, or hater." 

 Anything like a quarrel or hot controversy he instinctively 

 avoided, went serenely on his way, steeping everything in 

 philosophy, overcoming evil with good. His friends were all 

 who knew him, and he had besides the respect of the whole 

 community, hopefully showing that however bad the world 

 may be, it is good enough to recognize a good man. 



In the winter of 1874 or '5 I made the acquaintance of his 

 beloved brother, John. The two with their families were then 

 living together in a queer old house in Oakland, and I spent 

 many pleasant evenings with them. The brothers and John's 

 son Julian were invariably found reading or writing. Joseph, 

 turning down his book, would draw me out on my studies in 

 the Sierra, and we were occasionally joined by John when some 

 interesting question of physics caught his attention, — the car- 

 rying force of water at different velocities, how boulders were 

 shoved or rolled on sea beaches or in river channels, glacial 

 denudation, etc. I noticed that when diflficulties on these 

 and kindred subjects came up Joseph turned to his brother, 

 and always, I think, regarded him intellectually as greater 

 than himself. Once he said to me: "The public don't know 

 my brother for half what he is; only in purely scientific cir- 

 cles is he known. There he is well known and appreciated as 

 one of the greatest physicists in America, He seems to have 

 less vitality than I have, seldom lectures outside of his class- 

 room, cares nothing for popularity: but he is one of the most 



