NOTES ON TRAVEL 285 



told his memories of the early days, and the meeting 

 closed with the benediction. It was necessarily a short 

 ceremony, for the shade of the buildings receding as the 

 sun rose higher, the heat would soon have been unbear- 

 able ; but it was indeed a great experience. 



There was still on the hospitable programme an 

 excursion to Galveston, the scene of the great tidal- 

 wave disaster ten years before, with " a shore supper." 

 Interesting, however, as that excursion might have been, 

 the Ramsays were now due at Baltimore, and that night 

 they started northwards, breaking the journey at New 

 Orleans for a few hours. 



At Baltimore they stayed with Ramsay's old friend, 

 Dr. Ira Remson, the Principal of Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity, and Ramsay was at once surrounded by old 

 students, old assistants and colleagues, and friends. 

 They again missed meeting Dr. Woodrow Wilson, though 

 they met Mrs. Wilson and her daughter. The univer- 

 sity conferred on Ramsay the degree of Doctor of Science, 

 and a more informal ceremony of the kind surely never 

 took place. A special University Court had been sum- 

 moned, but, being vacation time, many of the members 

 were away, and the audience consisted mostly of old 

 friends and a certain number of new ones. Everything 

 was quite formal and academic till the capping was 

 over, but then the speeches of the Principal and of the 

 new alumnus were so full of old stories of their young 

 days at the German university, when Remson " opened 

 the door " for Ramsay into the world of chemistry, that 



