18 McGEE MEMORIAL MEETING 



characteristics of the man stand out prominently among many others: 

 his indomitable energy and capacity for work; his unbounded gener- 

 osity in its widest sense; his kindliness of spirit; and his helpfulness, 

 especially to younger men. 



McGee's energy and capacity for work are well known to all who 

 knew him. Time and again I have known him overwhelmed with 

 duties of many kinds, but never the time when he was not ready and 

 willing to take on another burden. His energy was stupendous, and 

 his physical endurance for many years such that, day in and day out, 

 for weeks and months together, he would labor from early morning 

 until well after midnight and yet without the staling of his mental 

 or physical vitality. Of his versatility others have spoken. McGee 

 was interested in everything under the sun worthy of his interest, 

 whether politics, religion, hydrography; the origin of mathematics (a 

 subject in which he was particularly interested and for a thesis on 

 which he was accorded his doctorate) ; geology; economics; mechanics, 

 his knowledge of which had its inception at the forge; the play of men 

 and animals; the beginnings of primitive and social institutions; pre- 

 historic surgery indeed there was almost no phase of the science of 

 man to which he did not devote some serious attention or contribute 

 from the sum of his knowledge. 



McGee's unlimited generosity is known to all. It would require 

 many times the brief period allotted me to recount half the generous 

 acts that chanced to come under my personal observation. He was 

 the first and the last resource for all classes of hangers-on as well as 

 for those who were not habitual parasites cowboys and Indians down 

 on their luck, decayed scholars, and many others who, knowing that 

 McGee had never learned the first lesson of refusal, found in his 

 means, limited though they were, a perennial fountain of pecuniary 

 blessings. I never knew an appeal to McGee for aid, of whatever 

 nature, to pass unheeded, and we are all pretty well aware of what 

 his worldly resources were. 



But it was not alone his generosity in such directions, but his en- 

 thusiasm, the inspiring influence of his personality, his energy and 

 capacity, of which all of his associates imbibed and from which they 

 have become the direct beneficiaries. It was impossible for one of 



