90 McGEE MEMORIAL MEETING 



Between editor and contributors of scientific publications there is 

 ample opportunity for friction and I well remember the courteous care 

 with which he made his various suggestions. 



Doctor McGee was one of a type of men whom there seems to be 

 a tendency to crowd out now, but to whom geology owes a very great 

 debt, men who without conventional academic training have brought 

 to their work the innate ability and the keen interest which surmounts 

 the obstacles that are thought to come from an early training in other 

 directions. 



I am very glad that there is to be a meeting in commemoration of 

 Doctor McGee to call to the attention of geologists the duty which 

 they owe to the class of men represented by him, as well as by Sorby 

 and Walcott, and I am sure, too, that such a meeting, inspired by his 

 example, would impress upon us the importance of the duties we owe, 

 as men of science, not merely to science, but to the commonwealths of 

 which we are members. 



From Miss Emma R. McGee, of Farley, Iowa: 



In a quaint old farmhouse, in the lovely State of Iowa, near the 

 City of Dubuque, in the county of the same name, there is a library 

 containing many old volumes, some of which came over the Atlantic 

 Ocean over seventy years ago. Among others is the Good Book, 

 sacred not only on account of it being that of Holy Writ, but of its 

 Family Record in the autographs of the departed, whose forms and 

 faces are seen only in dreamland. The fourth birthdate of the eight 

 children born to James and Martha Ann Anderson McGee is this one: 

 "William John McGee, born April 17, 1853, at Farley, Iowa." The 

 writer has not yet acquired heart courage to make the record which 

 should be in this old book, viz: "Died at Washington, D. C., Septem- 

 ber 4, 1912." He was never christened, as mother was a Baptist and 

 the tenets of her church did not allow infant baptism. For some 

 reason the appellation "Don" was given him when a small child, and 

 he was ever afterwards "Don" to his family, schoolmates, and friends. 

 Don was a very sickly, delicate child. Mother often related how she 

 carried him in her arms almost night and day the first years of his 

 life. The attending physician told her he had a Daniel Webster 



