394 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER 



heart. If the trouble was serious, if his advice or his resources would help, 

 let him know what he could do ; whatever the matter was, be sure of him. 

 The matter proved in no wise serious, and I needed no help at all. This does 

 not alter the gratitude which has glowed ever since that visit. He was one 

 of whom you would always be sure. 



Our last meeting was a happy climax of this constantly strengthening 

 fellowship. You will remember how I was giving some public lectures at 

 Cambridge incidents too frequent there to invite, in general, much alertly 

 cordial interest. At the close of one, you both gave a little tea-party, in my 

 honor. He never seemed brighter, happier, more his marvellous self than 

 he seemed that winter afternoon, telling with his vividness, which no one 

 else could quite equal, some of his experiences in France. In the middle of 

 his narrative something called me away from him. I never saw him again. 

 But the last memory is so like the first that they blend for all their twenty 

 years of separation, big, vital, exuberant in the certainty of their helpful, 

 inspiring humanity of friendship. 



These personal memories of mine are memorable only because what was 

 true of me was equally true of all the younger colleagues whom he welcomed 

 throughout the years of his service to Harvard. Such stories could be told, 

 such sentiments confessed a hundred times over. Without expression of 

 them, without insistence on them as the chief part in one's memory of him 

 as a colleague, the truth of this memory could never be made clear. 



The more obvious phases of this memory are almost a matter of record. 

 He prided himself very justly in punctilious performance of duty. This 

 involved regular attendance at the meetings of the faculty, no matter how 

 slight the business in hand ; and I can remember hardly a single night meet- 

 ing, when he was in Cambridge, from which he was absent. The eagerness 

 of his temper and the alertness of his mind combined to make whatever 

 was the subject of discussion appear for the instant paramount. So he spoke 

 oftener, and with more energy than most of us. This habit, which rather 

 strengthened with the years, involved a somewhat unexpected result. Above 

 the custom of most men he thought aloud concerning whatever problem was 

 before us. His remarks were often rather a statement of his current mental 

 process than an assertion of his deliberate conclusions. Yet, often, I had 

 almost said always, he expressed himself with that concrete precision of 

 momentary finality which was so characteristic. In consequence, particularly 

 during his later years, he sometimes impressed the younger men as not quite 

 stable, as prone to perplexing inconsistency. To understand what this 

 really meant one had not only to know him affectionately, but also to experi- 

 ence that gradual enlightenment which reveals the true office of debate in 

 the Harvard faculty. We are an unwieldy deliberative body with consider- 



