47 



was, "Live and let live." Hence his workmen were often 

 overpaid — paid more than the stipulated wages, and his 

 favors to you would be larger, if the chance permitted, 

 than yours toward him. His purse was at the mercy of 

 the benevolence beggar. Public spirited, he contributed 

 to everything, and often more than he could afford. 



Like Louis Agassiz, he never had time to make money, 

 though he might have been one of the richest of^^men. 

 Twenty years ago, as he told me himself, he resisted the 

 most tempting offers to act as a mining expert — offers 

 which, as subsequent events proved, would have rolled 

 between one and two millions of dollars into his posses- 

 sion. By his drill he discovered those white clay deposits 

 about Amboy and Woodbridge, which raised the land 

 over them from one hundred dollars to several thousands 

 an acre ; yet his freedom from covetousness kept him 

 from taking advantage of his knowledge to purchase a 

 single acre of the unsophisticated and unsuspecting 

 owners thereof. A critic once said of him, with a touch 

 of envy, " Doctor Cook is the recipient of three^salaries — 

 one from the College, as professor; a second from the 

 State, as geologist ; and a third from the Agricultural 

 Experiment Station, as director." Well, my friends, I 

 wish he had received six instead of three, for he managed 

 to distribute those salaries so liberally as to have little left 

 for himself. From no good cause did he hold anything 

 back, either gifts, time, talents, energies, or life itself. 

 With arduous labors he wore himself out, and passed 

 beyond the veil at an age when his eye ought yet to have 

 been undimmed and his natural force unabated. 



How could all these qualities fail to render our col- 

 league a magnet, drawing us to himself for safest counsel 

 and in the sweetest amenities of friendship ? In many a 

 dark and anxious hour he was for us the lighthouse on 

 the cliff, and now, since death has quenched the lamp 



