86 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



SPEECH OF DR. SILAS WEIR MITCHELL 



DR. MITCHELL: Mr. President, Mr. Vice-President, my 

 Brothers of the Academy: I am, I presume, the victim of the 

 after-dinner hour, as usual, and am well aware of the treachery 

 of the tongue, and much prefer the loyalty of the pen. I have, 

 therefore, deliberately put on paper that which I want to say to 

 you tonight, feeling that it will be much more probable that I 

 shall interest you than if I trusted to my unassisted words. 



I am, I presume, indebted to the liberal forbearance of time 

 for the honor of being asked to speak to you this evening. It 

 does not find me in the careless mood of after-dinner gaiety, nor 

 is it possible to escape altogether from personal remembrances, 

 which elsewhere than at this friendly board might entitle me to 

 be relegated to what Disraeli called the " fatal time of an- 

 ecdotage." 



My diploma is dated August 25, 1865, three years after our 

 foundation. It is signed by Dallas Bache, Wolcott Gibbs and 

 Louis Agassiz. Since then, one hundred and thirty-six of our 

 fellowship have come and died, with an average duration of 

 academic life of more than eighteen and a half years — very many 

 with far less. This makes clear that in those earlier years our 

 additions were of men older than those we elect now. 



At present the liberal endowment of research opens the way 

 to distinction for younger men, unembarrassed by the time- 

 killing need to preach science as well as to practice it. 



Between the mere words of our record — elected — deceased — 

 you, who are familiar with our history, may read much that is 

 written clear on the roll of scientific achievement. 



Here are they to whom, from the depths of space, were whis- 

 pered in the night watches its long hidden secrets. There, too, 

 are those who, in the silence of the laboratory, rejoiced in the 

 fertile marriage of the elements, or they who, like confessors, 

 heard from dead bones or rock or flower the immeasurable his- 

 tory of the silent ages of earth. 



