THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY 87 



One might linger long over many of these lives whose interests 

 were so remote from thought of the commercial gains their un- 

 selfish work made possible. But there are other compensations, 

 and there are men here today who are aware that there is no 

 earthly pleasure more supreme than to find disclosed some secret 

 of nature unknown before, save to Him who set in motion the 

 complex mechanism of the universe. 



The later life of the merchant and the lawyer loses vitality of 

 normal interest as age comes on; not so the man of science. The 

 eternal love of nature is his — a mistress of unfading charm. 



I remember once that, at my table, someone asked that ever 

 happy naturalist, Joseph Leidy, if he were never tired of life. 

 ' Tired! ", he said, " Not so long as there is an undescribed in- 

 testinal worm, or the riddle of a fossil bone, or a rhizopod new 

 tome." (Laughter.) 



My first remembrance of an Academy meeting is of 1866. We 

 met in a Smithsonian room. There were not more than fifteen 

 present. Professor Henry was in the Chair. 



I remember Benjamin Peirce, Wolcott Gibbs and Gould. 

 Agassiz sat on one side of me, and on the other Coffin. It was 

 all very informal. The first scientific paper was by Professor 

 Peirce, who for twenty minutes occupied us with algebraic 

 formulas and mathematical figures, until he turned and said that 

 he had got out of the region of material illustration, and so led 

 us on through the endless equations in which I had lost myself 

 at the very outset. 



Agassiz turned to me at the close and said, " Were you able to 

 follow him? " I said, " No; I can not do a sum in the Rule of 

 Three without trying it over two or three times." Upon which 

 the delighted naturalist added, " Ni moi non plus." Professor 

 Coffin remarked, " He was traveling with Seven-league Boots 

 over a country across which I should have to crawl." 



Some of this was quite audible to Peirce, who said that the 

 only thing required was more careful attention than men were 

 willing to give to the great science of mathematics, and that our 

 incapacity to understand and follow him was due to our want of 

 proper education. 



