DANIEL COIT OILMAN, LL.D. hvii 



degree not common in this day of selfish interests, he cooperated 

 in scores of undertakings and enterprises that lay outside the legiti- 

 mate field of his labors. Yet to him there was no boundary line 

 within which his duty lay. His ideal of service was as lofty as his 

 ideal of scholarship, and it penetrated as deeply as the smallest 

 details of his private life. His sense of obligation to the student 

 body that surrounded him, to the community in which he lived, 

 and to the nation of his allegiance was highly and sensitively 

 developed. He became a wise and sympathetic adviser of those 

 who during their life at the University or afterward came to him 

 for help or guidance. Few who sought came away without some 

 suggestive and pertinent comment, often aptly illustrated from his 

 own experience, which had a way of sticking in the mind because 

 born of shrewd insight and offered in kindness and without sting. 

 He was interested in men, not necessarily as scholars but as men, 

 and he was inclined to discourage mere scholarship unaccompanied 

 by practical application in the way of useful product. He liked to 

 see students taking their places in the world of affairs, each filling 

 a place of influence, whether as teacher or business man, lawyer 

 or doctor, organizer or investigator, Boniface or Benedict. He 

 valued success and was at all times impatient of indolence or placid 

 contentment. Many who came under his influence will recall his 

 warning against satisfaction and complacency as the enemies of 

 accomplishment. To him each output was but a stepping-stone to 

 better things. He constantly laid stress upon the minor qualifica- 

 tions which contribute to the effectiveness of human effort. He 

 pleaded for greater attention to thoroughness and accuracy, 

 clearness and precision in style and forms of presentation, care and 

 painstaking in chirography and penmanship. Master himself of a 

 graceful and forcible style, possessed of a neat and readable hand- 

 writing, and gifted with the power of selecting felicitous words and 

 phrases, he regretted the tendency among specialists to ignore 

 literary and artistic form and to grow careless, slipshod, and indif- 

 ferent to the manner of presentation. He drew lessons from manu- 

 scripts and proof-sheets, as does the preacher from stones and run- 

 ning brooks, and he pointed many a moral to adorn the tales that 

 he told of the eccentricities of genius and the literary perversities 



