Ixxii OBITUARY NOTICES OF MEMBERS DECEASED. 



existing affairs and coordinate their results with unerring fore- 

 sight. He knew every in-and-out of technical business. He rarely 

 received a legal paper for execution in which he could not lay his 

 finger on some blemish that would ultimately work detriment, and 

 he had some vast treasury of knowledge on all the forms for 

 possessing and passing real estate, upon which he could draw with 

 faultless memory. His command of the methods of finance was 

 perfect. He was by instinct a banker; and he would have been a 

 memorable Secretary of the Treasury, had he allowed his friends to 

 put forth the effort which alone was needed to elevate him to that 

 ofiice. He knew how to act with deadly swiftness, and he knew 

 how to wait — both trading capacities of the highest order. 



When, to these purely business talents, was added his technical 

 insight, there came forth a combination which in the realm of com- 

 merce was nearly irresistible. He knew chemistry and metals, not 

 wholly by laborious teaching in the technical school, but by that in- 

 stinct for driving nature to do his will which was a life-long" aim. 

 Hence he was equipped with one ingredient when the other was 

 wanted, and it is the destiny of such natures to find the other. The 

 man who goes fishing without a hook ought not to complain if the 

 man with the hook catches the fish. To be up and ready is the 

 watch-word of such success, and up very early and ready very 

 eagerly Joseph Wharton always was. 



Thus, he found a way to make zinc in Bethlehem, Pa., before it 

 was made elsewhere in the United States, and thus he was the 

 pioneer in the mining and manufacture of nickel in this country. 



But, if the knowledge of chemistry and metallurgy ran smoothly 

 into the cogs of business, it also denoted that wiser and nobler side 

 of the mind of Joseph Wharton which threw upon the details of a 

 life of trade the radiance of learning; the reflection from that finer 

 wisdom which is not in the service of self, but exists for the better- 

 ing of mankind, who are kin. His instincts for affairs, for com- 

 merce and the exchange of commodities, were indeed a phase of 

 that recognition of the orderly fabric of the universe which gifted 

 him with insight into her functions. 



But he was of that larger nature which does not stop at self, 

 and he went on from the level of personal accretion to that higher 



