JOSEPH WHARTON, ScD., LL.D. txxiii 



level of genuine usefulness by the impulse in him toward those 

 intellectual pursuits which ordinarily monopolize the powers of their 

 possessor. He might be likened to an Atalanta who stopped to 

 pick up the golden balls so temptingly dropped on the course, who 

 gathered them all in safely and prudently and then, besides, won the 

 race. And the goal was not a mere contest of strength or endur- 

 ance, but an intellectual prize in which the victor came forth a 

 benefactor to his kind, both in giving and in knowledge, and a 

 benefit to himself in the resources of a full mind. 



The very lack of academic education serves to measure the 

 native richness of Joseph Wharton's mind. He had little schooling 

 and yet, as he grew old in experience and reading, he was more than 

 half a scholar. He had so large a miscellaneous store of facts in 

 his ample head that he could generalize wisely on many subjects. 

 This often gave his views the appearance of more exact scholarship 

 than he possessed. He knew chemistry as a practical user, rather 

 than as a student ; and yet he was appointed one year to the chair of 

 the Visiting Committee on Chemistry to Harvard College, a compli- 

 ment he never forgot and always quoted with extreme satisfaction. 

 Indeed, he meant to recognize the distinction by a liberal endowment, 

 but this was one of the plans which went over the border with his 

 eager spirit. 



H he felt the lack of some scholarly attainments, it was rather 

 because he disliked to be unpossessed of any branch of culture, 

 than because he needed them to complete his already rare equipment. 

 It was an early and life-long ideal of his to master mathematics. 



When the Civil War broke out he, as a non-combatant by con- 

 viction, decided to turn all his possessions into ready securities, buy 

 a good stout horse and a wagon large enough for his family, and 

 drive with his needed impedimenta to Harvard College. There, in 

 academic peace, he would take a course in the higher mathematics 

 and perfect himself technically in those sciences which he afterwards 

 came to know by observation and by reading. 



He was capably furnished with the elements of geology and 

 astronomy, and he was inquisitive in every other physicial science, 

 but his knowledge of botany and ornithology was not so wide. I 

 have known him to ride post-haste from Jamestown, R. I., to Pro- 



