PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OP WASHINGTON, 219 



into all their joys ; with a sympathetic heart into all their sor- 

 rows. And while thus faithful to the charities of home, he 

 was intensely loyal to his friends, and found in their society the 

 very cordial of life. Gracious to all, he grappled some of them 

 to his heart with hooks of steel. The friendship, fed by a kin- 

 dred love of elegant letters, which still lends its mellow lustre 

 to the names of Cicero and Atticus, was not more beautiful than 

 the friendship, fed by kindred talents, kindred virtues, acd kin- 

 dred pursuits, which so long united the late Dr. Bache and Pro- 

 fessor Henry in the bonds of a sacred brotherhood. And this 

 was but one of the many similar intimacies which came to em- 

 bellish his long and useful career. 



His sense of honor was delicate iu the extreme. It was not 

 only that " chastity of honor which feels a stain like a wound," 

 but at the very suggestion of a stain it recoiled as instantly as 

 the index finger of Mr. Edison's tasimeter at the "suspicion" of 

 heat. I met him in 1847, when, soon after his election as Secre- 

 tary of the Smithsonian Institution, he had just been chosen to 

 succeed Dr. Hare as Professor of Chemistry in the Medical De- 

 partment of the University of Pennsylvania, at a salary double 

 that which he was to receive in Washington, and with half the 

 year open to free scientific investigation, because free from pro- 

 fessorial duties. It was, he said, the post which, of all others, 

 he could have desiderated at that epoch in his scientific life, but 

 his honor, he added, forbade him to entertain, for a moment, the 

 proposition of accepting it after tlie obligations under which he 

 had come to the interests represented by the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution. At a later day, after he had entered on his duties in 

 Washington, and found the position environed with many diffi- 

 culties, Mr. Calhoun came to him, and urged his acceptance of a 

 lucrative chair in a Southern College, using as a ground of ap- 

 peal the infelicities of his present post, and the prospect of fail- 

 ing at last to realize the high designs he had projected for the 

 management of the Smithsonian Institution. Admitting that it 

 might be greatly to his comfort and advantage at that time to 

 give up the Smithsonian, he declined at once to consider the pro- 

 posal made to him, on the ground that his " honor was committed 

 to the Institution." Whereupon Mr. Calhoun seized his hand, 

 and exclaimed, " Professor Henry, you are a man after my own 

 heart. " 



