348 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX. No. 1267 



1868. Four racial strains were joined in him, 

 for each of his four names represents some 

 family of his ancestors, one Scotch, one Dutch, 

 one Eng'lish, one French. The Sabines, of 

 Huguenot stock, came to Ohio from New Eng- 

 land in the early part of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. The Wares, his mother's family, of 

 English Quaker antecedents, came there about 

 the same time, probably from ISTew Jersey. 

 Of his father's father, Jolm. Fletcher Sabine, 

 the son of a circuit preacher, we are told : 



He was of such gentle disposition that in man- 

 hood he renounced the stern faith of his father 

 and came to believe that "all men would be 

 saved." . . . He died at the age of eighty-nine, 

 with mind as vigorous and clear as in youth, with a 

 remarkably retentive memory. His wife was 

 Euphemia Clement, a gentle, industrious, reliable 

 woman. Hylas Sabine was their oldest son. 



Of his mother's father, Jacob Eeed Ware, 

 it is written: 



He was one of the early, ardent albolitiouists 

 and lived on the most direct line from Southern 

 slavery to freedom in Canada. . . . Untiring of 

 body, alert of mind, and exceedingly strong of 

 purpose he lived in perfect health, with such simple 

 habits that at the age of ninety-eight, without dis- 

 ease, he fell asleep. J. B. Ware married Abnira 

 Wallace, a woman of force and uprightness. Anna 

 Ware was their first daughter. 



To those who knew Sabine well this brief 

 family history is deeply significant. Gentle- 

 ness, courtesy, rectitude, untiring energy, 

 fixity of purpose that was like the polarity of 

 a magnet, all these traits we found in him. 

 It is interesting and impressive to see how the 

 individualism and stem conscience that made 

 his ancestors on the one side Protestants in 

 France and on the other side Quakers in 

 England found expression in him, under 

 changed intellectual conditions. He was of 

 the very stuff of which martyrs are made; in 

 fact, he died a martyr to his sense of duty, 

 but, with an austerity of morals and a capacity 

 for devotion which none of his conspicuously 

 religious forefathers could have surpassed, he 

 held aloof, silently but absolutely, from all 

 public profession of religious creed, and he 

 took small part in religious observances. 



As a child he was allowed to develop with- 

 out forcing, but such was the natural vigor of 

 his mind that he gained the degree of A.B. at 

 Ohio State University at the age of eighteen. 

 He is said not to have specialized in his col- 

 lege studies, but he had in Professor T. C. 

 Mendenhall an inspiring teacher of physics, 

 and his early interest in scientific matters is 

 shown by the fact that he attended a meeting 

 of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science held in Philadelphia in 1884, 

 when he was sixteen years old. On leaving 

 Ohio State University in 1886 he came to 

 Harvard as a graduate student in mathematics 

 and physics, and he received the Harvard A.M. 

 in 1888. From 1887 to 1889 he held a Morgan 

 Fellowship, but in the latter year he became 

 an assistant in physics. Eather early in his 

 Harvard residence he was taken by Professor 

 Trowbridge as partner in a photographic study 

 of the oscillating electric discharge, and he 

 showed a remarkable aptitude for work of this 

 kind, requiring high experimental skill, yet he 

 never became a candidate for the Ph.D. Ab- 

 sorption in the work of teaching prevented him 

 for several years from engaging deeply in 

 further work of research. He spent his energy 

 and his talents in building up courses of 

 laboratory work, designing and making ap- 

 paratus for instruction and in every way 

 practising with devotion the profession of a 

 teacher. It is not too much to say that, for 

 the fifteen years preceding his taking the 

 duties of a deanship, he was the most efiective 

 member of the department of physics in giving 

 inspiration and guidance to individual stu- 

 dents of promise. This was due in part to hia 

 comparative youth, though none of the depart- 

 ment were repellently old; in part to his 

 sympathetic willingness to give help and to 

 spend much time in giving help, though others 

 were not lacking in this quality. It was per- 

 haps due mainly to the fact that, while he was 

 no more deeply versed than others in the 

 profundities of physics and mathematics, he 

 had a peculiarly clear vision for the right 

 kind of experimental problem and for the best 

 way of attacking it, and his students instinc- 

 tively, it may be, perceived this. 



