636 FRANCIS AMASA WALKER. 



rare exception, that we have had of great and remarkable original 

 genius. He was wise, industrious, conscientious, patriotic, faithful, 

 and brave. He had an independent intellect rendered ijrudent by a 

 great modesty. He administered with remarkable success the Indian 

 Bureau, the Census Bureau twice under vastly different conditions, 

 and a great college. He began his service in the Union Army as a 

 noncommissioned officer. He left it a general officer. He was severely 

 wounded. He was six weeks in Libby prison, where he met his 

 brother. He was twice promoted for gallantry in the field. He was a 

 favorite aide of three famous generals. He was frequently praised for 

 soldierly quality in the reports of his superiors and in general orders. 

 He was a model adjutant- general. He saved the day in an important 

 battle. He was our foremost writer and thinker on political economy 

 in a generation constantly called upon to reconsider and to apply 

 economic laws. He contributed to science our best example of the 

 scientific temper. He was a j)rofound thinker. He was a successful 

 teacher. He was a lover, inspirer, and leader of youth. He concealed 

 great power by quietness in his work. He did, for nearly forty years, 

 bravely and faithfully, what his generation much needed to have done. 

 He was a constant spectator and critic of what other men were doing 

 in other departments of human activity. Yet he never lost his kind- 

 ness of heart or his brave hopefulness. He loved his country, his 

 Commonwealth, the town where he was born, and the city where he 

 lived. He was perfect in the relation of son, brother, husband, and 

 father. He was unselfish. He was a constant, loving, avid faithful 

 friend. He had no ignoble ambitions. His objects in life were public, 

 not i)ersonal. The ends he aimed at were — 



"his country's, 

 His God's, and truth's." 



Every step in his life was upon a stair of honor. His sound brain 

 and athletic frame could bear great labor without fatigue. He had a 

 thoroughly healthy and robust intellect, callable of being directed 

 upon any of the pursuits of life, or any of the affairs of State in any 

 department of the public service. He exhibited a varied and sound 

 mental capacity which made it sure that he could have attained dis- 

 tinction as a metaphysician, or a mathematician, as a linguist, as an 

 advocate, as a lawyer, as a legislator, as a judge, as he did in fact 

 attain it as a soldier, as a teacher, as an administrator, as a statis- 

 tician, as a writer and reasouer upon abstruse doctrines of political 

 economy. As Mark Hopkins said of his pupil. President Garfield, 

 "there was a large general capacity applicable to any subject, and 

 sound sense. What he did was done with facility, but by honest and 

 avowed work. There was no alternation of spasmodic effort and of 

 rest, but a satisfactory accomplishment in all directions of what was 

 undertaken." * * * 



He was born in Boston July 2, 1840. He descended in the eighth 



