IN MEMORIAM. 



PEOF. JAMES. H. EATON, Ph. D. 



Late Professor of Chemistry and Physics in Beloit College. 

 By T. C. CHAMBERLIN. 



Once and again, a seventh time and an eighth, has our Society been called 

 upon to lament the departure of an esteemed and honored member. 



An Armitage, aa Engleman, a Foster, a Lapham, a Stimpson, a Smith, and 

 a McDill have passed in turn from our number and have left vacancies we 

 may not hope to fill, losses we may not hope to repair. Esteemed and 

 mourned, as these have been, the more esteemed and the more lamented aa 

 we have known them the more intimately, our sorrow is no less profound, 

 our bereavement is even yet sadder, as we realize the loss of a younger and 

 no less earnest co-laborer, the devoted Eaton. 



The 21st of June, 1842, marked the beginning, and the morning of the 5th 

 of January, 1877, beheld the close of the life of Prof. James H. Eaton, a 

 span of thirty-four years - twenty-five years of preparation, nine years of 

 work. 



To his father, at once a scholar, a teacher and an author, he owed much of 

 that firm intellectual foundation upon which he erected so true and trust- 

 worthy a scholarship. His early training was receiveS in earth's best and 

 truest university, the home, a cultured. Christian home. To this was added 

 the vigorous discipline of Phillip's Academy, the wider culture of Amherst 

 College and the technical training of Gottingen University. The fruitage of 

 these rare opportunities was everywhere manifest in the [mental acquisitions 

 of Prof. Eaton. His academic scholarship was thorough and accurate, firm 

 and solid. There was no weakness or unsoundness in the foundation. We 

 could admire the symmetrical shaft, the ornate capital, and the chaste en- 

 tablature of the intellectual column, with no misgiving lest a weak or 

 crumbling pedestal should work its ruin. 



His culture was broad and catholic. Because he was a chemist, he did not 

 find It necessary to despise the linguist. Because he traced and taught the 

 ^istory of an atom, he did not deprecate the merits of those who taught the 

 nistory of man, or of his institutions. Because he could give visible demon- 

 stration of the laws of the physical elements, he did not disparage the more 

 occult sanctions of civil, moral and religious laws. Because he dealt with 

 the material, he did not scorn the spiritual 



