60 PROCEEDINGS OF THE PITTSBURGH MEETING 



prompted the Territorial government to make an appropriation for a 

 geological survey, which was started in 1887 and finished in 1888. 



He was a man of kindness of heart, of loyalty to friend and principle, 

 generous to a fault, punctilious when he had charge of other men's 

 affairs, easy going with his own. A striking characteristic was his devo- 

 tion to wife and family. He lived for his home; the sons found in him 

 their best friend. He was a devout Episcopalian, having become an 

 active member of the church at the early age of 15; his poetic nature 

 made it natural for him to favor the high-church branch of the denomi- 

 nation. 



His ideas of right and wrong were well brought out in his management 

 of the Dakota School of Mines. It is an accepted saying that Territorial 

 or State schools pass through a political and a denominational stage be- 

 fore they reach the correst basis for future growth. In the first stage the 

 expenditure of moneys for buildings and apparatus is likely to involve 

 political patronage, and when this period is over and the politicians are 

 no longer actively interested a denominational stage is likely to follow, in 

 which "good men" who have not been successful are provided with berths 

 as "educators." At last the community gets tired of this state of affairs ; 

 there is a change of personnel, and the institution is set upon the true 

 road to usefulness and success. In 1887 the Dakota School of Mines was 

 in the political stage. The dean had to hold the fort against all open 

 assaults, as well as cunning stratagems, of the politicians. He kept fly- 

 ing, high and unstained, the flag of principle, and never lowered it at any 

 command of interest. What this means can be fully understood perhaps 

 by those only who have gone through a similar experience. 



In 1887 I was called to the Dakota School of Mines as professor of 

 metallurgy and assaying. When I was called, in 1889, to another educa- 

 tional institution, and my place was to be filled by the appointment of a 

 successor, whom the dean conscientiously disapproved, he resigned his 

 office without hesitation, although he had at the time no certain prospect 

 of remunerative employment elsewhere. 



His genius soon found, however, a new path. He had tested, by crucible 

 experiments in the laboratory, the possibility of melting the siliceous silver- 

 gold ores of Euby Basin, South Dakota, and had found that this could be 

 done so as to obtain a satisfactory recovery of the precious metals. What 

 remained to be determined was the kind of slag that could be economically 

 produced by this process in a blast furnace. This he undertook to deter- 

 mine at Deadwood in a small blast furnace ("baby smelter"), and when 

 this small operation had proved successful he laid the foundations in 

 jnining property and plant for a smelting enterprise on a commercial 



