14 PROCEEDINGS OF TWE WASHINGTON MEETING 



In the spring of 1861, owing to the ill health of his mother, the family 

 physician recommended for her restoration a summer trip to Europe. 

 Probably because he was at that time the most available person to ac- 

 company her, and possibly because it took him out of the country during 

 the early months of a disastrous civil strife, he was selected by the family 

 to take his mother abroad. After passing creditably his final examina- 

 tions, a few days previous to the closing exercises of the college, he 

 sailed in June, on a Cunard steamer, out of Boston Harbor for Eng- 

 land, with his mother and a younger brother who was nine years of age. 

 During the summer they made a somewhat extended journey, traveling 

 as far as Switzerland, which Emmons thoroughly enjo3Td among the 

 glaciers and mountains, having read and re-read, while in college, with 

 youthful enthusiasm, Tj^ndalFs "Hours of Exercise in the Alps." No- 

 vember saw them again in England, where he bade good-bye to mother 

 and brother, who sailed for home. Lingering for a while in England, 

 December saw him again in Paris bent upon some line of scientific work, 

 but still undetermined in his own mind just where and what course of 

 study to pursue. 



It was his good fortune shortly after reaching Paris to make the ac- 

 quaintance of the late Eckley B. Coxe, of Philadelphia, who was then a 

 student at the ficole Imperiale des Mines. It was an acquaintance 

 which soon ripened into friendship lasting till the death of Coxe in the 

 early days of a successful professional career. Emmons always regarded 

 this meeting with Coxe as a turning point in his own life, and, acting 

 upon the advice of his friend, he decided to pi'epare for the iScole des 

 Mines. He found his college French totally inadequate for his purpose 

 and his equipment for passing the required entrance examinations far 

 from satisfactory. Settling down in the Latin quarter among the stu- 

 dents in February of the following year, he worked assiduously for nine 

 months under private tutors, among other things going over the entire 

 field of mathematics from arithmetic to differential calculus, without 

 the use of text books, depending wholly upon verbal demonstration. In 

 after life he alluded to this instruction as a masterly and brilliant course 

 compared to anything in his previous student life. By good luck he was 

 able to enter as a private pupil the chemical laboratory of the celebrated 

 Prof. Adolf Wurtz, where he became sufficiently grounded in both chem- 

 istry and physics to enable him later to follow advanced studies in his 

 scientific course. 



In the autumn he entered the ficole des Mines as one of the few stu- 

 dents enrolled in the class known as ifileves Externes, a privilege in those 

 days granted only upon application of the foreign representative of 



