The Days of a Man D900 



Father's jokes," she sometimes asserted with gentle 

 pride and satisfaction. 



Yet though keenly enjoying my freaks of fancy so 

 long as they "kept their place," she had an unusually 

 mature grasp of reality as distinguished from imagina- 

 tion or sentiment. Walking once with her in the garden, 

 I repeated Riley's poem, "The Gobelins will get you if 

 you don't watch out." " But there isn't any such thing 

 as a goblin, there never was and never is going to be 

 such a thing," said she. "Maybe," I remarked, remi- 

 niscent of Bishop Berkeley's idealism, "there isn't any 

 such a thing as anything." "Oh, yes, there is," she 

 answered, "there is such a thing as anything," and, 

 looking around for an unquestioned reality, added 

 triumphantly, "There is such a thing as a squash." 



To be the parents of a child so "nobly planned" 

 gave us a higher estimate of ourselves — I think 

 deservedly so. One consolation, moreover, was ours; 

 she had never known evil, sorrow, or pain save in her 

 last illness, which she bore with the joyous patience 

 inherent in her nature. 



Afterward, my wife and I presented to the University 

 "the Barbara Jordan Library," for which we provided 

 special shelves in one of the rooms of what is now Jordan 

 Hall. In the center on the cabinet containing her birds 

 is a beautiful bronze plate designed by Professor 

 Bolton Coit Brown, and bearing this inscription: 



TO THE STUDY OF 



ORNITHOLOGY THIS 



ROOM IS DEDICATED 



IN TENDER MEMORY OF 



BARBARA JORDAN 



WHO KNEW AND LOVED 



THE BIRDS 



c 84 n 



