466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



have separated by the breadth of great States or even by the 

 width of America. Its social meetings have often been as gain- 

 ful as delightful. Here the youth just across the threshold of 

 geology or astronomy has met the veteran explorer or observer, 

 and thenceforward his work has known the ardor of disciple- 

 ship ; there are men now eminent in American science who recall 

 as among their first inspirations the noble and kindly faces of 

 Henry, Gray, Guyot, and Agassiz at association meetings. There 

 is always a good deal in the mind of a man of science that he does 

 not care to commit to a formal report or a dignified text-book ; 

 his appraisals of the current literature of his special field, his sug- 

 gestive criticisms of the latest audacities of theory, his shrewd 

 guesses as to what next awaits the discoverer, are only for those 

 who meet him face to face. Not seldom a thinker or an experi- 

 menter in a remote corner of the country cherishes a hypothesis 

 or proposes an apparatus intended to solve an old difficulty in a 

 new way. At an association meeting he finds the mechanician or 

 the chemist, who of all men can best disabuse his mind of its har- 

 bored fallacy, or point out how for success his project must be 

 modified. And many men prosecute masterly work at lonely 

 outposts, or, worse still, in populous centers of uninterested peo- 

 ple ; they are spared a withering sense of isolation in finding at 

 the yearly muster that it is after all a goodly army in which they 

 are enlisted. In so far, too, as the association has managed to 

 keep specialists of eminence in its ranks, they receive at the an- 

 nual assemblies not less benefit than the tyros. The observer 

 with microscopic slides or test-tubes constantly at his eye is re- 

 freshed when he meets at the council table and the general session 

 his peer of the geologic hammer or the telescope. Nor must the 

 benefits be forgotten which the association has conferred upon 

 men of affairs drawn into its audiences and interested in its work. 

 They have seen somewhat of the unselfish labor in breaking new 

 ground which must go before the sowing and reaping we know 

 as industry and business. Hence have arisen generous gifts for 

 research — which might well be multiplied ; and, apart from any 

 question into which gain or gift can enter, the association has 

 done noble work in bringing to the people a glimpse, at least, of 

 that inspiring ray which ever gilds truth as it emerges from the 

 unknown. 



Much that can be said of the good born of this association's 

 meetings is true of those of many societies for research, educa- 

 tion, or reform, which year by year and almost month by month 

 spring into existence. Let us glance at one or two cases where a 

 small band of earnest men have been able to do great things, not 

 for science, but for righteousness. The Civil-service Reform 

 Association, founded by George William Curtis and his friends 



