428 Professor JElias Loomis. 



at Monson, Mass. Owing in part to feeble health he was more 

 disposed, in those early years, to keep to his books than to roam 

 with other boys over the Willington hills. In later life he 

 frequently said that in his early days he never had a thought 

 of asking what subjects he was most fond of, but studied what 

 he was told to study. 



At the age of fourteen he was examined and was admitted 

 to Yale College, but owing to feeble health he waited another 

 year before actually entering a class. In college he appears to 

 have been about equally proficient in all of the studies, taking 

 a good rank as a scholar, and maintaining it through his college 

 course. President Porter remembers well the retiring demeanor 

 of the young student, and his concise and often monosyllabic 

 expressions, peculiarities which he retained through life. 

 During his Junior and Senior years he roomed with Alfred E. 

 Perkins whose bequest was the first large endowment of the 

 College Library. He graduated in 1830. 



A few weeks before graduation he left New Haven and 

 entered a school, Mount Hope Institute near Baltimore, to teach 

 mathematics, and he remained there for a year and a term. 

 One of his classmates, the late Mr. Cone of Hartford, said that 

 Mr. Loomis had intended to spend his life in teaching, and that 

 it surprised him when he heard that this purpose was abandoned, 

 and that Mr Loomis had gone, in the Autumn of 1831, to the 

 Andover Theological Seminary with the distinct expectation of 

 becoming a preacher. This new purpose was, however, again 

 changed when a year later he was appointed Tutor in Yale 

 College. A vacancy in the Tutorship occurred in the May 

 following (1833), and while not yet twenty-two years of age he 

 returned to New Haven and entered upon the duties of the 

 office. Here he remained for three years and one term. In 

 the spring of 1836 he received the appointment to the chair of 

 Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Western Reserve 

 College, at Hudson, Ohio. He was allowed to spend the first 

 year in Europe. He was, therefore, during the larger part of 

 the year 1836-7 in Paris attending the lectures of Biot, Poisson, 

 Arago, Dulong, Pouillet and others. He did not visit Ger- 

 many because of want of money. A long series of letters 

 written by him at this time appeared in the Ohio Observer, and 



