Professor Elias Loom is. 463 



k of this kind, and the work prepared for it was a 



od one. It was followed tin* nexl year by a Geometry. 



Tliis was an attempt, and if jndged by its reception and sale, 



it was a successful attempt to combine in a school-book the 



rigid demonstrations of Knelid witli the Courses of thought in 

 Legendre and in modern Bcience. The task is one of peculiar 

 difficulty, as the existence and activities of the English Society 

 for the Improvement of Geometric Reaching now for near twenty 



years illustrates. ( )ther books followed the Geometry from year 

 to year, the whole forming a connected series from Arithmetic 

 upward, so that the list of his works finally numbered near 

 twenty volumes. His experience in teaching, his rare skill in 

 language, his clear conception of what was important, and his 

 unwearied painstaking, combined to produce text-books which 

 met the wants of teachers. About 600,000 volumes have been 

 -<»ld, benefiting the schools and colleges, and bringing to the 

 author a liberal and well merited pecuniary return. 



We ought not on this academic occasion to omit to speak of 

 the teacher. College graduates who have been under his 

 instruction will probably retain a more positive impression 

 of the personal traits and the character of Professor Loomis 

 than of most of their other teachers. His crisp sentences, 

 lucid thought, exactness of language and steadiness of require- 

 ment, more than made up for any apparent coldness and real 

 reserve. These characteristics of his riper years were peculiar 

 t<> him from the beginning of his life as a teacher. During his 

 tutorship he was thought to be strict as a disciplinarian, and 

 this may have unfavorably affected his influence with some 

 members of the class of 1837, of which he was tutor. It was 

 not so with all of them. Some of you will recall what was 

 said by a member of that class as he came to Commencement 

 a few years since, occupying at the time the highest office 

 which a lawyer in the line of his profession can in this country 

 secure : — " If I have been successful in life," said Chief Justice 

 AVaite, u I owe that success to the influence of Tutor Loomis 

 more than to any other cause whatever.'' 



There was in Professor Loomis so much of reserve that to 

 many persons he seemed cold and without interest in the lives 



