20 



Annual Address. 



for the advancement of knowledge, if to have given mind 

 and heart to the establishment of institutions for the in- 

 struction and permanent benefit of his fellow men,- if to 

 have left something of the impress of his own fine qualities of 

 mind and character upon the thousands of boys who came 

 under his influence, give a man a claim to be held in love 

 and honored remembrance, few have a higher or better 

 claim to such remembrance than has Theodric Homeyn 

 Beck. 



Long as I have detained you with the consideration of 

 the services of some of the leading men connected with 

 the earlier days of the Institute, there is one more, who, 

 although still happily living, has been so long separated 

 from us, that we may speak of him without indelicacy, as of 

 one who is absent and whose fame has already become 

 historic. Need I say that I refer to the distinguished 

 secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. When a boy in 

 the Albany Academy in 1823 and 1824, it was my pleasure 

 and privilege, when released from recitations, to resort to 

 the chemical laboratory and lecture room, the same room 

 in which the meetings of the Institute are now held. 

 There might then be found, from day to day through the 

 winter, earnestly engaged in experiments upon steam and 

 upon a small steam engine and in chemical and other 

 scientific investigations, two young men — both active 

 members of the Lyceum — then very different in their ex- 

 ternal circumstances and prospects in life, but of kindred 

 tastes and sympathies; the one was Eichard Varick De- 

 Witt, known to all of us not less for his pure and amiable 

 character, than for his scientific tastes and acquirements, 

 and his interest in every good and useful work— the other 

 was Joseph Henry, as yet unknown to fame, but already 

 giving promise of those rare qualities of mind and charac- 

 ter, which have since raised him to the very first rank 

 among the experimental philosophers of his time. - 



