114 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



at the Johns Hopkins University. The next morning I 

 called on President Oilman, who showed me round the build- 

 ings, library, reading-room, etc., and introduced me to the 

 professors, among whom was Dr. W. K. Brooks, the zoologist, 

 who asked me to lunch with him, and afterwards took me to 

 walk over the Druid Hill Park, a finely wooded hilly tract of 

 680 acres, close to the town, and forming one of the most 

 picturesque recreation grounds I have seen. I also spent 

 an evening with Professor Brooks, when we talked on Dar- 

 winian topics mainly. One day I dined with President Oilman, 

 and met afterwards a host of professors, students, and ladies, 

 and had a very pleasant evening. Another day I called on 

 Professor Ely and had a long talk on the political and social 

 outlook. In the evening he took me to a meeting of psycholo- 

 gists — professors and students — whose talk was so technical as 

 to be almost unintelligible to me, and when they asked my 

 opinion on some of their unsettled problems, I was obliged to 

 say that I had paid no attention to them, and that I was only 

 interested in the question of how far the intellectual and 

 moral nature of man could have been developed from those 

 of the lower animals through the agency of natural selection, 

 or whether they indicated some distinct origin and some 

 higher law ; and I gave them a sketch of my views as after- 

 wards developed in the last eighteen pages of my " Darwinism." 



After my last lecture (on December 9) I went to 

 President Oilman's, where I met, among others, Professor 

 Langley, the physicist. The talk was chiefly about Professor 

 Sylvester, who had excited immense interest, not only by his 

 wonderfully original mathematical genius, but also by 

 his eccentricities and self-absorption. Many anecdotes were 

 told of him. He had started to dine with a professor who 

 lived not five minutes' walk from his own house, and whom 

 he had repeatedly visited ; yet he wandered about the streets 

 searching for it in vain, and came in a full hour late. After 

 having lived several years in Baltimore, he was one day 

 asked in the street to direct a person to one of the best- 

 known public buildings, and hastily replied, "Pray excuse 

 me; I am quite a stranger here." His genius for solving 



