16 
WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS 
sellor and teacher, the sympathetic friend, his droll humor always 
in evidence, but with never a trace of unkindness. I remember 
a day when one of the men, a rather puritanical student, who had 
been struggling with some refractory material, in a moment of 
discouragement told Professor Brooks that he could do nothing 
with it. In his characteristic way he made no reply at the time, 
but some hours later returned and said quietly, ''Did you ever- 
try swearing? That helps sometimes." 
Most delightful of all is the recollection of long evenings on the 
verandah, where, after the day's work was done, we sometimes 
sat listening to his talk on nature and philosophy. True it is 
that we were not always able to follow him closely in his meta- 
physical moods but we learned at least to feel something of the 
relation that exists between the study of phenomena and the 
philosophic inquiry into underlying causes. 
1900-05 J To work on aphids, to read Witlaczil, these were my 
first instructions. After that he seemed to have lost interest in me, 
and he showed none in aphids. Months later he startled me by 
suddenly proposing three elaborate dissections, a study of the 
lamellibranch gill, and of the brooding habits of Cyclas. 
To improve his pedagogy seemed an easy thing at that time; 
to-day I am thankful that he left me alone, and neither pushed nor 
pulled. Into the sea of work suggested I plunged, bat Brooks 
furnished no life-belts. Instead he gave opportunity, and some- 
thing more. 
In my time the ''Foundations" were being read, discussed, and 
not wholly understood. The typewriter in the laboratory and 
at Brightside, clicked incessantly. The Lowell Lectures were in 
the making; bulky translations from Hertwig and from Heider 
were completed though never published ; many essays and shorter 
papers were written; Berkeley was quoted; and the pile of incom- 
ing reprints remained unclassified on the floor. 
He seemed to be writing much, and the larger problems, 
for the time, triumphed over the microscope. The doom of his 
morphological studies was practically sealed by illness that grad- 
' Professor Otto C. Glaser. University of Michigan. 
