SIMON NEWCOMB. 
151 
comb ; as a past President of that great organization, was a 
perpetual member. He had little to say, although his interest 
in the welfare of the Association was evidently deep, but 
when he did speak it was with a mixture of sound, scientific 
judgment and of clarified common sense that showed me that 
he was far more than the asbtracted scientific genius I had 
always supposed him to be. But he still seemed unapproach- 
able. His unbending carriage, his leonine head, his stern 
expression, did not invite the approach of younger men. And 
so I knew him only from a distance, which, as I later found, 
was not to know him at all. 
And then there came a summer (it was after his retirement 
from the active list in the Navy) when his wife was away 
and he was thrown upon the Club. The men of his own 
scientific pursuits and of his own time were no longer there ; 
but Newcomb interested himself in the younger men — not 
only those engaged in scientific work, but others. And he 
took his luncheons, curiously enough, with a group of archi- 
tects — Glenn Brown, Dessez, Fuller, Hornblower, Marshall, 
Poindexter — and jokingly denied a seat at his table to all but 
architects. And then I and all the rest of us learned to 
know him better, and soon the sense of awe passed away and 
a feeling very much like affection took its place. 
Soon after there began a miniature revolution in the Club. 
New by-laws were adopted, emphasizing the intellectual fea- 
tures of the organization, and, as the most eminent exponent 
of that aspect of the Club life, he was made its President by 
practically a unanimous vote. In the meetings of the Board 
of Management he took the most serious interest, even in the 
most sordid details of club management, and showed himself 
a man of rare business judgment and capacity, while in all 
his relations with the other members he exhibited a charming 
courtesy at first and a warm friendliness later that showed us 
how much we had lost in not penetrating his apparent reserve 
at an earlier period. 
But it was the 1903 International Congress of Ails and 
Sciences at St, Louis which opened my eyes most fully, and 
those of many others, to the all-around greatness of the man. 
