518 
Eaton—Memorial Address. 
those themes being especially germane to his own thinking. 
He was chaplain of the 40th Wisconsin Volunteers during their 
one hundred days’ service in the vicinity of Memphis; “an 
ideal chaplain, ” Col. (now Bishop) Fallows called him. He 
traveled in Europe in 1869 and 1870. In 1873 he received the 
degree of Doctor of Divinity, both"from Knox College and from 
Dartmouth, his alma mater. He was sought for the presi¬ 
dency of two of our leading western colleges, but in each case 
decided to remain in Beloit and to make his work as a teacher 
center there and in Wisconsin. He died on the 10th of October, 
1896. 
Between the lines of these simple statements we of the Acad¬ 
emy and all who knew him, read the record of a noble and mem¬ 
orable life. Professor Blaisdell was a marked man as a thinker. 
You knew him in the breadth, the catholic range of his thinking. 
He loved best the great thinkers, but he found those great 
thinkers in many lands and ages. Isaiah and Paul and the seer 
of Patmos, Plato and Aeschylus, Dante and Aristotle,— these 
were men with whom he loved to hold converse. Of Puritan stock, 
he had the Puritan predilection for high themes and for wrest¬ 
ling with great problems of human destiny. In such society he 
found his chosen companionship; and with great men of recent 
years he also was in close touch and fellowship. Anyone who 
thought deeply on any line found in Professor Blaisdell an in¬ 
terested and sympathetic fellow-thinker. While certain lines 
were dearest to him, there could be no profound thought any¬ 
where that did not attract him and tempt him to follow it. His 
library was the library of a man who thought widely, and whose 
sympathies were wide; and this was part of the charm of his per¬ 
sonality to those who knew him. We all of us are aware that 
the distinguishing trait of his thinking was its spiritual qual¬ 
ity. A Puritan, austere in appearance and serious and stren¬ 
uous in his thinking and his life, he was also a mystic, lov¬ 
ing the subtle, spiritual qualities of thought, and absolved 
from the limitations of any age or condition. With him 
all nature was intensely spiritual. Behind the physical mani¬ 
festation shone the spiritual, as a light shines through an 
alabaster vase. He sunk himself deeply in these spiritual rela- 
