Epwa4rRD E.AYER 
Rsitwsy EXCHANGE BUILDING ~ 
CHICAGO . 
November 27, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Hodge: 
I regret exceedingly at not being able to attend the compliment- 
. 
ary dinner to my dear, dear friend, William Henry Holmes, on his 
seventieth aniversary of his birth. | 
Twenty-five years ago, one of the conditions I made lie . Field 
in accepting the Presidency of the Field Museum was that we should 
be permitted to get the best men that could be obtained in the 
United States for Curators. I immediately chose William Henry Holmes 
for the great department of Anthropology. The work that he did for 
us there has made that Department one of the greatest in the lluseum 
and one of the greatest in the world, of course, being largely 
American. 
I thought I knew Henry before, but I did not. appreciate his 
splendid ability and the lovable nature of the man. Our relations, 
Of course, for several years were very close and the longer they 
continued the more I loved him, and I made no mistake in getting the 
greatest anthropologist in America for that position. 
Of course, we ell know how talented he is in geology and other 
scientific directions; still, I feel that his life has been largely 
wasted in these directions when his really great talent of painting 
Should have been first. 
That he has been spared to us all to the age of three score and 
ten, and with that superb intelligence ever active and ever at work 
for us, all is something for which everyone who knows him is very 
thankful. He has left his fingerprints on nearly all the great 
