m to depart thence into the more lucrative ways of medical
practice. One of this class was Jeffries Wyman, whose character and
career well illustrate all that I have said of the scientific life,
its trials and rewards. There are some graves on which we cannot lay
too many flowers; and if, therefore, after those who knew him best, I
venture to add my words of honor and affection, and to state the
impressions derived from my intercourse with the very remarkable
student of science whose loss we have all lamented, I trust that the
strong feeling which prompts me may be held a sufficient excuse.

I had three or four sets of associations with Wyman, no one of which
fails to come back to my remembrance filled with the charm of a man
whose whole nature was simple, wholesome, pure and generous. Others
have said all that need be said of what he did for his much-loved
science: it is less easy to convey to those who knew him not an
impression of the influence he exerted upon younger workers, and a
sense of the social pleasure which came of his remarkable combination
of vast knowledge and general culture, combined with a certain
loveliness of character and an almost childlike simplicity. I once
heard our greatest preacher nobly illustrate, with Samson's riddle as
his text, the delightfulness of that form of human character in which
sweetness and strength are blended. As I listened, somehow I began to
recall Wyman, for it was just here that his social charm resided. He
was intellectually stronger even than any of his completed work
showed, but he was also the most lovable of men. His mind was very
active and remarkably suggestive--so much so that in social chat, even
the most careless, he was constantly saying things which made you
think or left you thoughtful. For many years he wrote to me
frequently, and his letters are filled with the most lucid and happy
suggestions, explanations or comments. After the failure on the part
of one of his friends to attain a deserved object of just ambition, he
wrote to me to state his own extreme regret; and this not once, but
thrice, as if he was haunted by the sorrow of another's
disappointment. At times he was full of the most boyish spirit of
jesting, as when in 1862 he wrote to me grieving over the secession of
Virginia, because we had both of us thus lost our easiest supply of
rattlesnakes. Then he rejoiced over the fact that we still had the
bull-frog; and in an another note regrets that the