n was earning his subsistence at this time. He did
some lecturing and private teaching, but I do not think they were great
in amount. In the springs and summers he frequented the coast, and
indulged in long swimming bouts and salt-water immersions, which seemed
to agree with him greatly. His sociability was boundless, and his time
seemed to belong to anyone who asked for it.

I soon conceived that such a man would be invaluable in Harvard
University--a kind of Socrates, a devotee of truth and lover of youth,
ready to sit up to any hour, and drink beer and talk with anyone,
lavish of learning and counsel, a contagious example of how lightly and
humanly a burden of erudition might be borne upon a pair of shoulders.
In faculty-business he might not run well in harness, but as an
inspiration and ferment of character, as an example of the ranges of
combination of scholarship with manhood that are possible, his
influence on the students would be priceless.

I do not know whether this scheme of mine could under any circumstances
have been carried out. In point of fact it was nipped in the bud by T.
D. himself. A natural chair for him would have been Greek philosophy.
Unfortunately, just at the decisive hour, he offended our Greek
department by a savage onslaught on its methods, which, without taking
anyone's counsel, he sent to the _Atlantic Monthly_, whose editor
printed it. This, with his other unconventionalisms, made advocating
his cause more difficult, and the university authorities, never, I
believe, seriously thought of an appointment for him.

I believe that in this case, as in one or two others like it, which I
might mention, Harvard University lost a great opportunity.
Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean
more in a university, where a few undisciplinables like T. D. may be
infinitely more precious than a faculty-full of orderly routinists. As
to what Davidson might have become under the conventionalizing
influences of an official position, it would be idle to speculate.

As things fell out, he became more and more unconventional and even
developed a sort of antipathy to all regular academic life. It subdued
individuality, he thought, and made for Philistinism. He earnestly
dissuaded his young friend Bakewell from accepting a professorship; and
I well remember one dark night in the Adirondacks, after a good dinner
at a neighbor's, the eloquence with which, as we trudged d