Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/496

 JOHN H. VINCENT By EEbkby G. Jaokson IT is said that an explorer among the tombs of ancient Egypt found, in the dried-np hand of a mummy, a few grains of wheat, that many centuries ago friends had placed there in token of their belief in immortality, or, at least, of their belief that there remains a germ of life that death is unable to destroy. The traveler, desiring to test the appropriateness of this symbol of their faith, took the grains from the patient hand that had preserved them through the waiting years, and, on his return to his home, planted them in suitable soil and awaited the result. In due time, greatly to his surprise, the moistened seed germinated, grew and pro- duced a little harvest, fresh and golden, in spite of the an- tiquity of the ancestral seed ; and, for anything that is known to the contrary, miUions of acres of waving grain are the descendants of the handful of seed so long held in waiting. In like manner it is the happy fortune of some adventurous explorers among the tombs of buried ideas to set free from the relentless grasp of forgotten years some deathless germ of truth, and so to plant it that, by its reduplication, it may reach and enrich the mind of the world. Eminent among those who have thus contributed to the advancement of biowledge is the subject of this biographical sketch — Bishop John Heyl Vincent — who, after serving his generation with distinguished ability and success, still lives in the enjoyment of an honored and serene old age. John Heyl Vincent's paternal ancestors were Huguenots, who, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, fled from their home in southern France and came to America. One branch of the family settled in Pennsylvania, near Milton, Northumberland County, where the father of the future bishop was bom. About 1820, he removed to Alabama, where he married, his wife being the daughter of a sea captain, Bernard Baser, of Philadelphia. From this union, John Heyl, son of John Him-