Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/161

 ELISHA KENT KANE 325 transcendent importance and is crowned with victory, is always ill-judged and un- fairly estimated. At the outset he is looked upon with contempt, and treated in the most opprobrious manner, as a wild fanatic or a dangerous disorganizes In due time the cause grows and advances to its sure triumph ; and in proportion as it nears the goal, the popular estimate of his character changes, till finally exces- sive panegyric is substituted for outrageous abuse. The praise, on the one hand, and the defamation on the other, are equally unmerited. In the clear light of reason, it will be seen that he simply stood up to discharge a duty which he owed to his God,- to his fellow-men, to the land of his nativity." ELISHA KENT KANE* By General A. V. Greely (1820-1857) Elisha Kent Kane, son of Judge John K. Kane, was born in Philadelphia, February 3, 1820. In his youth he dis- played those qualifications of ceaseless activity, daring advent- ure, and strong personal courage which characterized his mature manhood. Inclined to all ef- forts involving physical hard- ships and contact with nature, his early education was devoted to civil engineering and such natural sciences as chemistry, geography, geology, and miner- alogy. Unfortunately, in his sixteenth year, chronic and func- tional heart disease developed, which intermittently affected him through life and deterred him from the profession of an engineer. Applying himself to medicine, he graduated therein in 1842 at the University of Pennsylvania, in the meantime having served as a resident physician of the Pennsylvania Hospital. His inaugural medical thesis, based on personal experiments and observations, gave him a reputation which augured professional
 * Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.