Page:Luther S. Livingston (Parker).djvu/22

 They found that through some strange vagary of his physical system, which had been anaemic from childhood, the organs had ceased to send lime to the bones. No one who saw him during the months that followed this discovery is likely to forget the brave, wistful smile with which he remarked that he was assured of lasting fame, not because of anything that he had written, but as an extraordinary medical phenomenon. The medical people have their own names for the things that ailed him, and he was of sufficient importance, from their point of view, to be transferred to the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. There Dr. McCrudden and his collaborators experimented with him until treatment was found that proved helpful. The bones showed stronger in the x-ray prints, and the doctors told him that maybe some day he might walk again. When his improvement was assured, Mrs. George D. Widener asked him to become the first Librarian of the Harry Elkins Widener Collection, in charge of the Memorial rooms which are the center of the great library building at Harvard which perpetuates the memory of what she, and Harvard, and book lovers everywhere, lost when the Titanic went down.