Page:Memoir of George McClellan MD.djvu/40

 100 matriculates. Suddenly in 1844, it was in the condition of a ship just out of a storm. And now, it is like the same remanned, having safely made four additional voyages, and now spreading sail for the fifth. May we have fine weather and happy faces all the voyage.

Such was the public life of the late Doctor George McClellan. He now appears before us in the triple character, pre-eminently, of a surgeon, a teacher, and the founder of medical schools.

Man's daily acts seem like trifles,—worthless as detached and separated grains of sand; but these aggregated, as the shore of the ocean, and those enchained and summed up, as life's work, excite our admiration,— indeed they both seem to be almost sublime. Permit me to make an application of this truism by saying that McClellan, except when he performed some bold act of extra surgery, seemed to us who were familiar with him in the ordinary, unfinished, imperfect doings of detached and separated days, as merely one of us; but now, that life's duty is done, and gazing at him in the completeness of his character, we instinctively honor him with the honor due unto him. This is the tribute we pay to his memory.

In review, we discern a three stranded thread, genius, utility and rapidity in thought, word and action, like the triple elements of light, passing through all the events of his life, to be the unity of his character.

With remarkable quickness he learned from books and conversation. That, which without and beyond precedence, his sleepless genius strongly and practically conceived, he promptly executed. He thought, executed and communicated, in a day, more than others did in a week,—his weeks were as the months of ordinary men; and his years, each of them, as their lives. His