Page:The Whitney Memorial Meeting.djvu/37

Rh from its loftier manifestations (of which a moment later), showed itself in some lesser ways not iinpleasing to recall. In describing his passage through the wilds of the Detroit River, he says in that youthful journal, "There was little difference in the appearance of the two sides; but I endeavored to persuade myself that the American offered evidence of more active and successful industry than the British."

I venture to quote in part the words and in part the substance of a recent letter from one of his old pupils. There is no one, said this pupil, whose privilege it was to know him more intimately, who could not speak of the deep tenderness underlying his ordinary reserve, of his profound sympathy with difficulty and misfortune, and of his ever-steadfast loyalties. Of the last a touching illustration is found in his remembrance of the Schaal family, in whose house auf dem Graben he lodged during his Tübingen summers of 1851 and 1852. Nearly forty years later he wrote to this pupil, then in Tübingen, asking him to seek out the Schaals, and to be the bearer of kindly messages to them. Fraulein Schaal spoke of the delight her mother and herself had felt at the messages sent them by the professor who had become so celebrated, but who had not forgotten them, and showed the visitor Professor Whitney's room, all unchanged, a typical Studentenzimmer; in the middle, a long plain table, and by it an uncushioned arm-chair. That, said she, was Professor Whitney's chair, and in it he used to sit for hours at that table, almost without moving. When he moved the chair more than a little, I knew that it was time for me to take him his mug of