Page:The Whitney Memorial Meeting.djvu/57



T this hour, and after these comprehensive and sympathetic studies, I venture but a word about the Master's personality.

Of his wide and deep learning, his multifarious and fruitful labors, the world is well aware; it cannot know so well the power he was for guidance and inspiration to his immediate disciples. Other men there were, as learned and as prolific, who kindled no altar-fire, who set no torch-runners on the way. Among them may have been more brilliant men; but often their own torches went out before their day was done. In the quiet study under the New Haven elms the altarfire burned brightly to the last, and the torches kindled there have lighted other altar-fires throughout the land.

The secret of this enduring influence is to be sought in Whitney's individuality; it is a secret of character. His was, indeed, an opportunity; he came in the fulness of time to find a new world waiting to be won for a new science; but the opportunity opened alike to all his generation. He alone measured up to it and