Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/22

Rh phase. I am aware that, in these days, so soon after his death, anything that I may write of him is sure to betray a persona] feeling for the man, one which grew ever stronger as I knew him better.

Of Sumner's labors one might say in general that they were as unremitting as strength would allow, whereas before his illness of the early nineties they had been virtually incessant. There seems to have been in this man such intellectual eagerness, such a very mania for discovering the truth, coupled with so strong a power of will, that he wore out a robust physique untimely — for with his vigorous frame and sound constitution he might well have lived out the life of a Humboldt. As it was. Professor Sumner retained his large elective courses and ruled them with iron discipline, up to a few years before his retirement; and to the very end of his active service he remained an incomparable leader in the college faculty. We younger men are told that at a crisis the leadership has been wont to creep into his hand as by some inherent urge; he hit about him rather regardlessly in the preliminary skirmishes, but as others grew hot he grew cool and took command of the situation. One who seeks to account for what Yale College has become, and who realizes that such an institution is not built of bricks and stones, but of men, cannot leave out of reckoning the often determinative influence wielded for nearly forty years by Professor Sumner. He did not fumble about in the mazes of compromise, and he was unafraid. Even during the last years of his life he never lost his characteristic power of cutting straight to the core of an issue; nor, indeed, was he deprived, until the latest days, of his joy in battle. He remained, as he had been in his prime, the redoubtable debater, confronting opposition with a combination of manner, matter, and method with which few ever successfully coped. But the fight, though Homeric in its tactics, was always fair; Sumner took his wounds in front, and as one observer remarked, always shouted, "Look out! I'm com-