too great stress on the single factor of natural selection, an opinion foreshadowed in the remark just quoted.

Notwithstanding the tumult of the days that opened the second half of the nineteenth century, Rogers steadily pursued in Boston a project which had become the great ideal of his life—the establishment of an educational institution whose curriculum should be based upon courses of scientific study and which should be closely related to laboratory practice and to research. It is wellnigh impossible to appreciate, in our day, how great a novelty this proposal appeared in the America of that time. It required many years, even in Boston, to awaken the interest of the people and of the legislature in this plan. In September, 1860, through a committee of associated institutions of art and science, Rogers secured a grant of land in the Back Bay for the use of such an institution, and as chairman of a committee, submitted in September, 1860, a report entitled 'Objects and Plan of an Institute of Technology Including a Society of Arts, a Museum of Arts, and a School of Industrial Science.' New England was then just entering upon its manufacturing phase and was more ready than any other part of the country to appreciate the significance of such an enterprise. The bill establishing the Institute of Technology was passed by the legislature in the early part of 1861, and was approved by the new governor, John A. Andrew. Amongst the memorials in favor of the proposed institution, addressed to the legislature, was one from Benjamin Peirce, himself a distinguished member of the Saturday Club. Others of the Saturday Club, more identified with classical studies and interests, also lent Rogers their aid and support.

On April 10, 1861, the act of incorporation was finally passed. That very week the Civil War broke out. A more inauspicious moment to launch a new educational movement could under ordinary circumstances scarcely have been selected; but such was the eloquence and the devotion of Rogers that, notwithstanding the difficulties and the delays which the War brought, he kept the new enterprise not only alive but constantly growing. It would be interesting to recall the names of those who in that day subscribed sums of money, small in comparison with educational gifts of today, but enough to keep the new enterprise alive.

With the return of peace a new growth and an enlargement of life came to the Institute. With it, however, by 1865, came also the breakdown of President Rogers's health, and from that time until the day of his death his work was done under the handicap of frail health and diminished strength. Only the devoted care of his wife made possible his last twenty years of service.

From the end of the War President Rogers's whole life and work were wrapped up in the Institute of Technology. He was forced to retire from its active direction and turn it over to his faithful associate, Dr. Runkle. But always it was he who voiced more clearly and more eloquently than any other man has done the conception of a school founded upon scientific studies and inspired by scientific ideals. He lived to serve this ideal. When his strength permitted, he took over the reins of administration; when he was too weak to serve as President, he gave all his thought and all his devotion to the cause of the Institute. In it he lived and moved, and on the thirtieth of May, 1882, ended his life in the act of addressing the graduating class of that year. His voice, at first somewhat weakened by illness, soon rang with its full volume. Then there was silence, the fire in his eyes died, and he sank a knight in harness in the cause to which he had given his whole life. It was a fitting close.

His enduring monument is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He founded an immortal human institution which in all the days to come will carry forward the principles of scientific education for which he stood. It is to the everlasting credit of Boston that it understood and accepted this man and enabled him to realize his conception.

HENRY S. PRITCHETT

WILLIAM AMORY

1804-1888

DR. HOLMES in a letter to Lothrop Motley in 1877 wrote, 'William Amory joined me and wanted to know all I could tell him about you. I always find him good company - in some ways better than anybody else, for he has known Boston on its fairer side longer as well as better than almost any other person I can talk with easily

has a good memory, talks exceedingly well, and has a pleasant, courteous way, which is exceptional rather than the rule among the people that make up New England society.'

The record of the Amorys in history has been good. One William was a companion of William the Conqueror. Now and again the name appears, later in South Carolina. One Thomas, educated in England, was consul for the English and Dutch in the Azores and came to Boston, settling down here to trade.

William Amory, son of Thomas C., who was senior partner in a commission house, was born in Boston, June 15, 1804. Entering Harvard at the age of fifteen with the Class of 1823, he received his share of the renown or notoriety of that class due to 'the Rebellion,' and with half of the class retired to rural life for a period. His place of rustication was Groton, of whose social life he wrote an interesting account. His degree of A.B. was not granted him until 1845. Later, 1877-83, he was an Overseer of the College.

Upon graduation he undertook a course rather unusual for a young man of that generation, studying Civil Law at the University of Göttingen, and later in Berlin for some two years. On returning to Boston he continued his studies in the offices of Franklin Dexter and William H. Gardiner, and was admitted to the Suffolk Bar in 1831.

No sooner was this well-equipped young lawyer ready for clients than he, like many of the most promising and privileged men of Boston then and since, accepted the position of a mill treasurer. First treasurer of the Jackson Manufacturing Company at Nashua, New Hampshire, he succeeded so well as to win one of the great

treasurerships, that of the Amoskeag, and later of the Manchester Mills. He met the conditions of manufacturing New England of those days of high tariff, over-expansion, panics, contraction, and failures with exceptional ability. He had courage, discretion, and tact. Of course other honors which accompany such success were his. He became director of several companies, president of the Langdon Mills, and a vice-president of that association which has for generations been a byword for respectability, financial integrity, and comfortable estate, the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company.

As did other young men who lived on Beacon Hill, he became an officer of the Boston Light Infantry, and turned out for General Lafayette and the laying of the cornerstone of Bunker Hill Monu

ment.

In the Civil War he readily supported the desire of his son, Charles Walter, to accept a commission as lieutenant in the Massachusetts Second Cavalry, with Colonel Charles Lowell. The young lieutenant was captured in a fight with Mosby's guerrillas, and languished for many months in Confederate prisons, coming home a semi-invalid for life, but with such pluck and character as won for him in the course of years the treasurership for which his father's career had prepared him, that of the Amoskeag. Charles Walter was his name, but from boyhood to the end he was called by his father, family, and friends, simply Ned: he was Ned Amory.

Mr. Amory married Miss Anna Powell Grant Sears, eldest daughter of David Sears, who gave her the house, 41 Beacon Street, next his mansion, which is now occupied by the Somerset Club. Mrs. Amory was a woman of exceptional force and grace, of wide reading and agreeable conversation, but almost totally deaf. She was thus cut off from general society of which Mr. Amory was an ornament. As they had several children, they entered into the plan of Mr. Sears in providing homes in the country for his children in a great tract which he had bought two and one half miles west of the State House, stretching from the Charles River on the north to Muddy Brook and beyond on the south. The district received from Mrs. Sears the name of Longwood, due to her admiration