every-day philosophy is communicated, but the author never forgets that he is an historian and the historic sense runs through the whole book. Never published but privately printed, it was sent to some friends and intimate acquaintances for criticism and comment, and it made the subject of conversation as men and women gathered together. The first criticism that it was egotistical may be disregarded. Egotism inheres in an autobiography, but what is so called in a living man becomes the record of a valuable experience when that man is dead. It may be suspected that some of those who shall hereafter read this book will not share this friendly critical comment. Another criticism ran that it was pessimistic. But perhaps Adams saw further in 1907, when this book was printed, than the rest of us. Exceedingly modest about his venture, he wrote to me in 1908: "If you can imagine a centipede moving along in twenty little sections (each with a mathematical formula carefully concealed in its stomach) to the bottom of a hill; and then laboriously climbing in fifteen sections more (each with a new mathematical problem carefully concealed in its stomach) till it can get up on a hill an inch or two high, so as to see ahead a half an inch or so, you will understand in advance all that the Education' has to say."

Let me close with a letter written to me one year later when Adams was seventy years old, that is, in 1908: "You are still young and have the ten best years of working life to employ. I envy you the amusement but I envy you, still more, the experience. Twenty years would be better still. Almost every day some new attempt is brought to my notice to calculate the date when the world will begin to feel its next squeeze or evolution. I notice that whether the calculation is based on population or exhaustion of cheap minerals or on mind, etc., all the speculations come out where I did in my ratio of unity to multiplicity — about twenty years hence. My a priori calculation as a law of history is not worth much, but as a curiosity I am amused by it and would like to see the situation in 1930. Capitalism, socialism, anarchism or restriction of the birth-rate, all squint at the same end, with the exhaustion of cheap steel. The world should be a curious study between 1930 and 1940 even more curious than in my own very curious time.”

SENATOR LODGE'S LETTER

For forty-seven years Mr. Henry Adams has been my most intimate friend, to whom I have not only been indebted for help, wise counsel,

and unfailing sympathy throughout my active life, but whose affection was one of my most cherished, most precious possessions. No ties of blood could have made him closer or more devoted to me and mine than he has been for nearly half a century. To me the loss caused by his death is inexpressible.

I was a Senior at Harvard when he came there as Professor of History, and I became at once one of his students. The course he gave that first year was in medieval history, of which he was fond of saying he knew nothing and that he learned it by teaching, keeping only one lecture ahead of his pupils. However he acquired his knowledge, he knew more of his subject than any one with whom I have ever come in contact and his instruction was the most inspiring and effective I had ever known or imagined. He then took up American history. At that time it was possible for a boy to go through school and Harvard College without learning anything of the history of his country, without knowing who wrote the Declaration of Independence or who drafted the Constitution of the United States. Mr. Adams founded and established the Department of American History at Harvard and, what was still more important, he revolutionized the methods of teaching and studying history in the University. His coming to Harvard where he did this great work for education was one of the many debts which we owe to President Eliot.

This is not the moment to trace in detail or to describe his later achievements after he left the University. His "Life of Gallatin" and his wholly admirable history of "The Administrations of Jefferson and Madison" will always remain as his enduring contribution to the history which his ancestors so largely helped to make.

He was much more, however, than an eminent historian, he was a great man of letters whose place and importance in literature will loom ever larger as the years go by. I will speak here of only one book, "The Education of Henry Adams," which he left in my charge to be printed by the Massachusetts Historical Society. This is in my judgment one of the most remarkable autobiographies which have been given to the world and will, I think, be so regarded as the generations of men succeed each other. Not only does it contain the charming picture of the Boston of his youth and of the Washington of his later years and of the London where he lived and worked with his father during the Civil War, a most important contribution to history, but it concludes with an exposition of his philosophy of life and of human development which has the permanence of a profound addi

tion to the thought which in the last analysis instructs and guides the race.

He had the most remarkable mind which I have ever known, in its range of knowledge, in its grasp of the meaning and causes of events, and in its wholly original and independent action. There was no subject upon which, however he might disclaim it, he was not informed, upon which he had not reflected, and where the last word and the latest authorities were not familiar to him. Whether it was geology or biology, science or history, art or architecture, or pure literature, it was always the same. His penetrating intellect and his apparently effortless power of absorbing knowledge had mastered them all. He lived a life of strict retirement. He shrank from anything resembling publicity, but his fame will grow as his work, so much of which he kept in the shadow, comes forth into the light and is studied and known by men.

GE

GEORGE VON LENGERKE MEYER, '79.

BY JOHN T. WHEELWRIGHT, '76.

EORGE VON LENGERKE MEYER, son of George Augustus and Grace Helen (Parker) Meyer, was born at Boston, June 24, 1858. He prepared for College under G. W. C. Noble, '57, and was admitted in July, 1875. After graduation he continued to make his home in Boston. In January, 1882, he was admitted to his father's firm of Linder & Meyer, commission merchants. In 1888 he was elected a member of the Common Council of the city of Boston on the Republican ticket, and in 1889 was reëlected. In 1891 he was elected a Republican member of the Board of Aldermen. In 1892 he was elected representative on the Republican ticket to the General Court of Massachusetts from the ninth Suffolk district, and in 1893 was reelected from the same district. In 1894 he was again returned, and was chosen speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Again in 1895 he was returned for the fourth time, and unanimously reëlected speaker of the house. "My time," he wrote in 1895, "has been chiefly spent attending to business and politics in Massachusetts, living half the year on my farm at Hamilton, going to town nearly every day, and in the afternoon occasionally getting a game of polo for exercise and recreation. Every summer, however, I make it a point to get off into the woods in Canada on the Resti