alike centred, and who know not whither to turn. Our sense of loss is almost greater than our sense of pain. We loved him deeply, dearly; but a man is not necessarily missed in proportion as he is loved. He is missed in proportion to the number of points at which he entered into our lives, and the emphasis with which he impressed his being upon ours at each point. Mr. Holley entered the Institute in November, 1871, the first year of it existence. He brought to it a reputation already assured, a wide acquaintance and an intense enthusiasm. He devoted to it from that hour his unexampled gifts, in a spirit of absolute selfabnegation. After serving as vice-president, he accepted with joy and pride the unsought nomination and election to the presidency, because he felt that it was in his power to increase the sphere of the influence of the Institute, and enlarge its sources of power. At the end of a year he declined a re-election, resisting all solicitations to continue what had unquestionably been a most brilliant and successful administration, because he felt-what no one else felt-that in the Centennial year, we should be represented by some one better prepared to receive and entertain foreign guests. He worked harder to get out of the presidency than many men would work to obtain public honors. Who among us can remember any movement for the advancement of the interest and profit of our members, in which he was not active? Who is not personally indebted to him for something that will be a precious memory hereafter? These debts we cannot pay; but we can at least acknowledge them. For my part, among all the services which I have attempted to render to the Institute, the one upon which I look with the greatest satisfaction is, that it was my good fortune to overcome the modest reluctance of Mr. Holley, and induce him to enter upon that prominent activity in our affairs for which he was so brilliantly qualified, and which he so fruitfully pursued. It seems strange to recall that when I knew him first, fourteen or fifteen years ago, he was afraid to speak in public -he, by whose eloquence and humor we have been charmed so many times since! He was not wont to parade his accomplishments. I remember how, in 1873, I first discovered, after years of acquaintance with him, his knowledge of architecture and his skill as an artist. It was after one of the sessions of our Easton meeting in 1873, and he was waiting for some of us who were detained in a committee-meeting. It was in my lecture-room at Lafayette College; and the blackboard stood invitingly empty. Seizing the chalk, Holley employed the five minutes of idleness in an incredibly rapid and apparently careless scratching upon the board, and when we came from the committee-meeting, lo! there stood before us a magnificent Gothic cathedral, arch, buttress and spire complete, recalling, though not precisely repeating, the white glory of Milan, or the stately splendor of York. In all that hasty work, not a line had been thrown away; not an essential detail had been omitted. I love to think of the incident as a type of all his work-the clear creative conception, the trained skill of execution, the art become a second nature, the intuitive use of means to ends, that shone through it all. It is by reason of his many-sided activity that it has seemed best to make this meeting a many-voiced testimony to him. No single minstrel―only a great chorus-can fitly chant his praise. DR. T. STERRY HUNT, of Montreal, Canada, Ex-President of the Institute: I know that all the friends around me will agree with me when I say how weak and inadequate I feel any language of mine to express my appreciation of the many virtues of our friend, and my sense of grief and desolation at his loss. I cannot, however, forbear to recall on this occasion some few incidents which are to me as landmarks in the course of my long friendship with Alexander Holley, and which now rise before me with peculiar force as grateful memories of one whose absence we all mourn to-day. My acquaintance with him began fourteen years since, in 1868, when he was at Troy, as a member of the firm of Griswold, Winslow & Holley, and engaged in the beginnings of an industry with which his name was hereafter to be so conspicuously identified. It was as a student interested in the Bessemer process that I first met Holley, and then and there began an intercourse which ripened into friendship. I soon learned to recognize in him that eager spirit of scientific inquiry, and that patience and courage under difficulties which were to lead him to the eminence in this, which he had already achieved in other branches of his profession. Afterwards, in 1870, I was with him in a journey for metallurgical observation and study during a week. Through parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio, visiting steel-works, rolling-mills and other establishments, in all of which his special knowledge was shown, and was freely given for the instruction of myself and his other companions, one of whom is with us here to-day to join his testimony to my own of the great pleasure and profit which we then found in the society and friendship of Holley. Next, it was my good fortune to find myself associated with our friend as one of the Judges at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, in 1876, when we met daily in the same class, and week after week prosecuted our examination in the department of metallurgy, or encountered in social intercourse the distinguished representatives of various foreign nations, who, as our colleagues, then learned to know and to honor him. Again. I shall never forget the pleasure which I felt when, in 1878, I found myself with our friend in Paris at the meeting of the British Iron and Steel Institute. There were present three Americans, Holley, John Fritz, and myself. At the grand dinner, at which we were all invited guests, Holley was chosen to speak for the American nation and for our own Institute. I have often listened to him, and we all remember his wit, his wisdom and his eloquence, but those who were not there present have never, it seems to me, heard him at his greatest and, his best, as inspired by the occasion, he addressed that brilliant assembly. How well I recall the emotion of pride which filled my heart when Holley rose and, in a glowing speech, replied to the toast of "The American Institute of Mining Engineers." As a member of this Institute, and moreover, as being like him, a son of Connecticut, I was proud to claim Alexander Holley as my friend and countryman, and as a representative American in the best and highest sense of the term, representing American science, American technical skill, American manhood, and American eloquence, grace and genius as well. One more memory of Holley and the last. Soon after arriving in England from the Continent, I chanced, on.the 10th of last November, to hear that our friend was lying sick at Morley's hotel in London. I hastened thither at once, but was met by the glad intelligence that Mr. Holley was much better and had gone out. A moment afterwards, as I was leaving the hotel, I met him coming up the stair. His joyous countenance beaming with the bright expression which we see depicted in the portrait now before us, his delighted surprise at the unexpected meeting, and the hearty grasp of welcome greeting which he gave me, I shall never forget, nor the interest with which he listened to an account of my recent travels in various European countries, and to my plans for the future. He then believed his health restored, and was to leave in a day or two for the north of England, and to join his family in Paris in a few weeks. I spoke with regret of my enforced absence from the late gatherings of our Institute, and we then promised to meet each other at this February meeting. And so we parted for the last time. He, on his death-bed, told with evident delight to a dear friend the story of our brief interview in London, and I am here alone to repeat it to you. For the rest, you all know the sad sequel, and I feel that I cannot add another word. My heart is full, but in the words of another: A. S. HEWITT, of New York City, Ex-President of the Institute: I come with no set phrases to speak of our departed friend. In fact, I did not know that I was expected to speak on this occasion; but to be silent in the presence of such a loss, knowing Holley as I knew him, would be more than the heart could tolerate. I do not know who in this audience first had the pleasure of his acquaintance; my own knowledge of him goes back somewhere between twenty-five and thirty years. He came into my office; I do not know whether he brought me a letter, or whether he introduced himself to my notice, but I never shall forget, and I never have forgotten, the wonderful impression which that boyish face made upon me. The look of intelligence, of honesty, of calm consciousness of power was more marked in his case than in any young man who had ever come under my eye. At that time I think he was engaged in some literary work with Mr. Colburn. It was my privilege to introduce him to my old friend, Mr. Edwin A. Stevens, of Hoboken, one of those born mechanical engineers who understood the laws of nature and the laws of character-of personal character-alike, and made no mistakes among the men whom he chose to aid him in his work. Under his patronage Mr. Holley made one of his first visits to Europe; and in all his subsequent career he enjoyed the confidence and the friendship of Mr. Stevens and of the great engineers with whom he was thus put in connection. I think that I first called his attention to the Bessemer process, I mean to the subject of its introduction into this country. My firm had made a feeble effort within six weeks after the famous Cheltenham paper was read in 1856, to see whether pig iron could be thus converted into steel. It was three or four years, perhaps, after that, that Mr. Holley's attention was called to the matter, and he went to Europe and brought back for his friends the control of that patent. I am not going to pursue the story of his contributions-you know them better than I doto the successful introduction of this wonderful civilizing agent. Men are to be measured by two standards. One is the standard of personal character, as we judge of it in each other by personal conduct. Those of you who enjoyed his friendship need no words from any one else to elevate the standard of judgment which you will apply to Holley. There is another standard by which we measure men when they have passed away, and that is by the influence they have exerted upon the progress of civilization and the advancement of humanity. Of all the men at this day, in this line, I know of none surviving him who has contributed as much to the growth of material wealth and the advancement of industrial progress in this country, as Holley did. I look upon the invention of Mr. Bessemer as almost the greatest invention of the ages. I do not mean measured by its chemical or its mechanical attributes, I mean by virtue of its great results upon the structure of society, and of government. It is the great enemy of privilege, it is the great destroyer of monopoly, it will be the great equalizer of wealth. I have no time to pursue that line of thought longer, but those who have studied its effect upon transportation, the cheapening of food, the lowering of rents of land, the obliteration of aristocratic privilege upon the other side of the Atlantic, will readily comprehend what I mean by calling your attention to this view of the subject. To these results, second only to that of Bessemer himself, the contribution of Holley is greater than that of any other man, who has lived, or who can possibly live. It is said that the world knows little of its great men; and this is true. The man who, in his closet, in the recesses of his own workshop, discovers a new law of nature or makes a new application of hidden forces by which the structure of society is changed, modified, revolutionized, is often little known in his own day, even in his own country. It may require the historian of future ages to find out what, his contribution has been to the progress of humanity. But happily, in this day of rapid communication, we know better the work which is done by such men as Holley; and I think that even now, so soon after his departure, we can assign him to the place which he will hereafter occupy in the history of mechanical industry, a mechanical engineer of unerring judgment, an inventor of the true means for great results, a lover of his race who subjected his science, his talents and his labor to the good of his fellow-men; and he will live in the memory of those who knew him, |