tears are mingling with mine, because one whom we all loved so dearly has gone from us. Will they think it presumptuous in me if I say that I shall always think of them as his brothers? I beg you and them to believe that any and all events connected with the American Institute of Mining Engineers will be of the greatest interest to Yours most gratefully and affectionately, III. MEMORIAL SESSION OF THE. AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS. PHILADELPHIA, April 19th, 1882. THE PRESIDENT, PROF. R. H. THURSTON, of Hoboken, N. J.: I feel that I have a peculiar right to speak in this place of the friend and colleague who has left us, to speak of him who was one of the most active among the founders of our Society, and of the man who was the ablest of his generation in our profession. As your presiding officer I stand in the place that he should have occupied, holding the position which he would probably have held had he not himself chosen otherwise, deferring an honor which he hoped, and of right may have anticipated, would be tendered him a little later, when, with improved health, he expected to pass an unbroken year among us. The brotherly feeling that always unites men who have been taught within the same academic walls came to unite us a quarter of a century ago when we became alumni of "Old Brown." A mutual trust and confidence, such as rarely bind men seeing as little of each other as we did during the succeeding years, came to us, despite infrequent meetings, while the last few years had brought so many opportunities of intercourse that our friendship was cemented with a firmness and closeness of union that is still more rarely experienced among business men. Common tastes and closely related professional pursuits, similar interests, and pleasant meniories of much that was common to our earlier manhood, led to a friendship of which the remembrance will never cease to yield sad pleasure to the survivor. Mr. Holley was one of those who signed the call for the meeting. for the formation of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; he was the principal author of our by-laws and rules, and the leading spirit in the organization of the Society. He was a member of the Nominating Committee, and resigned in order to oblige his colleagues by accepting a nomination as Vice-President, while positively declining nomination as the first President. He was one of those among the officers of our Society who were always present at the business meetings of the Council, and at all regular meetings, and who never allowed even important private business to interfere with the business of the Society. No member was more thoughtful in regard to its interests, more prolific of plans for the promotion of its welfare, or more active and earnest in enlisting others in its support, and in bringing the leaders of the profession into our ranks. Mr. Holley was among the foremost in the movement to resuscitate the United States Board to test metals, and to reorganize the great scheme of investigation planned so carefully by that body, but hardly more than planned before the demise of the Board. He was the most active of our members in the organization of a plan for a gathering of European members of the several branches of the profession to meet our own representative men in convention in the United States, and to inspect, under the guidance of our committees, the public works and private enterprises of this country. This thought of a community of work, of pleasures, and of all interests, that should bring into contact all branches of the profession, and all members of our great guild, is illustrative of the breadth of his intellect no less than of his greatness of heart; and these qualities always became prominent in discussing those still weightier matters that had for us a common and more intense interest,—a rational system of education, and a general system of promotion of the useful arts and applied sciences by the united efforts of statesmen, men of science, and men of business,matters that were always brought into view when, as was so often the case, "The Scientific Method of Advancement of Science" became the theme of our discussion. Intellectually great, with a noble soul, and possessing the next essential, a powerful and vigorous yet graceful body, Mr. Holley was in all the days of his middle working life one of the finest illustrations of the type of man that Agassiz is said to have been. It was "the soul of a sage in the body of an athlete." But that soul has broken out from even such confinement, and that athletic frame yielded to the strain of the mightier soul temporarily confined within it; and to us is left only the hope of a future renewal of intercourse and the remembrance of the past. Our friend Holley was an honest and an earnest man. But such a man is not always the most useful man either to the world, to his fellows, or to himself. The honest, earnest man, who, in the excess of his zeal, deceives himself, is often the most dangerous of char acters. The greater his intelligence the more dangerous the man. The greatest crimes that the world has known have been committed by conscientious, zealous men. Such men must possess a better judgment and a greater power of self-control than their comrades if they are to live useful, happy, and successful lives. Holley was an honest, earnest, intellectually great man, possessing that rare and sterling judgment, and having more than a common share of that woman's intuitive appreciation of the right, which is the best regulator of the earnest worker. The faith, the hope, the charity, the brightness, the earnestness, and the wholeness of heart that distinguished him, no less than his great mental powers and his professional standing, helped to place him in the high position which he held among men. Shakespeare's admonition in that wellnamed play, "All's Well that Ends Well," was unneeded by our friend. To "love all, trust a few, do wrong to none," was, with him, second nature. His charity and his love covered all humanity; his faith in those about him, once given, was never withdrawn, except when, by some such bitter experience as we have all occasionally tasted, it was extinguished by betrayal. Do wrong to none! His whole life was a mission of noblest beneficence, not only to his friends and his acquaintances, to those who loved, and to those who came to him necessitous, but to all nations, to the whole race contemporary with and succeeding him. He was of those few great and fortunate benefactors of mankind to whom we owe the highest material benefits brought to us by civilization. Our committees are considering how, where, and in what form a suitable monument shall be erected to the memory of this most hon-ored of our colleagues; whether to mount a bust of marble or of bronze in Central Park; to erect a statue at the capital of the United States, or to place some more modest but not less fitting and expressive memorial at his tomb. We may adopt either scheme; if we were to measure his deserts, they would be beyond all these plans. It is of little consequence which is decided upon; his noblest monument is the memory which is implanted in the hearts of his friends, and in the memories of mankind. If these were not enough, we might erect in the midst of each of those great and ⚫ wonderful industrial establishments built up so largely by his genius a tablet inscribed with his name, and the legend so familiar to the visitor to Sir Christopher Wren's tomb in St. Paul's, London: "Si monumentum quæris, circumspice." Let us hope that the time may come, and that soon, when a still nobler monument than any yet proposed may be built to perpetuate his fame. The time must come, and that we will hope very soon, when a pressing want of this great country shall be supplied by the establishment of a complete system of thoroughly scientific practical education of the people for their work, a congeries of trade schools and of technical colleges, united into a thoroughly organized and well-administered whole. Such a system it seems now certain must be the work of private hands, and must be built up by the intelligent liberality of comparatively few wealthy and patriotic citizens. We have not yet statesmen in numbers, intelligence, and influence equal to the task of securing a governmental system of education such as has done so much for Germany and France. But the work is begun, and when it has so far progressed that the grand central, crowning, and directing member of the organization, a great UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES, shall have been founded and endowed by some noble modern Vaucanson, or Worcester, or citizen more kingly than Ptolemy of Alexandria,-some one, perhaps, of the beneficiaries of the comrade whom we mourn, let us hope that its most important department may be known as the HOLLEY MEMORIAL SCHOOL OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES OF ENGINEERING. If other inscription is needed upon any tablet that may be erected, or upon the pedestal of the monument that shall be raised to the memory of this great man, this worthy successor in fame to the greatest of the inventors of the steam-engine, we may write with fitness and justice a paraphrase of that splendid tribute which may be read on the base of Chantrey's statue of Watt in Westminster Abbey: Not to perpetuate a Name which must endure while the peaceful Arts flourish, that Mankind have learnt to honor those who best deserve their Gratitude, those among the People of the United States and of Europe ALEXANDER LYMAN HOLLEY, who, directing the Force of an original Genius, early exercised to the development of the modern Processes of Steel Manufacture, enlarged the Resources of his Country, increased the Powers of Man, and rose to an eminent Place among the most illustrious Followers of Science, and the real Benefactors of the World. |