Famous Men of Science

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

During the last twelve years of his life, he devoted much time to our system of coast fog-signals, making "contributions to the science of acoustics, unquestionably the most important of the century."

Observations were made, among other places, at Block Island and Point Judith. The distance between these fog-horns is seventeen miles, and the sound of one can be distinctly heard at the other when the air is quiet and homogeneous; but if the wind blows from one towards the other, the listener at the station from which the wind blows is unable to hear the other horn.

While at work in the Lighthouse Depot, in Staten Island, December, 1877, Henry's right hand became in a paralytic condition. This foretold that the end was near. He died at noon, May 13, 1878, asking, with his latest breath, which way the wind came, as though still thinking how to save human lives in a fog at sea. He was buried May 16, at Rock Creek Cemetery, near Georgetown, D. C. He was ready when death came. Two weeks before, he said to a friend: "I may die at any moment. I would like to live long enough to complete some things I have undertaken, but I am content to go. I have had a happy life, and I hope I have been able to do some good."

Several times during his connection with the Smithsonian Institution he was offered more lucrative positions, but he remained where he believed he could be most useful. He was called to the professorship of chemistry in the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, with double the salary of his secretaryship; but he declined. He was urged also to take the presidency of the college at Princeton. John C. Calhoun desired him to accept a professorship in the University of Virginia, as there were so many difficulties in connection with the secretaryship. Henry declined, saying that "his honor was committed to the institution." Calhoun grasped his hand, exclaiming, "Professor Henry, you are a man after my own heart."

He seemed to have no time to accumulate money. Fortunately, a fund of forty thousand dollars has been raised by friends, the income of which goes to his family during life, and afterwards to the National Academy of Sciences, to be devoted to original research.

In character he was above reproach. He said, "I think that immorality and great mental power exercised in the discovery of scientific truths are incompatible with each other; and that more error is introduced from defect in moral sense than from want of intellectual capacity."

He loved nature. "A life devoted exclusively to the study of a single insect," he said, "is not spent in vain. No animal, however insignificant, is isolated; it forms a part of the great system of nature, and is governed by the same general laws which control the most prominent beings of the organic world." In 1870, when gazing upon the Aar glacier, from the Rhone valley, he exclaimed to his daughter, while the tears coursed down his cheeks: "This is a place to die in. We should go no further." A really great man is never afraid to show that he has a tender heart.

He loved his home. Out from it, in his early married life, two children went by death, and later, an only son in his early manhood. Three daughters were left him. One of them records in her diary: "Had father with us all the evening. I modelled his profile in clay, while he read 'Thomson's Seasons' to us. In the earlier part of the evening he seemed restless and depressed, but the influence of the poet drove away the cloud, and then an expression of almost childlike sweetness rested upon his lips, singularly in contrast, yet beautifully in harmony, with, the intellect of the brow above."

Again she writes: "We were all up until a late hour, reading poetry with father and mother, father being the reader. He attempted 'Cowper's Grave,' by Mrs. Browning, but was too tender-hearted to finish the reading of it. We then laughed over the 'Address to the Mummy,' soared to heaven with Shelley's 'Skylark,' roamed the forest with Bryant, culled flowers from other poetical fields, and ended with 'Tam O'Shanter.' I took for my task to recite a part of the latter from memory, while father corrected, as if he were 'playing schoolmaster.'"

He was orderly and painstaking in his work, deciding with great caution. Prof. Asa Gray tells a story of his boyhood which well illustrates this. "It goes back to the time when he was first allowed to have a pair of boots, and to choose for himself the style of them. He was living with his grandmother, in the country, and the village Crispin could offer no great choice of patterns; indeed, it was narrowed down to the alternative of round toes or square. Daily the boy visited the shop and pondered the alternatives, even while the manufacture was going on, until, at length, the shoemaker, who could brook no more delay, took the dilemma by both horns, and produced the most remarkable pair of boots the wearer ever had; one boot round-toed, the other square-toed.... He probably never again postponed decision till it was too late to choose."