MEN I HAVE PAINTED
render them unfit for the ordinary performance of civic duties, that, in consequence, any extension of liberty in the direction of communism is impossible. The whole basis of the communistic theory resting as it does upon a false notion of equality in mental and physical powers, that basis does not exist and will not exist so long as disease and insanity afflict mankind. States, like ships, are built for storms and wars, and not for calm seas or peaceful peoples. And furthermore no one has, as yet, seemed to realize that the variable climates of this planet are unsuited to the Utopian notions of our so numerous visionaries and vagabonds.
One of the most interesting fields of research entered by Dr. Taylor led him to many important discoveries concerning the effects of poisoning by snake-bites. He associated himself with Dr. Weir Mitchell, who in collaboration with him investigated the character and intensity of various poisons in the different species of venomous reptiles, and the antidotes to each. The picturesque Mount Desert Island was chosen by both scientists for the pursuit of their studies, an island which, in some respects, resembles in character some of the beauty spots of the old world.
When the portrait was painted, Dr. Taylor had changed from the appearance of the Greek athlete to the more usual type of the man of science. There are still traces of the classical lineaments, which we all admired in the youth, to be seen in the fine profile; and although the hair is gone, and already the effects of reading and study begin to appear, the old love of sport and of athletic exercise still lingers in a frame that retains all the vigour of youth. The Maine woods and the silent lakes of Canada are the happy hunting-grounds of the idle moments of a man who lives in the open and breathes deeply of the health-laden air of mountain and forest.
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