Page:The Whitney Memorial Meeting.djvu/17

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PREFATORY SKETCH.
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The details of the arrangements for the Philadelphia meeting were intrusted to a Committee composed of deleg-ates from the several societies concerned. The Committee met in October, and agreed that while there should be three general or joint sessions of the societies, the last of these sessions should be exclusively devoted to the memory of Professor Whitney.

The present volume is intended to be a full report of this Whitney Memorial Meeting, which was held in the Library of the University of Pennsylvania, on Friday evening, December 28, 1894. The presiding officer was President Daniel C. Gilman, of the Johns Hopkins University, President of the American Oriental Society.

The meeting began with the reading, by Professor David G. Lyon, of extracts from letters relating to Professor Whitney, which had been received from various foreign scholars.

The memorial address, by Professor Charles R. Lanman, then followed.

Professor Francis A. March, on behalf of the Modern Language Association of America, then made an address on "Whitney's Influence on the Study of Modern Languages and on Lexicography;" and Professor Bernadotte Perrin, one on "Whitney's Influence on Classical Philologists." Mr. Perrin was followed in turn by Professor J. Irving Manatt and Rev. Dr. William Hayes Ward; and, in conclusion, by President Gilman.

Since the whole convention or congress of societies was itself of the nature of a tribute to the memory and