to decline the request in behalf of all of us, to scatter now, in the mellowing year, the leaves and the ripened berries of laurel, brown myrtle, and ever green ivy, over the grave of him who was the master not of his pupils only, but of all American scholarship, and whom, departed, we yet look up to as its genius, shall I not say its guiding, its protecting spirit?
Our first tribute is due to Professor Whitney as the most active and faithful member and officer of the American Oriental Society. He became a member in 1850, while a graduate student in Yale College, with Professor Hadley, under Professor Salisbury, the same year that he went to Germany to pursue the study of Sanskrit with Weber and Roth. On his return in 1853 he accepted a professorship especially secured for him by the wise provision and generosity of Professor Salisbury, who particularly desired his assistance in developing the usefulness of the Oriental Society, of which he was Corresponding Secretary. And accordingly his name appears on the Publication Committee for 1853-54, and in 1855 he was made Librarian. He found the books lying in a corner in a room in the Boston Athenæum, where they seemed to have been dumped, brought them to New Haven, and did no small amount of tedious work in arranging and cataloguing them and providing for their increase. In 1857 he succeeded Professor Salisbury as Corresponding Secretary, and in 1884 he was made President,—an office which he held until his enfeebled health compelled him to resign in 1890. During the years from 1853 until 1886 he was never absent from a meeting when he was in the country, and for a series of
