Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/23

xii INTRODUCTION ing for you!" before he charged. The greatest immediate loss involved in Professor Sumner's retirement and death, excluding the bereavement of those who loved him, is that sus- tained by the faculty of Yale College. It is no derogation to anybody to say that he was sui gtnerig and can have no suc- cessor. What the larger Yale College thought of him was &nely expressed in the demonstration of June, 1909. when Yale ' accorded him the doctorate of laws — when fathers and sons united in applauding the great teacher of two generations. Thia affected him, as he admitted, to tears; and during the succeeding summer he received many letters expressive of gratitude and affection, which made him feel, as he told me, that the world was using him well. But whatever may be said of his intellectual qualities, yet the most attractive and the grandest aspect of Sumner's latter years was that, not of hb mind, but of his character. He was a Roman soul among us; he lived before his students and colleagues as the embodiment of honesty and fear- lessness. Duty always preceded all else with him; the mem- ory of his performance of what some would call hackwork, even when he was ill, would have been pathetic if it had not been done with such unconsciousness and simple dignity. Until the aid he would not ask for was almost forced upon him, be used to grade between three hundred and five hundred test papers every week. He was to the end the uncom- promising foe of hypocrisy, sham, ostentation, and weak senti- mest — which last he curtly denominated "gush." Further, he was in character a humble man. He seemed at all times pomtive and even intellectually arrogant, but his personal opinion of his own services and work was entirely self-depre- datory. In personal relations he was unassuming, helpful, excessively grateful for small services rendered, but beset by the fear that he would cause anybody else some trouble. In many respects his character was strangely like that of Charles Darwin. He was ready at all times with kindly counsel and qrmpatby — and the counsel was that of deep wisdom and the sympathy that of a warm heart. I have somewhat enlarged doyGoogle