Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

[50] head of American mathematicians,--a place which, I believe, he still retains by tradition. In his later years, and after the abandonment of the temporary elective method, he may have become discouraged or apathetic, but when I knew him he was in his prime, and he was to me of all teachers the most inspiring and delightful. He was then a very handsome man, with the most eager and ardent manner, alternating with deep absorption, and he gave beyond all others the effect of original and creative genius. We studied, by an added stroke of good luck, his “Curves and functions,” which was just passing through the press, and the successive parts of which were bound up for our use. This increased the charm; it seemed like mathematics in the process of construction. I was already old enough to appreciate the wonderful compactness and close reasoning of these volumes, and to enter with eager zest into filling the intermediate gaps afforded by the long steps often taken from one equation to another. Dr. Bowditch, the translator of Laplace's “Mdcanique Celeste,” used to say that whenever he came to one of Laplace's “Whence it plainly appears,” he was in for an hour or two of toil in order to make this exceeding plainness visible. It was often so with Peirce's books, but this enhanced the pleasure of the chase. He himself took