deal with this phase of Conrad's personality is a rather delicate matter. As his nephew, I might say too much; as his biographer, I wish not to say too little.
Conrad was of small stature, thin and homely, yet he had, as an intimate friend recently said, a refined countenance. There was a kindly light in his eyes that words can not describe nor the cunning of the artist depict. I have said “homely”; this on his own authority, for in his poem The Watermelon he declares:
"The poet may sing of the Orient spices,
Or Barbary's dates in their palmy array,
But the huge rosy melon in cold juicy slices,
Is the Helicon font of a hot summer day,
"Where I bathe the dry wings of the spirit, and sprinkling
Sweet drops on the pathway of dusty old Care,
I hold Father Time from his villainous wrinkling
Of features that never had graces to spare.”
As a conversationist, Conrad had few superiors, but a weakness of his voice made it difficult for him to be heard, and it was only when with two or three intimate friends that this quality shone out. He avoided large gatherings and never spoke in public. He had a keen sense of humor and was an inveterate punster. His memory was “very bad” scientifically, says Prof. Dall, but it was remarkably good so far as poetry was concerned, and when walking alone in the country he would repeat aloud long passages from the works of his favorite authors. His fondness for poetry led him to writing verses, some of which were printed in the Philadelphia papers as early as 1828; and his latest effort bears date of 1874. In 1848 Conrad published The New Diogenes, a Cynical Poem. This is well described in the subtitle. It consists of some twenty-five hundred lines of fault-finding. The edition was very small and is not yet exhausted. In 1871 the writer undertook to bring together the scattered short poems, and found thirty-two of these, mostly in the corners of newspapers and two in manuscript. The little volume was “privately printed.” It bears the title, A Geological Vision and Other Poems. Trenton, N. J., 1871.
In his non-scientific writings Conrad invites a comparison with Thoreau, but, while loving the outdoor world as devotedly, he always had an eye to physical comfort, and preferred, at the end of a long tramp, a good bed at a tavern to sleeping out of doors. So too, probably, did Thoreau, but then to say so does not sound so prettily in a book.
Timothy Abbott Conrad died in Trenton, N. J., August 9, 1877, the last of the prominent group of early Philadelphia naturalists, who paved the way for the more philosophical biologists of the present day.
