Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/565

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SKETCH OF CHARLES D. WALCOTT.
547

years-old closes, wyndes, and laimdes of Edinburgh and Glasgow; but also in homes on light and clean streets and famous avenues.

Obligations of society toward the poorest poor can not be lessened, but they can be increased toward the rich and the richest. "There is no duty of one class toward another which is not essentially the duty of each human being to all his fellows. There is no genuine charity toward the poor which is not, in principle, the duty of the rich toward the rich."

The art of living together domestically is a fine art, that seeks expression through beautiful family life which is not extinct, but comparatively rare. Along with renaissance, in architecture, painting, and sculpture, why may there not be a family renaissance, so that men, women, and children shall feel that the real life of the world is not in the counting house, clubhouse, schoolhouse, meeting house, courthouse, or statehouse, but in the family house—the dwelling house?

SKETCH OF CHARLES D. WALCOTT.

A "NEW YORK GEOLOGIST," whose name is not given, is quoted as having attributed Mr. Walcott's success largely to his having persistently followed one track. Acquiring a taste for geology when very young, it eventually became dominant, and more and more manifest to the world about him, till he secured a position in the United States Geological Survey. There he has risen, chiefly by the force of his ability and energy, to his present position of director of the survey.

His grandfather, Benjamin S. Walcott, moved from Rhode Island in 1822, and became one of the leading manufacturers of central New York; he had broad interests in educational matters, was the founder of a professorship at Hamilton College, and was well known as a philanthropist. His son, Charles Doolittle Walcott, was a man of unusual energy, was well established in business, and held an influential and leading place in the community. Dying at the early age of thirty-four, he left a wife and four children, the youngest, two years old, being the subject of this sketch.

Charles Doolittle Walcott was born at New York Mills, N. Y., March 31, 1850. His scholastic education was in the public schools of Utica, which he entered in 1858, and in the Utica Academy, which he left in 1868. He then entered a hardware store as a clerk and, continuing in such occupation two years, acquired a practical business training, which has proved of great value to him.

His scientific tastes were developed at the age of thirteen, when