Page:The Whitney Memorial Meeting.djvu/39

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MEMORIAL ADDRESS.
25

which arose in 1882—of moving from one dwelling-house into another did not break it. "Even moving," he writes, "I expect to find consistent with regular doses of Talavakāra, etc." The "art of judicious slighting" was a household word in his family, a weapon of might; its importance to the really great is equalled only by its perilousness in the hands of the unskilful. His plans were formed with circumspection, with careful counting of the cost, and then adhered to with the utmost persistence, so that he left behind him nothing fragmentary. We may change Goldsmith's epitaph to suit the case, and say that Whitney put his hand to nothing that he did not carry out,—nihil quod incepit non perfecit.

And what shall I say of the lesser virtues that graced him? As patient as the earth, say the Hindus. And endless patience was his where patience was in place. And how beautiful was his gentleness, his kindness to those from whom he looked for nothing again, his gratitude to those who did him a service! And how especially well did the calm dignity which was ever his wont become him when he presided at the meetings of learned societies! How notable the brevity with which he presented his papers! No labored reading from a manuscript, but rather a simple and facile account of results. An example, surely! He who had the most to say used in proportion the least time in saying it. And this was indeed of a piece with his most exemplary habit, as editor of the publications of the Oriental Society, of keeping his own name so far in the back-