I am greatly shocked at the death of Dean Shaler and mourn his loss. I not only feel for him the affectionate remembrance of scholar toward instructor, but the remembrance of the friendship and regard I grew to feel in constantly growing measure for him after I left College.   THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

By Thomas Wentworth Higginson '41.

When it became my good fortune, some thirty years ago, to become once more a dweller in my native town of Cambridge, I naturally looked about with interest for pleasant acquaintances among the College professors and was fortunate enough to find myself for a time at least, a near neighbor of Professor Shaler. We had some army experiences to recall in common; and I was soon struck with his peculiarly frank and cordial relations with the students, a thing the less surprising, however, as those who may be called out-door professors are apt to drift into easier relations with their pupils than the indoor men. There was, however, soon opportunity to go a little deeper and to find for his relation to the students a basis beyond this.

I happened to have indirectly under my care a young Freshman who while hither to blameless in character had the misfortune, after some public day in Boston, to be caught in some prank, not very serious, such as the throwing of a stolen sign off the end of a bridge into the Charles River, during which lamentable misdeed, he had been arrested by the police and spent the night with his two or three companions in the lock-up. When they were called before the judge on the next morning I was allowed to make a brief statement of the case, having very little to say, when I was reinforced, to my great surprise and satisfaction, by Professor Shaler who had strolled in and taken his place on a back seat and who, it seemed, had noticed the young men in Boston, just before the event happened, and testified that they were not intoxicated or turbulent, but simply boyish. The judge with evident relief accepted the Professor's view of the matter, imposed only a moderate fine, and the youths went out quite ashamed of the whole affair, as was fitting.

This was not, however, what struck me most in the occurrence. Seeking an opportunity to thank Professor Shaler afterwards, I found that he was out of town and when we met, after a week or two, it appeared that the whole affair had passed very much out of his mind, he saying frankly that he did so much of that sort of thing that he might easily have confused it with other events. He said that it was rather his habit, after public days in Boston, to take a look in at the Cambridge police-court next day, to see that his boys, if in any trouble, had justice done them; and that in most cases, as would doubtless happen in this, the mere fact of arrest would be sufficient punishment. All that I could see of his relations to the students proved the hold he had on them in this way and, when it came to sterner discipline, I knew one or two events which showed me that this mild authority had its distinct limitations. I remember one case, in particular, when one of the most popular and influential students in College had been charged with an insult to a woman and when all Shaler's Kentucky chivalry was roused, until it turned out that the whole affair had been greatly overstated.

I have left myself no time to dwell upon the literary side of Professor Shaler's life, but have found an especial interest in one or two of his books. One of his most agreeable works is certainly that on "Domesticated Animals." It is full of personal observation and I know of no book 'more sure to enlarge the mind of a thoughtful boy or girl. A later book, to be greatly prized, is one whose rather inadequate title is "The Neighbor", and whose chapter. "The Problem of the African", while liable to some criticism in detail--as is almost everything yet written on that difficult subject--yet lays down this manly conclusion, coming from a Kentuckian (p. 149) "A fair assessment of the situation leads to the conviction that morally he (the negro) is hopeful material for use in our society." If as some seem to think this whole vast question needs to be settled over again, it is a comfort to think that we have the strong testimony of Professor Shaler on the side of justice.  THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON '41.

By LcBaron Russell Briggs '75.

Professor Shaler's greatest charm was his eager interest in every created or uncreated thing; as one of his colleagues said, even

Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto

was not wide enough to compass him. This interest he expressed in language that was brilliantly his own. No man was quicker-witted; no man had thoughts more original or diction more picturesque. He was ardent, combative, filled with poetry and romance, instantaneously responsive in his feelings. "I hold it," he said, "a part of my business to do what I can for every wight that comes to this place"; and thousands of men bear witness that this was the truth. No teacher in Harvard University within my recollection has roused so many minds or touched so many hearts.  L. B. R. BRIGGS '75.

By John Henry Wright.

Dean Shaler touched life at so many points that it is difficult to say in what relation his death will be most felt. The government of the University loses in him a successful administrator, sagacious and resourceful, and a stimulating and inspiring teacher; his colleagues, a delightful associate and comrade, whose words and ways brightened many a tedious hour; the students, a warm-hearted, whole-souled friend. Those of us who live near the Yard will miss his picturesque figure, like that of a handsome Andrew Jackson, in long raincoat and soft hat, striding along with the familiar swing, and flinging across the way the brusque greeting, "How d'ye, neighbor?" The College Chapel will miss him, whither he used to repair daily to take what he liked to call his "moral bath, as needful, sir, as the other." He was the impersonation of health, vigor, and purity, moral as well as physical and intellectual. He was an Elizabethan man in his qualities and temperament: a poet, above all, of keen susceptibilities and sympathies; gifted, furthermore, with a remarkable creative power in English expression, especially in extempore speech, pungent, vivid, finding always--if sometimes he had to make it--the fit word; impetuous, generous, the soul of honor, scornful of meanness and falsehood, swift in thought and manner, too swift at times for sluggish wits.

"Tell thou the world......

"That once there was one whose veins ran lightning."  JOHN H. WRIGHT.

By Byron Satterlee Hurlbut '87.