To Harvard men throughout the country the death of Dean Shaler brings again that keen sense of personal loss we felt thirteen years ago when Phillips Brooks died. To a high degree both possessed rare power of winning the affection of men--making their loyal friends not only those with whom they daily associated, but also those whom they chanced to meet and who to them frequently remained almost unknown. The source of Dean Shaler's power of thus winning and holding men lay, I have always felt, in his bluff, great-hearted manliness, his humor, and his sympathy. He loved men and was in turn beloved. Like other men remarkably fertile in plans and suggestions, he found his judgments and conclusions often questioned--no man has been oftener disagreed with; but however much one might differ with him in opinion, one found that the bond of affection grew steadily stronger. No subject that involved the sons of men or their concerns was foreign to his interest; if there was one he had not thought about, he was ready to think about it, and to say what he thought. He was willing to put himself in the other man's place; and all he undertook he performed with zeal. In his office, his class-room, and his home he was the soul of hospitality. Only the hearts of the many he has encouraged can tell how great has been his help.
He had the good fortune to live until the purposes he had labored for through many years had been accomplished or were in good promise of rapid fulfilment; and although he did not see the full fruition of his work, the time had come when he could say that his great task for Harvard was practically done: the development of what he has accomplished can now be safely left to other hands. The place that he leaves empty in the hearts of his friends no one can fill. B. S. HURLBUT '87.
By John Trowbridge L.S.S. '65.
The most striking characteristic of Professor Shaler's mind was its alertness. He resembled a photographer who takes you into his dark room saying, "I have instantaneous photographs on all those subjects"; which he proceeds to develop; and you go away with new impressions. The range of his scientific thoughts extended from the depths of the earth to the mountains of the moon.
The last time I met him he was anxious to know whether the researches of Bjerknes on the attractions of pulsating bodies might not throw light upon the mysterious force of gravitation; and in the discussion of these researches he showed that he had absorbed to a remarkable degree the knowledge of our time in regard to what was once called the Correlation of Forces, and which is now termed Transformation of Energy. I never left him without a mental stimulus which led me either to differ or reflect. His mind was like an electrical discharge in a tube of rarified gas, a flash light, enormously suggestive. He was seen at his best in some meeting of earnest men, unlearned, but men of affairs, capable of grasping fundamental ideas. There he was the scientific protagonist bringing the truths and sublimity of science down to the comprehension of humanity; and a journey in his company from Boston to New York realized all our ideas of rapid transit. To see him thus the centre of rapt listeners led one to recall Lowell's "Incident in a Railway Car", in which is portrayed the effect of Burns' humanity on humanity; and we will substitute science for Burns:
"All thoughts that mould the age begin
Deep down within the primitive Soul,
And from the many slowly upward win
To one who grasps the Whole."
He was a man of great heart; a scientific humanitarian, and shall we not say of him:
"Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit
Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit"? JOHN TROWBRIDGE L.S.S. '65.
By William Morris Davis L.S.S. '69.
During the last forty years Professor Shaler has lectured on geology to about 7000 students at Harvard, a greater number, I believe, than have attended the lectures of any other man on that subject; but this does not mean so much that the legion of young men were deeply interested in the science of the earth as that they were attracted by the man who told them about it. His extraordinary individuality was felt there as it was everywhere else. Most professors are known chiefly through the subject that they study and teach: strip them of that and, like kings without their robes, they look just like plain men; but with Shaler it was his subject that was known through him; leave off his geology and he was still a marked man, a striking figure, the centre of every group he joined. He was so many other things besides being a geologist and a professor; he served on the Massachusetts topographical survey commission, on the state highway commission, on the gypsy moth commission; he was actively interested in mining enterprises in the South and West; he wrote books and magazine articles on many subjects; he was a practical, influential, honest politician. His originality showed in his frequent use of words rarely heard from the mouths of others, yet well fitted in his effective and picturesque speech; and in his peculiar handwriting which almost constituted a new alphabet, yet which was consisitently a law unto itself and as legible as other current script when its letters were once learned; and in his vivid perception of the rich variety of the world about him, in which like an impressionist he saw bright colors unseen by duller eyes. He was the friend and advocate of the students in his charge rather than a prosecuting officer of the University, and it was always more his wish to get young fellows out of scrapes than to punish them for getting in. He was the inventor and developer of the three double-named departments that are embraced in our Division of Geology, and nearly all the teachers of these departments are his former pupils or the pupils of his pupils; and he was more instrumental than any other man in rehabilitating the Scientific School, of which he was an early graduate, and the most successful Dean. He would have been, we all feel, the Dean of the Graduate School of Applied Science, soon to be established; it is hard to realize that he has gone from us before seeing the approaching consummation of his years of vigilant and persistent work. W. M. DAVIS L.S.S. '69.