airs, a leader of
armies or a captain of industry. His excursions, however, into such
fields, though sometimes noteworthy in result, were transient and more
or less half-hearted. His allegiance, given so early to the sublimest
of pursuits, held him to the end. The Government of the United States
placed him in its highest scientific position, at the head of the
Naval Observatory, and his serious work from first to last was in the
solemn labyrinths where the stars cross and re-cross, and here he was
one of the most masterful of master-minds.

It was full fifty years since Simon Newcomb and I were boys together
in Divinity Hall. No letter or message had ever passed between us. I
had followed the course of his fame, and felt happy that I had once
known him. Returning to my lodgings, during a sojourn in Washington, I
was told I had had a visitor, a man well on in years, plain in attire,
and rugged-faced. The card he left bore the name "Simon Newcomb." I
sought him out at once, and have rarely felt more honoured than that
my old friend, learning casually of my whereabouts, had felt
the impulse to find me and renew our former intercourse. After a
half-century the boy was still discernible in the aging man. The big
brow remained and the keen and thoughtful eye. His dress and manner
were simple, as of old. He was entitled to wear the insignia of a
rear-admiral, and had long lived in refined surroundings which might
have made him fastidious. In look and bearing, however, he was the
hearty, friendly man of the Nova Scotia coast, careless of frills and
fine manners.

It was a red-letter day for me when Simon Newcomb met me at the door
of the Cosmos Club, of which he was then president, and presented
me as his guest to one and another of the select company of men who
formed its membership. He moved among them as unostentatious and
simple-mannered as he had been as a boy, with a catholic interest in
all the varying topics which held the sympathies of the crowd,
and able well to hold his own whatever might be the field of the
conversation. Bishop, poet, scientist, historian, he had common ground
with them all. I sat with him in his study, among heaped-up papers
inscribed with the most abstruse and intricate calculations. It did
not affect the warmth of his welcome that I had no partnership
with him in these difficult pursuits. He was broad enough to take
cognizance, too, of the things I cared for. It was hard to feel that
the man t