for aid. It is quite likely that, had these wise and prudent
men been consulted at each step, and their advice been followed, he
would have emphasized his protest by resigning. But before they were
called in, the affair had gone so far that, believing the director
to be technically right in the ground he had taken and the work he
had done, the council felt bound to defend him. The result was a
war in which the shots were pamphlets containing charges, defenses,
and rejoinders. The animosity excited may be shown by the fact
that the attacks were not confined to Gould and his administration,
but extended to every institution with which he and the president of
the council were supposed to be connected. Bache's administration of
the Coast Survey was held up to scorn and ridicule. It was supposed
that Gould, as a Cambridge astronomer, was, as a matter of course,
connected with the Nautical Almanac Office, and paid a high salary.
This being assumed, the office was included in the scope of attack,
and with such success that the item for its support for the year 1859,
on motion of Mr. Dawes, was stricken out of the naval bill. How far
the fire spread may be judged by the fact that a whole edition of the
"Astronomical Journal," supposed to have some mention of the affair
in the same cover, was duly sent off from the observatory, but never
reached its destination through the mails. Gould knew nothing of
this fact until, some weeks later, I expressed my surprise to him
at not receiving No. 121. How or by whom it was intercepted, I do
not know that he ever seriously attempted to inquire. The outcome
of the matter was that the trustees asserted their right by taking
forcible possession of the observatory.

During my first year at Cambridge I made the acquaintance of a
senior in the college whose untimely death seven years later I have
never ceased to deplore. This was William P. G. Bartlett, son of a
highly esteemed Boston physician, Dr. George Bartlett. The latter
was a brother of Sidney Bartlett, long the leader of the Boston bar.
Bartlett was my junior in years, but his nature and the surrounding
circumstances were such that he exercised a powerful influence
upon me. His virile and aggressive honesty could not be exceeded.
His mathematical abilities were of a high order, and he had no
ambition except to become a mathematician. Had he entered public
life at Washington, and any one had told me that he was guilty of a