on his way to the observatory the night
before. His heirs had no possible object in pushing the suit;
probably his entire little fortune was absorbed in the attendant
expenses.

When the difference with Borst was first heard of it was, I think,
proposed to Peters by several of his friends, including myself, that
the matter should be submitted to an arbitration of astronomers.
But he would listen to nothing of the sort. He was determined to
enforce his legal rights by legal measures. A court of law was,
in such a case, at an enormous disadvantage, as compared with
an astronomical board of arbitration. To the latter all the
circumstances would have been familiar and simple, while the
voluminous evidence, elucidated as it was by the arguments of
counsel on the two sides, failed to completely enlighten the court
on the points at issue. One circumstance will illustrate this.
Some allusion was made during the trial to Peters's work while he was
abroad, in investigating the various manuscripts of the Almagest of
Ptolemy and preparing a commentary and revised edition of Ptolemy's
Catalogue of Stars. This would have been an extremely important and
original work, most valuable in the history of ancient astronomy.
But the judge got it mixed up in his mind with the work before the
court, and actually supposed that Peters spent his time in Europe
in searching ancient manuscripts to get material for the catalogue
in question. He also attributed great importance to the conception of
the catalogue, forgetting that, to use the simile of a writer in the
"New York Evening Post," such a conception was of no more value than
the conception of a railroad from one town to another by a man who
had no capital to build it. No original investigation was required
on one side or the other. It was simply a huge piece of work done
by a young man with help from his sisters, suggested by Peters,
and now and then revised by him in its details. It seemed to me
that the solution offered by Borst was eminently proper, and I was
willing to say so, probably at the expense of Peters's friendship,
on which I set a high value.

I have always regarded the work on Ptolemy's catalogue of stars,
to which allusion has just been made, as the most important Peters
ever undertook. It comprised a critical examination and comparison
of all the manuscripts of the Almagest in the libraries of Europe,
or elsewhere, whether in Arabic or other languages, with