I had three or four sets of associations with Wyman, no one of which fails to come back to my remembrance filled with the charm of a man whose whole nature was simple, wholesome, pure and generous.  Others have said all that need be said of what he did for his much-loved science:  it is less easy to convey to those who knew him not an impression of the influence he exerted upon younger workers, and a sense of the social pleasure which came of his remarkable combination of vast knowledge and general culture, combined with a certain loveliness of character and an almost childlike simplicity.  I once heard our greatest preacher nobly illustrate, with Samson’s riddle as his text, the delightfulness of that form of human character in which sweetness and strength are blended.  As I listened, somehow I began to recall Wyman, for it was just here that his social charm resided.  He was intellectually stronger even than any of his completed work showed, but he was also the most lovable of men.  His mind was very active and remarkably suggestive—­so much so that in social chat, even the most careless, he was constantly saying things which made you think or left you thoughtful.  For many years he wrote to me frequently, and his letters are filled with the most lucid and happy suggestions, explanations or comments.  After the failure on the part of one of his friends to attain a deserved object of just ambition, he wrote to me to state his own extreme regret; and this not once, but thrice, as if he was haunted by the sorrow of another’s disappointment.  At times he was full of the most boyish spirit of jesting, as when in 1862 he wrote to me grieving over the secession of Virginia, because we had both of us thus lost our easiest supply of rattlesnakes.  Then he rejoiced over the fact that we still had the bull-frog; and in an another note regrets that the rattlesnakes had not been allowed to vote on the question of seceding.

As I write I pause to turn over these records of a dearly-valued friendship.  They begin years ago with words of encouragement as to certain investigations in which both of us felt interest.  Here and there they touch on matters of social or personal value, but for the most part they deal only with science.  I used to wonder in those days, and still am surprised anew as again I turn over these letters, at the amount of what I might call suggestiveness in Wyman.  He replies, for example, in one letter to the gift of a scientific essay, and then in a postscript runs off over eight pages of comment, explanation and novel suggestions which put the subject in a new light; while every here and there, amidst the wealth of scientific illustration and useful hints given to aid another’s work, there is some pause to express a courteous doubt of his own opinions.  Everywhere, indeed, his letters, which made the most of our intercourse, were full of the broadest sympathy in pursuits which often were—­but often were not—­in the same direction as his own lifelong studies.  At