[Delivered at the Memorial Services, Natural Science Auditorium, May 3, 1911]

Thirty years ago I came to the University of Iowa as a student. As I was anxious to get the most that I possibly could out of the remaining two years of my college course I naturally found my way into Professor Calvin'sa laboratory, which at that time occupied the northwest quarter of what is now the registrar's office.

There was no class doing the work which I wanted to do, but that made not the least difference. I was admitted to the laboratory and given personal attention, together with such modest facilities in the way of books and instruments as were available. I entered that laboratory expecting to pursue a wide range of microscopical studies. Within a fortnight, however, I had somehow been persuaded to limit myself for the time to a single group of organisms -- the rhizopoda, it chanced to be.

Samuel Calvin

As I was leaving the laboratory upon the afternoon that this limitation had been decided upon I asked Professor Calvin what books I should buy. His answer I shall never forget--"There is Leidy's RHIZOPODA of North America in the library," he said, "but what you must get first is more rhizopoda." It was evident that I was to study rhizopoda and not books.

A fortnight later I had no use for books at all for I was devoting my laboratory periods to an attempt to make out the nature of the connection between the ARCELLA and its shell. The results of the study were immaterial. That was of consequence to me, and what has always been of consequence, is that within a month I had been led naturally and without constraint into the study of an actual problem in dealing with which I was thrown upon my own resources. That was the work of an able teacher. It is the method of every good teacher to-day, of course; but be it remembered that in such work Professor Calvin was one of the pioneers.

Pardon me if I seem to have dwelt upon a personal experience. It is not merely a personal experience. It is, on the contrary, typical--typical of the experience of everyone of the hundreds of students who have had the good fortune to come under Professor Calvin's influence, or bent, at least, to nobler purposes; for it was profound and lasting. To such as remained in close relationship with him it was at once paternal and fraternal.

The ties that united him to his fellow workers were stronger than those of mere friendship. They were such as unite great, strong, clean, men unselfishly devoted to common high purposes, -- ties too strong to be broken, too tender and too sacred for expression. Thus it is that I have the honor to speak of him upon this occasion -- for those most worthy and best qualified and best entitled to do so cannot trust themselves to speak of him as they would.

This 1900 photo of North Dubuque Street shows the Iowa River Calvin would have known, as it curves to the west across from the modern-day Mayflower residence hall. The large building on the right of the photo is Terrill Mill, with its mill dams spanning the river.

Professor Calvin was great as a teacher because he was himself a great student -- great of heart, great in his sympathy and great as a man. Great as a man! And after all is it not the man that we love best to remember? At the time to which I have referred, his studies and his work as a teacher covered a wide range. Though forty years of age he had not yet become a specialist.

He never did become a specialist in the narrower sense. He was still laying the broad foundation upon which he has since builded so magnificently. And his was no house of cards, destined to fall as soon as his own supporting hand should be withdrawn. Rather has his withdrawal from our midst revealed to us what he has built; "that spiritual building -- that house not made with hands -- eternal in the heavens."

We have all admired Professor Calvin and those of us who have really known him have indeed loved him. We have marveled at his vast and accurate scholarship, and at the fine literary sense manifest, not only in his writings but in his lectures and even his ordinary conversation. We shall never forget that courtly manner and dignified bearing, at once relieved and accentuated by a keen humor, which revealed nothing of coarseness, and by joyous enthusiasm free from affectation.

These attainments and these qualities were of themselves sufficient to win him a place of distinction; but his highest attribute -- that which bespoke the genuineness of all his other attributes -- was his character. For this we not only admire him; we revere him.

Professor Calvin's ancestors were Scotch Covenanters -- men and women of the strictest virtue, who even made a virtue of sternness. Such was the bed rock upon which his character was founded; but in its development we recognize the influence of something more fundamental than creed, or doctrine, or ritual. We recognize the beneficent and sweetening influence of the Master himself.

I do not know that I have ever heard him make the least profession of religion; but I am sure that he was a deeply religious man. I have never heard him pray but I am certain that he did pray, and what one of us can think of Professor Calvin, retiring to himself and appealing to Almighty God, without feeling his own faith strengthened and exalted?

We have come here in honor of and to consecrate the memory of Samuel Calvin. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. "But in a larger sense we cannot consecrate -- we can not hallow" -- that memory. This he has done himself, "beyond our power to add or to detract." Students and professors in the University of Iowa "will little note nor long remember what we say here to-day; but they will never forget" what he did here. "It is rather for us, the living, to consecrate ourselves anew" to such works as he so nobly advanced. It is ours to be dedicated to new achievement; to "take from the honored dead increased devotion" to that cause to which he "gave the last full measure of devotion."

This is the highest possible tribute that we can pay his memory, and it is the tribute which he himself would have most desired.

Laenas G . Weld, B. S. '83, M. A. '86