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My esteemed Professor,
When we planned to take the occasion of your birthday to preserve for posterity your personality in the form of a statue or a picture, you showed the same benevolence in declining that usually you do in bestowing. Enough of 'hewing and cutting' in these times you said; and in your familiar words, 'what are you thinking of', you made us aware of our defenseless position. Although we let ourselves be dissuaded from presenting you a memento, we certainly shall persist in thinking of you in the truest sense of the word.
We shall not take note here of your works eternally important for mankind. But you are for us—we who by good fortune have had the opportunity to be your immediate students and to enjoy a personal relationship with you—such a magnificent model of the great free spirit, the upright independent man, the unprejudiced investigator, the truly complete scholar and the all-understanding, all-forgiving individual, that we wish this once to declare our indebtedness to you. We can only proffer our thanks, and we assure you of our undying gratitude, our veneration, love, adherence and enduring trust.
You patiently taught us to expect the multitudes to prefer to envision your newly discovered truths as a stage setting in artificial light rather than in the component parts of which they consist in broad daylight; moreover, that it is sometimes