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appendix g professor burton h. camp’s address, ‘‘uncle johnny’’ Brother Eclectics: I have been asked to write out what I said at our banquet in June. Those remarks do not seem to me to be specially suited to written discourse , but for what they may be worth here they are. Since writing that paper about Billy Rice I have been thinking of another great Eclectic who was also a Wesleyan professor, J. M. VanVleck, Uncle Johnny we called him. Billy Rice used to say that Wesleyan University owed more to him than to any other man. Perhaps Billy was over modest at this point. He was referring to incidents that happened before my time, and I would not know, but he said it on more than one occasion, and evidently felt quite certain of it. I am not going to indulge in extensive reminiscences of Uncle Johnny. I only want to tell you one way in which he influenced me. If I can tell you that adequately, then he will have come here tonight and said something to you also. First of all some things he did not do. Uncle Johnny was a professor of mathematics and astronomy, but he made no significant contribution to either of these sciences. He might well have. He had the mental powers and the energy to do distinguished work. As many of you know his grandson is now a distinguished mathematical physicist at Harvard. But as in the case of most men of that time, the college demanded too much other work of him to permit time for research. Also, when I knew him he was not by modern standards a particularly good teacher. (Here I described briefly one of his classes.) But his character shone through his teaching. He thought he was teaching us astronomy, but he wasn’t, or if he was, we quickly forgot it. But, without knowing it, he was teaching us something else which we would never forget. It would be too little to say that Uncle Johnny was an honest man, and that he had scientific integrity. What I have in mind now is more subtle than that. He had one of the cleanest minds I ever knew, and by clean I do not mean now the opposite of smutty. If a matter should be arrived at rationally, Uncle Johnny would not stoop to make an emotional appeal instead. If an action could be explained in several ways, 178 he would not dissemble by giving other than the primary reasons, and if you asked him a question he would answer that question, not some other. The reason for all this, we felt, was that all his life he had not hesitated to ask himself the right questions, and had not side-stepped the answers. To illustrate. When I was a boy there was a band of men who called themselves Kickapoo Indians. They traveled apparently like gypsies, and would park theircovered wagon in a vacant lot at night. Attracting a crowd by flares they would put on a show as follows. First a brave would come out and display his strength and vigor in various ways. ‘‘See how strong we are.’’ Then another would come out and describe dreadful diseases which we were all likely to get, and then he would put on the table a bottle of Kickapoo Indian Sagwa—25 cents. No other argument, but many takers. Not many years ago a distinguished oratorcame to the Wesleyan Chapel. He began by describing certain thrilling incidents in all of which he happened to be the hero.Then he described the horrors of World War III which was certain to come unless we bought his prescription which he then laid on the table. No other argument, but the applause was long and loud. Uncle Johnny would not have done this. Either he got you clean or not at all. Incidentally, he almost certainly would not have applauded either, for he did have an obstinate streak. Many years ago, as I sat in my studyat home, my little daughtercame running to me, and asked me why was I doing some thing or other. I replied: ‘‘Well, for one reason’’—and then gave her a perfectly honest answer. She looked at me for a moment, as a child will, and then said: ‘‘What’s the other reason, Daddy?’’ I have a feeling that Uncle Johnny would have given the other reason first. My third illustration...

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