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Show Earned Fortune With His Pen Prof. Ellas Loomls of Yale Made More Than $300,000 by Writing Writ-ing Textbooks Which Had Great Sale. One of the largest, If not actually tbe largest, bequest made to any American university by an officer of the university was he estate which by his will Prof. Elias Loomis, who died in 18S9, bequeathed to Yale University. Uni-versity. Professor Loomis was an eccentric and yet very greatly respected member mem-ber of the Yale faculty for more than a generation. There is no alumnus of Yale whose degree was received between the early sixties and the late eighties who does not recall affectionately affection-ately and yet with a slight smile of humorous recollection this quaint and eccentric professor vastly learned in natural philosophy, mathematics and especially astronomy. Among men of science the world over Professor Loomis ranked with Dan, the great geologist; Hadley, the Greek scholar and father of Arthur Hadley, president presi-dent at this time of Yale; and Silli-man, Silli-man, one of the world's great authorities author-ities upon chemistry. Tbe United v States government recognized Profes sor Loomis as the foremost meteorologist meteor-ologist of the United States, and vhea the government established its first weather bureau this was not doDe until after consultation with Professor Loonjls. Professor Loomis was a man of singular taciturnity. If he could express ex-press his thought in a single word, he would do that. Moreover, he led almost a hermit's life. The world of Tale University saw nothing of him except at chapel, at Sunday services, and in the lecture room. After lectures lec-tures were ended or the recitations brought to a close, Professor Loomis would depart quietly, always unaccompanied, unac-companied, from the lecture room, crossing New Haven gveen to his lodg- j Ing room, which faced the green He ' always wore a conspicuous black and I white checked necktie, gathered into j a bow knot of mathematical accur- acy; his linen was immaculate. j Within the time specified by statute stat-ute after the death of Professor Loomis his will was offered for probate. pro-bate. It contained only two bequests, and one of these was a partial one. He bequeathed his entire estate to Yale College, one-half of the estate to pass Immediately into the possession posses-sion of the college; in the other half his sons were to have a life interest, the income from it being divided between be-tween them, and after that interest lapsed, the entire estate was to go to Yale for the purpose of establishing as great and fully equipped an astronomical as-tronomical observatory as the amount of the estate would permit. Every one around Yale gasped when he learned the provisions of the will. Had this quiet professor, who had led a lonely life, been able to save out of his salary a sum as great as twenty-five thousand dollars? That was the estimate of the value of the estate commonly made from the nature na-ture of the bequest. But when the estate was inventoried and the administrators admin-istrators made, their reports to thP probate court, a most amazing state of affairs was disclosed. The quiet professor had amassed not $25,000, but a fortune a litt'a in excess of $300,000; his Investments had been made with wisdom, most of them were what are called quick assets. And one after another of his old faculty fac-ulty associates went about asking how had it been possible for Professor Loorais to accumulate so large an estate es-tate as that. It was known that he had inherited nothing and that, however how-ever the estate was gained by him, it was the result of his own savings or work. Not until some time after the probating pro-bating of the estate did the true explanation ex-planation of the manner in which his fortune had been accumulated begin be-gin to be made in a sort of confidential confiden-tial way to the inner circle at Yale college. Then it was said: "Professor "Profes-sor Loomis was one of the most successful suc-cessful of the writers of American text books, not only from the scholarly scholar-ly point of view, but from that of business. His text books upon mathematics mathe-matics and astronomy, his text books upon meteorology and allied sciences, had a sale wherever the English lan: guage was spoken, a sale the magnitude magni-tude of which was known only to Professor Pro-fessor Loomis and his publishers." And in clearing up the estate evidence evi-dence was also obtained among some of Professor Loomis" papers tending to show that at the time when he be gan to write text books he had no other purpose in view than the mak ing of Yale University the beneficiary of all of his earnings from tbe books, subject to a life interest in a part of the estate which his sons were to have. (Copyright, 1911, by E. J. Edwards. All Rights Reserved.) |