Prof. Benjamin Pierce, the mathematician, was rather an awe-inspiring
figure as he strolled through the college grounds, recognizing few and
speaking to none--apparently oblivious to everything except the internal
life which he led in the "functions of curves" and "celestial mechanics."
He was a fine-looking man, with his ashen-gray hair and beard, his wide
brow and features more than usually regular. When he was observed
conversing with President Hill the fine scholars shook their heads wisely
as if something remarkable was taking place. The president had said in
one of his addresses to the Freshmen that it would require a whole
generation to utilize Professor Pierce's discoveries in algebra; and I
believe, at last accounts, they have not been utilized yet. He would
often be seen in the horse-cars making figures on scraps of paper, which
he carried with him for the purpose, oblivious as ever to what was taking
place about him. To "have a head like old Benny Pierce" has become a
proverb in Boston and Cambridge.

Neither did he lack independence of character. In his later years he not
unfrequently attended the meetings of the Radical Club, or Chestnut
Street Club, at Mrs. John T. Sargent's, in Boston, a place looked upon
with pious horror by good Doctor Peabody, and equally discredited by the
young positivists whom President Eliot had introduced in the college
faculty. His remarks on such occasions were fresh, original, and very
interesting; and once he brought down the house with laughter and
applause by explaining the mental process which prevented him from
appreciating a joke until after all others had done so. This naive
confession made his audience like him.

It is a curious geneological fact that Professor Pierce had a son named
after him who would seem to have been born in mirth, to have lived in