PREFATORY SKETCH
OF THE
HISTORY AND CHARACTER OF THE FIRST AMERICAN
CONGRESS OF PHILOLOGISTS AND OF THE
WHITNEY MEMORIAL MEETING.
FOR many years the various American societies that have for their object the promotion of philological science in its several aspects have held their stated meetings separately, at different times of the year and in different places. The project of uniting them in a joint convention, with general and special sessions, had doubtless often suggested itself to many, and had been the subject of more or less discussion and effort in private and in public. Such discussions, however, were without palpable result, until, in March, 1894, upon the vigorous initiative of Talcott Williams, Esq., of Philadelphia, new efforts were made, and, thanks in largest measure to his persistence, were pushed to a successful conclusion.[1]
The death, on the 7th of June, 1894, of Professor William Dwight Whitney— for more than a quarter of a century the leading figure in American philology—at once awakened in his friends and pupils a
- ↑ See "Journal of the American Oriental Society," vol. 15, p. cxliv, and vol. 16, pp. v and lv; also "Transactions of the American Philological Association," vol. 25, pp. xxv and xxvi.
