The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-01-11
ON a DIET OF FIGURES.
Names Human Algebra and Arith-
metic Wonder
From the Ne,c Yor. Herald

ngureS. Such has been the steady diet of
one man in Maine, year in and year out, for
the past quarter of a century. He is ''Pro-
fessor" George S. McIntire, and no one is
better known to citizens of Southwest
ern Maine than this oft-encountered person,
With his little tin pail and his armful of
DOCKS. Almost any day, be the weather
what 1t may, he may be seen saunteriDg
lelsurely alou s the main thoroughfares or
crouched in some hallway, upon a doorstep,
absorbed in the one great work Of his life,
mathematics. He is not exactly an intel
lectual tramp, but, perhaps, more strictly,
numerical nomad. His is a life wrapt up
In igures-those dry, abstract things, 50
cold, palpable and undeniable. Only when
delVing in them is his cup of happiness
filled to the brim.
"Prof.n George S. McIntire was born in
the little settlement of North Kennebunk-
port, Me-, on Jan. 81, 1876. He sprang from
good, hardy, Anglo-Saxon stock, and had
he not inherited constitution of iron, he
would never have been able to withstand
the ordeal through which he has passed, for
In his aimleSs rambles he has undergone
enough exposures aud privations to knock
the underpinning out of a dozen human
frames. When quite young McIntire was
put at work upon the farm, and at the age
OF l6 was sent to the village school. The
curriculum of the school, which was kept
open only during six weeks in winter, did
not soar higher than the rudimentary ele-
ments of mental arithmetic, and the teacher
was Moses Wilson, long since passed to the
other shore.
A HATEFUL GIFT.
Pedagogue Wilson determined to become
physician, and on the last day of his ad-
ministration as teacher presented young
McIntire with an old leather-covered alge-
bra. The presentation of the old algebra,
yellow with age, yet glowing with truths,
marked the turning point in Mclntire's life.
1t became the KEY to all the mans future
idiosyncrasies. Never before had George
seen book called an algebra, and when he
took it home he found his parents in equal
ignorance. 1t was beyond them.
Nevertheless, young McIntire was soon
knee-deep among the KS, US, and rs. 1t
seemed strange to him that anything tangi-
BILE could be resolved out of those frag-
mentary characters, but the more he
thought Of it the more il interested him,
and ere long he became deeply infatuated
with the study. His parents tried to dis
suade him from his task, but, unmindful of
their suggestions, he absorbed chapter after
chapter Of the wonderful book, and neg
lected farm work as often as he could steal
away into the more sequestered hooks Of
the forest. Here in the silence Of the woods,
broken only by the voices of the birds or
the rustling of the leaves, young McIntire
spent many an afternoon, deeply plunged
in thought So proficient did ne finally
become in the algebraic branch of mathe.
mates, that in two years after he received
the old leather-covered book, he could re-
vert an algebraic series without the aid Of
a teacher. Such other mathematical books
as he could obtain were also studioUsly con-
sidered.
McIntire remained on the farm, doing
little else than figuring, until he was well
along in years. Once he ran away from
home and secured a job in a mill in Saco.
but he did not earn much, and soon gave up
the undertaking in order to accept job at
painting in big machine shop IN Bidde-
ford. The paint hadian i'll effect upon his
system, and he wandered up to Buxton,
where he pushed the shovel and hoe for one
Benjamin Grant. After a month of this
drudgery-for anything was drudgery out
side of mathematics for him-he returned
to the old homestead, where he remained a
series of years until his parents died. Then
he removed to Biddeford some time in the
early ''sixties."
Soon after McIntire came to Biddeford
he went to New York and took steerage
passage by the Nicaragua route to San
Francisco. On the passage out he fell in
with a French general who happened to
be on beard, and was a college graduate.
The man of Mars expressed much surprise
at Georges remarkable inroads upon the
science of mathematics, and on one occa-
sion, during a protracted discussion of the
subject. many of the ships passengers and
crew gathered about the pair with mingled
feelings of pity and awe.
A MATHEMATICIAN SAVING WOOD.
While in San Francisco McIntire sawed
wood and did other odd jobs, but he found
it difficult to obtain livelihood. Never
theless, on every pleasant Sabbath he went
to the Lone Mountain burial ground to de-
cipher the characters on the graveStones
there, and, by way of diversion, to rehearse
his mathematical studies. McIntire returned
from California by way Of the isthmus in
1866
Professor the title he now went by in
Maine. So thoroughly absorbed had he be-
come in the one study of his life that it had
taken on form of tnonoua ia. And to
day, outside the realm of figures, all the
world is a blank to him. He declares that
he likes the study we'll enough to 90 without
his natural food, and this he has frequently
done. He has seldom eaten q warm meal
or slept in bed during many years past.
Much of the time he has slept in barns,
sometimes in old carts, and not infreqnently
he has remained out of doors all night. AT
the present time he is occupying a small
room over store in this city, but nothing
in the shape of a bedstead adorns the room
the occupant securing repose upon an old
blanket thrown upon the floor. For years
McIntire has subsisted upon milk, bread
and fruit, which he purchases or begs IN
small quantities at time, going into g
doorway or a livery stable to enjoy the
frugal meal
AN AUTHORITY ON MATHEMATICS.
Thoroughly untitled as George S. McIn-
tire may be for all the other walks and
duties of life, it is generally conceded that
he is a mathematician of no mean merit
No Poisson, no Plana, no Gauss, nc
De Morgan ever put a more unin-
terrupted life of devotion into the
study of mathematics than he. II
is well known in these parts that he is pre-
pared to tackle, without gloves, anything
in the line of figures, from young arith-
metic to the transoendental calculus, in
Guiding the bipomial theorem, the quad
nature of the hyperbola, or analytical
trigonometry. He devours everything il
books and papers that even hints Of
mathematics, and keeps thoroughly posted
on all the latest information concerning
this branch of education. When talking
upon the subject he pours out volume OF
words. figures, and quotations so rapidly
that it is difficult to keep the connection.
McIntire never perUses novels, for he be-
lieves they corrupt the mind, and the only
studies outside of mathematics in which he
takes delight are mental philosophy anc