Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1909-03-01
Ernest n. Wheeler.

| wish to mention only three scenes
in the short though full and eventful
career of an old schoolfellow. Better
than any words of mine can they tell
the story of his service-of his life.
The first scene is when the train OF
Names sick soldiers came home from
the camp at Chickamauga in 1898. The
young surgeons executive and medical
ability and tender care was made
manifest on that trying trip. The SOL
diers remember.
The second scene is while he was
serving as a captain and assistant sur
geon of Volunteers in the Philippines,
when he made that wild nght-ride
over the preciptous and treacherous
trail to Cervantes, Lepanto, buoyed up
by the hope of saving the life of a
brother officer sick there, shut in by
MOUNTAINS almost impossible in the
dav time-the country of the savage
Head-Hunters of Northern Luzon. The
hard riding cavalrymen there were
proud of him and those higher up
sent congratulations.
In the third scene he is on the 18th
mus of Panama striving under Colonel
Gorgas to carry forward the great
work of sanitation.
'rn is selected from the Ancon hos
pital to be health officer of Colon.
.on, at that time undoubtedly the
most unhealthy spot on earth! Colon,
built on ground so low that there could
be no drainage; Astounding in filthy
pools flooded by every tropical shower:
surrounded. by evil smelling swamp;
! 1, - 10, .nl1 f1.N
bearing mosquitoes.
Everybody now knows how the doc
tors and engineers working together
made Colon sanitary. how the swamps
were cleared off and numerous large
bitches dug through so that the cleans
ing sea could in it's tidal ebb and flow
permeate the infested places and kill
off the dreaded mosquitoes. Yellow
fever was stamped out on the 1sthmus
and the building Of the Panama canal
made possible.
Not small was the part he had in
this stupendous task and the medical
faculty of his alma mater Dartmouth
has recognized it. 1t is fitting that
here at home we should realize that
this Maine boy made good as the sons
of Maine have a way of doing
We expect it, do we not? and soma
times we are so absorbed in our affairs
that we do not wake up to the achiev-
ments of fellow-mortal until the
tolling bell tells of his passing.
Let us then not forget this clear
eyed genial eyer-boyish man whose
laugh was So infectious-the optimist
and comrade and in not forgetting him
let us bear in mind and sympathy
those he left behind.
Robert Louis Stevenson says:
"r,.nr,- heart that has beat strong
and cheerfully has left a hopeful i'm
pulse behind it in the world and bet
,e ,u>. tradition of mankind. And
even if death catch people, like an
open pitfall, and in mid career, laying
out vast projects, and planning mon
strous foundations. flushed with hope.
and their mouths full OF boastful
language, they should be at once trip
ped up and silenced; is there not some
thing brave and spirited in such a
termination and does not life go down
with a better grace, foaming in full
body over a precipice. than miserably
struggling to an end in sandy deltas?
Death has not been
suffered to take so much as an illusion
from his heart. In the hot-fit of life,
a-tiptoe on the highest point of being,
he passes at bound on to the other
side The noise of the mallet and
chsel is scarcely quenched. the trum-
pets are hardly done blowing when.
trailing with him clouds of glory, this