ABSTRACT
With remarriage Davis recaptured much of his former self-assurance and cheerfulness. He now continues to take a fatherly interest in the department’s advanced students. Earlier writers have made many references to his generosity without giving examples; the following is an actual incident and gives some idea of the extent of his kindness.
While Ellis W. Shuler was working on his doctoral degree at Harvard, the eminent geologist William Morris Davis became much interested in the young man. Just before Shuler’s departure for Dallas in 1915 to begin teaching in the newly founded Southern Methodist University, Professor Davis called him into the book-lined study in the Morris home and said ‘Here, Shuler, take all of these books. You’ll need them in Texas’.
Thus the geology collection in the University library owes its beginning to the interest of a famous geologist in his pupil. Included in this magnificent gift, which Dr. Shuler immediately made available to his students, were many items which a struggling university in its first year of classes could not have dreamed of owning. In addition to files of the U.S. Geological Survey publication, the first 12 volumes of the ‘Bulletin’ of the Geological Society of America and the complete run of the ‘American Geologist’, there were hundreds of monographs, studies and papers by geologists such as Lapparent, LeConte, Lyell, Dana, Jukes-Brown, Agassiz, Geikie, Marcou, Maury, and Viollet-le-duc.
A stipulation in the gift made by Professor Davis prevented the legal transfer of these books to SMU, but that was only a technicality which never interfered with use of the volumes. The library catalogued and administered the collection even during the first few years when they were housed in Dr. Schuler’s classroom.
(‘The Mustang Magazine’, Southern Methodist University, Vol. VI, No. 5, March 1954, p. 12)