Clary, Mr.

Francis P. Clary was a laboratory assistant, janitor, and man-of-all-work at the Boylston Hall laboratory, Harvard University, in the 1860s. In "Worthies Who Helped Harvard Along" (The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, vol. 23, no. 89, September 1914), F. W. Hackett '61 wrote: "Let us step into Boylston, and note where the unflinching Clary stands, amid all the congregation of salts and acids. The arcana of solutions and precipitates (some of which work and some don't), the furious bubblings, and the clouds of noxious gases pale not his dusky cheek. Nay, even though the experiment be at once the most unintelligible and the most hazardous known to science, Clary goes ahead, pumping and emptying and mixing, as serene as if he were the holder of a paid-up policy in a first-class insurance company. You recall, sir, the universal belief that this important factor in the curriculum was ticketed for a farewell exit (we knew not what moment) up through the roof, shot skyward with the débris of apparatus, and the fragments of an exploded formula: all of which would be adequately explained at the next lecture. The best authenticated apotheosis of Clary, as I recall it, assigned him a station (with a background of blazing strontium) at the right hand of Boyle, him I mean, renowned as the Father of Chemistry and brother of the Earl of Cork."