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My dear Prof. Palmer,

    I was deeply touched by your kind and sympathetic letter of condolence, and especially by your impressive outline of my husband's nature and character in his younger days.

    Dr. Sidis has never changed in his opinions and ways of living. He always liked and lived a most simple, happy and contented life at his home with his loving family and friends.

    We were terribly shocked by his sudden and untimely death. It is a great sorrow to me and family, and great loss to us all.

    His life was devoted entirely to humanity, helping some by personal contact and thus by his writings and teachings.

    It was his plan to spend his later years writing on philosophy and psychology. In fact we have some partially completed manuscripts on the subjects which we hope sometime to publish.

    Dr. Sidis always held you closely in his affection. He valued highly your works and those of Mrs. Palmer, and enjoyed greatly in sharing them with those with whom he came in contact.

    With deep appreciation of your letter

    Yours sincerely,
        Sarah M. Sidis
            (Mrs. Boris Sidis)

November 10, 1923

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"Of his professors at Harvard, Boris was devoted to his professor of ethics, Dr. [George Herbert] Palmer. Alice Palmer, his wife, who founded Wellesley and was its first president, was one of the great women of the country at that time. She was one of the simply great, too, but unfortunately I knew her only a year before she died. With Palmer we became to be good friends over the years." The Sidis Story, Chap. 3

George Herbert Palmer, (1842-1933)
Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity
Harvard University
Portrait: 1926, 40 x 30 inches, Oil
[Click photo for source.]

Contributed by Leon Hansen