Read it through once

More than a month ago Berlin began to prepare to celebrate Professor Virchow’s seventieth birthday. When the birthday arrived, the middle of October, it seemed to me that all the world of science arrived with it; deputation after deputation came, bringing the homage and reverence of far cities and centres of learning, and during the whole of a long day the hero of it sat and received such witness of his greatness as has seldom been vouchsafed to any man in any walk of life in any time ancient or modern. These demonstrations were continued in one form or another day after day, and were presently merged in similar demonstrations to his twin in science and achievement, Professor Helmholtz, whose seventieth birthday is separated from Virchow’s by only about three weeks; so nearly as this did these two extraordinary men come to being born together. Two such births have seldom signalised a single year in human history.