Cambridge Sketches | Page 6

he
believed that more important work was to be done in the new world,--
which, by the way, he considered the oldest portion of the globe.

In height and figure Agassiz was so much like Doctor Hill that when
the two were together this was very noticeable. They were both broad-
shouldered, deep-chested men, and of about the same height, with large,
well-rounded heads; but Agassiz had an elastic French step, whereas
Doctor Hill walked with something of a shuffle. One might even
imagine Agassiz dancing a waltz. Lowell said of him that he was
"emphatically a man, and that wherever he went he made a friend." His
broad forehead seemed to smile upon you while he was talking, and
from his simple- hearted and genial manners you felt that he would be a
friend whenever you wanted one. He was the busiest and at the same
time one of the most accessible persons in the university.
On one occasion, happening to meet a number of students at the corner
of University Building, one of them was bold enough to say to him:
"Prof. Agassiz, would you be so good as to explain to us the difference
between the stone of this building and that of Boylston Hall? We know
that they are both granite, but they do not look alike." Agassiz was
delighted, and entertained them with a brief lecture on primeval rocks
and the crust of the earth's surface. He told them that Boylston Hall was
made of syenite; that most of the stone called granite in New England
was syenite, and if they wanted to see genuine granite they should go to
the tops of the White Mountains. Then looking at his watch he said:
"Ah, I see I am late! Good day, my friends; and I hope we shall all meet
again." So off he went, leaving each of his hearers with the embryonic
germ of a scientific interest in his mind.
Longfellow tells in his diary how Agassiz came to him when his health
broke down and wept. "I cannot work any longer," he said; and when
he could not work he was miserable. The trouble that afflicted him was
congestion of the base of the brain, a disorder that is not caused so
frequently by overwork as by mental emotion. His cure by Dr. Edward
H. Clarke, by the use of bromides and the application of ice, was
considered a remarkable one at the time; but five years later the
disorder returned again and cost him his life.
He believed that the Laurentian Mountains, north of the St. Lawrence
River, was the first land which showed itself above the waste of waters
with which the earth was originally surmounted.
Perhaps the most picturesque figure on the college grounds was the old
Greek professor, Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles; a genuine

importation from Athens, whom the more imaginative sort of people
liked to believe was descended from the Greek poet Sophocles of the
Periclean age. He was much too honest himself to give countenance to
this rumor, and if you inquired of him concerning it, he would say that
he should like very well to believe it, and it was not impossible,
although there were no surnames in ancient Greece before the time of
Constantine; he had not found any evidence in favor of it. He was a
short, thick-set man with a large head and white Medusa-like hair; but
such an eye as his was never seen in an Anglo-Saxon face. It reminded
you at once of Byron's Corsair, and suggested contingencies such as
find no place in quiet, law-abiding New England,--the possibility of
sudden and terrible concentration. His clothing had been long since out
of fashion, and he always wore a faded cloth cap, such as no student
would dare to put on. He lived like a hermit in No. 3 Holworthy, where
he prepared his own meals rather than encounter strange faces at a
boarding-house table. Once he invited the president of the college to
supper; and the president went, not without some misgivings as to what
his entertainment might be. He found, however, a simple but
well-served repast, including a French roll and a cup of black coffee
with the grounds in it. The coffee loosened Sophocles's usually reticent
tongue, and after that, as the president himself expressed it, they had a
delightful conversation. Everybody respected Sophocles in spite of his
eccentric mode of life, and the Freshmen were as much afraid of him as
if he had been the Minotaur of Crete.
The reason for his economy did not become apparent until after his
death. When he first came to the university he made friends with a
gentleman in Cambridge to whom he was much attached, but who, at
the time we write of,