Louis Agassiz as a Teacher | Page 5

furniture, stayed with the memory of him. When I first met Louis
Agassiz, he was still in the prime of his admirable manhood; though he
was then fifty-two years old, and had passed his constructive period, he
still had the look of a young man. His face was the most genial and
engaging that I had ever seen, and his manner captivated me altogether.
But as I had been among men who had a free swing, and for a year
among people who seemed to me to be cold and super-rational, hungry
as I doubtless was for human sympathy, Agassiz's welcome went to my
heart--I was at once his captive. It has been my good chance to see
many men of engaging presence and ways, but I have never known his
equal.
As the personal quality of Agassiz was the greatest of his powers, and
as my life was greatly influenced by my immediate and enduring
affection for him, I am tempted to set forth some incidents which show
that my swift devotion to my new-found master was not due to the
accidents of the situation, or to any boyish fancy. I will content myself
with one of those stories, which will of itself show how easily he
captivated men, even those of the ruder sort. Some years after we came
together, when indeed I was formally his assistant,--I believe it was in
1866,--he became much interested in the task of comparing the
skeletons of thoroughbred horses with those of common stock. I had at
his request tried, but without success, to obtain the bones of certain
famous stallions from my acquaintances among the racing men in
Kentucky. Early one morning there was a fire, supposed to be
incendiary, in the stables in the Beacon Park track, a mile from the
College, in which a number of horses had been killed, and many badly
scorched. I had just returned from the place, where I had left a mob of
irate owners and jockeys in a violent state of mind, intent on finding
some one to hang. I had seen the chance of getting a valuable lot of
stallions for the Museum, but it was evident that the time was most
inopportune for suggesting such a disposition of the remains. Had I

done so, the results would have been, to say the least, unpleasant.
As I came away from the profane lot of horsemen gathered about the
rums of their fortunes or their hopes, I met Agassiz almost running to
seize the chance of specimens. I told him to come back with me, that
we must wait until the mob had spent its rage; but he kept on. I told
him further that he risked spoiling his good chance, and finally that he
would have his head punched; but he trotted on. I went with him, in the
hope that I might protect him from the consequences of his curiosity.
When we reached the spot, there came about a marvel; in a moment he
had all those raging men at his command. He went at once to work with
the horses which had been hurt, but were savable. His intense sympathy
with the creatures, his knowledge of the remedies to be applied, his
immediate appropriation of the whole situation, of which he was at
once the master, made those rude folk at once his friends. Nobody
asked who he was, for the good reason that he was heart and soul of
them. When the task of helping was done, then Agassiz skilfully came
to the point of his business--the skeletons--and this so dexterously and
sympathetically, that the men were, it seemed, ready to turn over the
living as well as the dead beasts for his service. I have seen a lot of
human doing, much of it critically as actor or near observer, but this
was in many ways the greatest. The supreme art of it was in the use of a
perfectly spontaneous and most actually sympathetic motive to gain an
end. With others, this state of mind would lead to affectation; with him,
it in no wise diminished the quality of the emotion. He could measure
the value of the motive, but do it without lessening its moral import.
As my account of Agassiz's quality should rest upon my experiences
with him, I shall now go on to tell how and to what effect he trained me.
In that day there were no written examinations on any subjects to which
candidates for the Lawrence Scientific School had to pass. The
professors in charge of the several departments questioned the
candidates, and determined their fitness to pursue the course of study
they desired to undertake. Few or none who had any semblance of an
education were denied admission to Agassiz's laboratory.