Biographical Sketch 23 



out an expedition across South America, and be received 

 the A. B. degree in 1870. At one time he tried life in his 

 father's counting house. Here he exhibited characteristic 

 interest in the solution of problems and distaste for such 

 mechanical drudgery as had only practical and not theo- 

 retical ends in view, by the invention of a calculating 

 machine to lessen the amount of unprofitable manual 

 work. 



To get university education despite lack of funds he 

 became a teacher in De Veaux College, 1870-1873, where 

 he profited by communion with nature as presented 

 along the rapids below the falls of Niagara. There he 

 entered upon a second marked period in necessary prep- 

 aration for his life-work. He learned the boy mind and 

 the simple way to teach by arousing interest in the truths 

 of nature. Some others profited by this later when 

 he was induced to give private lessons in natural history 

 to boys in Newport, and the same bent always made his 

 university lectures the opposite of that ill-digested verbi- 

 age that is sometimes heard. It was then that he became 

 so strongly impressed by the writings of Bishop Berkeley 

 as never to be oblivious of the relation of observational 

 science to the fundamental character of the ego. 



He was drawn by the fame of Agassiz to his first ex- 

 perience with marine life at the famous experiment, the 

 Penikese school, where he shared the discomforts and 

 delights of the beginnings of that hastily materialized 

 ideal. Sailing to that island by fishing vessel the poetic 

 strain in his composition long treasured the glimpse of his 

 point of departure, the then picturesque hamlet of South 

 Dartmouth, much later recognized, for its rare atmos- 

 phere, by the artist, Tryon. 



At Harvard College, he received the degree of Phi. D., in 

 1875. He had the stimulus of contact and friendship with 

 Hyatt and McCrady and the environment of the museums 

 of Agassiz and of the Boston Natural History Society. 

 With Hyatt's aid he added to his own studies of the 



