Of course, we were glad to go and were gready interested in the 

 Commissioner's plans, which included an aquarium for the public. 

 When I inquired whether a public aquarium were not an unnecessary 

 expense in so small a place and so out of the way as Wood's Hole, 

 Dr. Baird answered me in an illuminating fashion. Some day, he said, 

 a boatload of excursionists would land there, a congressman or two 

 among them, and, when they found there was nothing for the public 

 to see, those congressmen would make things unpleasant at the next 

 session and might succeed in getting the appropriations cut down. 

 This was my first meeting with an administrative official's fear of Con- 

 gress and the power of the purse, an experience which has often been 

 repeated since. The U. S. S. Albatross, the ocean-going steamer of the 

 Fish Commission, which was then quite new, was in harbour and we 

 were welcomed aboard to make a thorough inspection of her. She has 

 since become famous for her deep-sea work in the Gulf, the Caribbean 

 and the Pacific. 



Captain Sigsbee, of the Navy, was then in command of the Albatross 

 and had already gained distinction for his very valuable improvements 

 in deep-sea sounding apparatus. He became very much better known 

 to the public at large as the commander of the ill-fated Maine, when 

 she was blown up in Havana harbour. 



In the autumn of that year Matthew Arnold came to Princeton and 

 delivered his celebrated lecture on Numbers. He took a train from New 

 York, which was not scheduled to stop at the Junction and, when his 

 agent succeeded in getting the train stopped, there was no train on 

 the branch line to take them up, and so the two of them drove up the 

 hill to Princeton in a farm wagon, their long legs dangling down 

 behind. Dr. McCosh, who did not hke Arnold, used to chuckle with 

 great enjoyment over this very undignified entrance. The substance of 

 the lecture was very fine, but the manner of its deUvery was ludicrous, 

 the usual English wooden stiffness being far outdone. Dr. McCosh had 

 a reception for Mr. Arnold after the lecture, but the guest of honour 

 was almost as ligneous in the drawing room as he had been on the 

 platform. Sloane met him on the train the next morning and expressed 

 the pleasure which the lecture had given him, "Ah! yes," said Mr. 

 Arnold, "but what an audience!," an ambiguous phrase which Sloane 

 took to be complimentary. 



After one of the Board meetings, Dr. McCosh informed me that my 

 salary had been increased by a substantial amount (to $2,500 I think it 

 was) and added: "And now you can get married." I took his advice 



C 194 3 



