FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



teen. In the meantime I had done fairly well at school (The 

 Ithaca Academy). About 1871 I got into some difficulty with the 

 Principal, was feruled, and indignantly left school. My father 

 took my side enthusiastically and put me into an excellent private 

 school of which Mr. William Kinne was Headmaster. It was 

 really a Latin school, but taught mathematics and other things, 

 and was an accepted preparatory school for the universities. 



Then suddenly, in the night, in March, 1873, my father died, 

 at the age of forty. He left my mother with three boys to care 

 for and to educate. I was fifteen, my brother George ten, and 

 my brother Frank six. She took up the burden bravely. Her 

 financial means were comparatively small, although she had 

 some valuable real estate, and a big house that my father had 

 built two years before. 



Both father and mother had associated much with the young 

 professors of the University and their families, and my mother 

 realized that I should enter the University immediately. So on 

 my sixteenth birthday I passed the entrance examination and 

 registered as a freshman in September, 1873. 



I entered in the course of Civil Engineering, although I wanted 

 to study Natural History. My mother's professorial friends, how- 

 ever, assured her that there was no future in Natural History, 

 except possibly an underpaid professorship in some small college. 

 Civil Engineering was then very much in the public eye. Great 

 railroads were being built, American engineers were being sent 

 to South America and all over the world to build railroads, and 

 the engineering courses were filled with students. 



It proved to be an interesting experience, but when I got into 

 Differential Calculus it was too much for me, and I failed in my 

 examinations. Then, without telling my mother, I took the 

 studies I hked best. I was J. H. Comstock's first laboratory 

 student, and I spent many hours in his laboratory. I studied 



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