THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



was about five feet ten inches in height, and was slender and 

 active. He looked more Hke a poet or an artist, or possibly an 

 actor, than a man of science. I had seen him six years before at 

 Ithaca. He greeted me with sufficient cordiality, and introduced 

 me to his only other assistant, Theodor Pergande, a little German 

 of forty, with a heavy brown beard, who spoke fluent but rather 

 ungrammatical English, and who had charge of the rearing of 

 the insects and the making of the notes. Pergande was conscious 

 of his poor English, and was anxious to better it in order to 

 make his notes more readable. Knowing that I was college bred, 

 he consulted me as to the best way to bring this about. I sug- 

 gested that he should read the masters of English style. Some 

 months later I discovered that he had been reading Spenser's 

 "Faerie Queene" and G. W. P. James' novels. There was a 

 distinct difference in the wording of his notes. For example, a 

 record of the biology of, let us say, a species of Smerinthus would 

 begin: "The sun was setting behind the distant hills when a 

 solitary horseman" . . . and so on, and so on. But there will be 

 more of Pergande later. 



Much to my disappointment, I found that Professor Riley 

 wished to use me at the beginning more as a clerk than as a 

 scientific assistant. The typewriter had not come into use, but 

 for a few weeks I was able to take his dictation in a bastard 

 shorthand that I had invented during college lectures, and to 

 write his letters by longhand. 



At the end of three or four weeks, however, he asked me to 

 prepare for him a manual of silk culture, which I did without 

 much trouble, after consulting the books on the subject, both 

 French and Italian, and the Bulletin was published under his 

 authorship. 



Life in Washington in those early days was intensely interest- 

 ing to me, but I much doubt its interest to other people. Pro- 



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