CHAPTER IV 



95 



" For Richer for Poorer 



E 



VEN before I entered Harvard, one of the greatest 

 stimulants to my career had come to me in the course of 

 my schoolboy visits to the New York Zoological Park, 

 where I used to spend my Saturdays. I knew Professor 

 Henry Fairfield Osborn, the President of the Zoological 

 Society, because one of his sons was a schoolmate of mine. 

 To me, a shy fifteen-year-older in those days, he seemed 

 very awesome, but one Saturday afternoon he did some- 

 thing which enriched my life more than he ever realized. 

 On this occasion he sat down beside me in the train going 

 back from the Bronx to Grand Central Station. He asked 

 me what I had been reading and then said, "There are four 

 great books for boys who like natural history." And he 

 named them: Wallace's Malay Archipelago, Belt's The 

 Naturalist in Nicaragua, Bates's book on the Amazon, and 

 Hudson's on the La Plata region. Well, I read them in this 

 order. Wallace's book, coming first, made the greatest im- 

 pression; I read it over and over again until I knew it almost 

 by heart. And my desire to see the Dutch East Indies be- 

 came so all-consuming that I must have seemed a veritable 

 monomaniac to my parents. 



I was married on the first of October, 1906. When I 

 had won a yes from Rosamond, in the face of countless 

 competitors, I soft-pedaled the fact that I planned to leave 

 for the Dutch East Indies as soon as we were married. This 



