the State of Iowa, to where my family had moved, 

 I labored along, the most indifferent of scholars, 

 finally leaving school, in the seventh grade, at the 

 age of fifteen. Certainly in my own instance the 

 child was not father to the man. The future 

 naturalist-artist-writer was not then adumbrated 

 in such commonly-assumed juvenile attributes as 

 studious habits and a preoccupation with beauty 

 or books. Such pursuits did not become the serious 

 business of my life until I was well past my major- 

 ity; in my boyhood I seldom gave them a thought. 

 My ambition then lay in a far different direction — 

 Reader, do not gasp, I wanted to become a prize- 

 fighter. My models, therefore, were not Agassiz, 

 Wuerpel, Macauley, et al., but John L. Sullivan 

 and James J. Corbett . . . 



Well, I did become a prize-fighter. And now I 

 must expose something which I have concealed in 

 the opening chapter. It was from the proceeds of 

 one of my pugilistic affairs that I was enabled 

 finally to buy my first microscope. 



But if the adage just paraphrased in a preceding 

 sentence does not hold good, another as homely, 

 though trite, surely will: As the twig is bent, so 

 the tree is inclined. For it is unquestionably due 



[81] 



