STUDENT DAYS 53 



in a normal school in western Missouri. Mr. 

 Straight was most enthusiastic both as a teacher 

 and as a student. There, too, was the principal of 

 the same school, James Johonnot, and his daugh- 

 ter. Among the students were Ernest Ingersoll, 

 Professor C. O. Whitman, then an almost unknown 

 man, Walter Faxon, Charles S. Minot, J. W. 

 Fewkes, Winifred Stearns, David S. Jordan, and 

 others who have since become notable in one of 

 several fields as naturalists. 



I returned to Cambridge in the fall. No pro- 

 fessional opening presenting itself, my studies 

 were again taken up while awaiting and looking 

 for a position. 



Some time late in November a great gale raged 

 on the coast of Massachusetts. The next morning 

 when we visited Fresh Pond, as we often did to 

 see what migrant ducks or birds might have come 

 in there, we found the whole place covered with 

 myriads of little water-birds, which we knew were 

 some kind of strangers from the North. They 

 rested on the surface of the water in incredible 

 numbers, and many sat along the shore. I walked 

 up to a group and took one of them in my hand, 

 for the birds were exhausted, utterly tired out, and 

 seemed bewildered. He was a dumpy creature, 

 seven or eight inches long, with very short neck, 

 a head large in proportion to the body, and black 

 and white in color, with almost no tail. Webbed 



