43 



was closed, out poured the interesting items and enquiries about 

 Cliemistry and Zoology, which absorbed all his interest, and he was 

 allowed to go. He thought he should be willing to return to Col- 

 lege preparations, and his excessive labors in the Museum (for 

 Prof. Agassiz was then arranging it, and his pupils worked with 

 great enthusiasm to aid him) induced his mother to take him 

 away at the end of the year, with the hopes of his doing so. He 

 tried the Greek, with an interesting and able teacher, but his heart 

 was not in it. After listening to all the arguments that could be 

 adduced on the other side, to which he gave respectful considera- 

 tion, in spite of his strong protest, he was allowed three months 

 to deliberate, unmolested, between Harvard College, the Lawrence 

 Scientific School, and West Point. Mr. R. W. Emerson, who took 

 much kind interest in him, and who generally councils the College 

 course, said, "If the boy has a vocation thank God for it and let him 

 follow his genius." Mr. Thoreau, with whom he had become inti- 

 mate on a journey to the West, told him " no teachers ever did him 

 any good in College." The result of the deliberation was what might 

 have been expected, and he rejoicingly pursued the Scientific path. 

 In this decision he could have found many supporters amoug the most 

 advanced thinkers of the age. 



His powers of observation became more keen than ever under the 

 training, and he undoubtedly studied Avith some feverish anxiety, in 

 order to justify his course. The field widened as he proceeded. It 

 had been his taste and inclination, rather than any conscious process 

 of reasoning, that had determined his course, but he grew more and 

 more confident that he could study better alone, and with a purpose, 

 than in classes, where the mastery of subjects was impossible, and 

 with only a vague expectation of future good. His enthusiasm and 

 exhaustive application became almost too intense for his bodily 

 strength. He worked at Zoology in his leisure hours, in his own way, 

 which was to reduce all animal life to its lowest terms — skeletons! 

 And this gave him some out-of-door recreation. 



He excelled in anatomical preparations, and a large collection of 

 alcoholic specimens attest his industry; some hundreds of these 

 finally found their way to the Cambridge Museum, and many of the 

 reptiles he collected went abroad to other Museums. The Museum 

 ditch at Cambridge was supplied by himself and brothers with 

 turtles, frogs, snakes, etc. His mother, by whom these details are 

 furnished, writes : "The reign of snakes was a reign of terror to the 

 uninitiated, especially when on one occasion six or seven goodly sized 

 ones escaped from the place of their confinement in the house and 

 were not to be found for many days." These details of early life serve 

 to show that "the boy was father to the man." 



