144 



100 V'EARS EXPLORING LIFE, 1888-1988 



James P. McGinnis preparing a dogfish. MBL Archives. 



At Other times, the students would go out in small rowboats. Curtis 

 recalls that when he served on the staff of collectors, Gertrude Stein 

 attended one of the MBL summer sessions. She had been enrolled as a 

 medical student at Johns Hopkins but had already decided against a medical 

 career. She did not make a pcirticularly flattering impression to Curtis: "For 

 us that summer she was just a big, fat girl waddling around tlie laboratory 

 and hoisting herself in and out of tlie row boats on collecting nips." 



The supply depai'tment followed the Mess in hiring students to help 

 with the increasing work load, as the MBL expanded its extramural speci- 

 men supply business. Most students quickly learned to wait on tlie tables. 

 Leai'ning to sail and to collect marine organisms — and all tlie other little 

 tricks of the trade — took longer. One young man recalled his arrival at the 

 MBL in 1914. His faculty advisor in Iowa had urged him to go to the MBL for 

 the summer. When he responded that he had to work during the summers 

 in order to attend school during the ac^ademic yeai', he was adxised to wi'ite 

 and ask for a collecting job. He did, and he received a job. He had to learn 

 a lot, and once lay awake all night in his Candle House bunk practicing tlie 

 proper knots for making a lunning boat fast aftei' a particulaiiy embar- 

 rassing day. The captain's commands earlier in the day to "take a line" and 



