AGASSIZ'S PERSONAL QUALITY 95 



moment he had all those raging men at his command. He went 

 at once to work with the horses which had been hurt, but were 

 savable. His intense sympathy with the creatures, his know- 

 ledge of the remedies to be applied, his immediate appropria- 

 tion of the whole situation, of which he was at once the master, 

 made those rude folk at once his friends. Nobody asked who 

 he was, for the good reason that he was heart and soul of them. 

 When the task of helping was done, then Agassiz skilfully came 

 to the point of his business the skeletons and this so 

 dextrously and sympathetically, that the men were, it seemed, 

 ready to turn over the living as well as the dead beasts for his 

 service. I have seen a lot of human doing, much of it critically 

 as actor or near observer, but this was in many ways the great- 

 est. The supreme art of it was in the use of a perfectly spon- 

 taneous and most actually sympathetic motive to gain an end. 

 With others, this state of mind would lead to affectation ; with 

 him, it in no wise diminished the quality of the emotion. He 

 could measure the value of the motive, but do it without lessen- 

 ing its moral import. 



As my account of Agassiz's quality should rest upon my 

 experiences with him, I shall now go on to tell how and to what 

 effect he trained me. In that day there were no written exam- 

 inations on any subjects to which candidates for the Lawrence 

 Scientific School had to pass. The professors in charge of the 

 several departments questioned the candidates and determined 

 their fitness to pursue the course of study they desired to un- 

 dertake. Few or none who had any semblance of an education 

 were denied admission to Agassiz's laboratory. At that time, 

 the instructors had, in addition to their meagre salaries, 

 his was then $2500 per annum, the regular fees paid in by 

 the students under his charge. So I was promptly assured that 

 I was admitted. Be it said, however, that he did give me an 

 effective oral examination, which, as he told me, was intended 

 to show whether I could expect to go forward to a degree at the 

 end of four years of study. On this matter of the degree he was 



