JOSIAH P. COOKE 111 



this or that, it was dangerous for a student to be seen in parley 

 with the enemy, and the leaders were not supposed to have 

 much to do with the adversary's recruits. Coming as Agassiz 

 did as a foreigner, successful in his efforts to get money for his 

 large purposes, intense and outspoken as regards the ancient 

 methods of teaching in the College, he naturally met with much 

 opposition, which in his strong way he did not conciliate but 

 overrode. The result was that his students found it well to 

 herd together and have little to do with the followers of the 

 other men. This, be it said, was not true in the case of Jeffries 

 Wyman, with whom, despite incidental frictions as in the case 

 above mentioned, Agassiz always retained friendly relations; 

 he had indeed a great admiration for him. The fact that my 

 master, who was the very antithesis of Wyman, understood 

 and valued him, showed me that he had a rare capacity for 

 judging men, and further that his conflicts with others were 

 not due, as some thought, to his grasping desires. 



Although in the curious system of instruction then existing 

 in the Scientific School, essentially one of apprenticeship, the 

 students of geology and zoology were not required to attend 

 any other instruction, I went to certain courses of lectures, par- 

 ticularly to those given by Josiah P. Cooke in chemistry and to 

 those of James Russell Lowell in literature. Cooke's lectures 

 and experiments there was no formal laboratory work 

 gave an excellent outline of the subject as it was then known. 

 At first, owing to a certain solemnity of speech combined with 

 a nervous trembling which affected his voice as well as his hands, 

 he made a somewhat unpleasant impression. Yet soon his ear- 

 nestness, his willingness to help us to understand, made him 

 valued for his real worth. From him I learned a little of chem- 

 istry and chemical physics, which has made me deplore my lack 

 of real learning in that vast field. 



Outside of natural science, the only teacher I listened to in 

 my student days was Lowell, whose lectures I attended off and 

 on for three years. I was first attracted to him by hearing that 



