CHAPTER XXV 



THE TEACHER 



1864-1905 



DIFFICULT as it is to select the talent over and above all others 

 for which Mr. Shaler was preeminent, one is nevertheless forced 

 to fall back upon his teaching as the central point of his intel- 

 lectual achievement, the one which in a large way, though lack- 

 ing a lasting habitation, was productive of the greatest results. 

 Although the effects of teaching are elusive, its subtle influence 

 not to be permanently transmitted or set down in definitions, 

 yet in the words and deeds of some seven thousand men, forty 

 classes, there is abounding testimony to the effectiveness and 

 uplifting quality of his work in that field. As early as 1864 he 

 was assistant and lecturer in what is now known as the Agassiz 

 Museum. In 1869, at the age of twenty-eight, he was made full 

 professor of paleontology (his title eventually changed to pro- 

 fessor of geology), and he continued to lecture with few inter- 

 ruptions until the end. For nearly forty years he might have 

 been seen walking at a swinging gait and with unfailing regu- 

 larity across the College Yard to and from his lectures. 



Mr. Shaler chose the work of the teacher without other com- 

 pulsion than that which came from within ; indeed when a boy 

 he startled some of his college associates with what seemed at 

 the time the bold assertion that he meant to become a Harvard 

 professor. His father and others of his immediate circle were 

 disappointed at his choice. Without prescience of the large and 

 noble part he was to play in the role of a university professor, 

 it was thought that his talents required a wider scope : law and 

 politics were the accepted outlets for a man of his parts in his 

 region of the country. 



