RELATIONS WITH HIS COLLEAGUES 395 



able party legislative powers, and wholly without party organization. The 

 incessant speeches there have very little, if any, persuasive effect; they are 

 essentially expressions of sincere intelligent opinion, to be taken at the mo- 

 ment for what it is worth. Each year, young men fancy that they are ad- 

 mitted to something like a parliament ; each year, we older ones understand 

 better that we are really sitting in something more like a Homeric council. 

 So the young fail to comprehend the old, while the old begin to forget what 

 their dreams and fancies were in the days when they were of the young. 



And yet, through it all, there springs to memory one of his utterances 

 there, ten years ago. Just what his own words were I have quite forgotten, 

 except that they were so completely characteristic of his peculiar bravery, 

 and some note of just that spirit was what I most wanted, at that moment, 

 for the verses which I was trying to write. So here is the form they took in 

 my "Ralegh in Guiana," where as I told him more than once his 

 remarks concerning himself and ourselves gave my forgotten play a touch 

 of such spaciousness as makes inspiring that old Elizabethan world he loved 

 so well : 



"This cloudy monster, circumstance, 

 Affrighting common folk, doth melt to air 

 Round them that, plunging in her maw, dare vex 

 Her misty bowels." 



Mr. Shaler's heart-felt desire that the doors of the Univer- 

 sity should never be closed against one who showed any dis- 

 position to profit by what it had to give, sometimes led to mis- 

 apprehension and the charge of shielding students from merited 

 punishment. The truth lies in the manly statement contained 

 in the letters given below from one of his colleagues. Although 

 these letters belong to a later date this seems in a way a fitting 

 place for them. The first is addressed to President Eliot. 



CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 19, 1905. 



Dear Sir: In the brief word which I had with you after the meeting 

 to-day, in regard to the administrative board of the Scientific School, I was 

 conscious of not having made my meaning clear to you, and in justice to 

 myself I beg you to allow me to add a word of explanation. 



My object was merely to correct one misapprehension in regard to a matter 

 of fact about which I have had ample opportunity for observation. In the 

 course of your statement to the faculty you said that complaints had come 

 to you from members of the Board to the effect that the Board had felt 



