188 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



was that we were underfed, and suffered from it; as is shown 

 by the fact that we got into the habit of taking a whiskey toddy 

 before going to bed. It was, indeed, the only time in my life 

 that I have felt the need of that whip. The hardest kind of work 

 in the open air, when bacon and beans and the like were at hand, 

 has never led me to feel the need of alcohol. This period of im- 

 perfect nutrition, combined with arduous study and with the 

 exhaustion due to the Anticosti expedition, which came just 

 before it, brought me lower in health than I had been since my 

 childhood. I suffered very severely from indigestion, especially 

 from the effect of the malady on the heart, in the shape of inter- 

 missions and irregularities, which often made it necessary for 

 me to sit the night out in a chair; all this coming at a time of 

 much worry on account of the war and because of my prepara- 

 tion for the examination for my degree. Except for an essen- 

 tial toughness which has stood me in good stead, I should 

 certainly have broken my health in a permanent way by this 

 combination of scanty diet and hard labor. 



I had not much help from Agassiz in these last months of my 

 preparation. He had admitted me to candidacy after going 

 over with me what I had done, and he stated that he expected 

 me to pass a good examination. He gave me an odd bit of 

 warning, which was that Benjamin Peirce would probably 

 subject me to a searching test, for the reason that they had 

 recently once again quarrelled, Peirce questioning the character 

 of the instruction which Agassiz gave his students as lacking 

 in thoroughness; the truth being that Agassiz was the worst 

 instructor I have ever known, but in diverse ways the greatest 

 educator. These two able men were off and on the nearest of 

 friends and the bitterest of foes; just then they were at enmity; 

 so I had to look out for myself, for I was likely to be seized on 

 as a horrid example of Agassiz's looseness of method of teach- 

 ing. All I did to prepare for defence was to look up with care 

 the little of geology which had at that time been subjected to 

 mathematical treatment. I reckoned that the burthen of the 





