The Days of a Man ^1874 



I never again returned to it. Having sold all my 

 seaweed books to a second-hand dealer, I found to 

 my pleasure in 1892 that Dudley had bought them 

 and brought them with him to Stanford University. 

 A cdi to At the end of the first summer I went over to 

 Wisconsin Cambridge, where Agassiz had promised me an 

 appointment as curator of fossil vertebrates in the 

 Museum, a position which had recently become 

 vacant. Meanwhile he received a letter from Dr. 

 Russell Z. Mason of Appleton, Wisconsin, asking 

 him to send one of his students as principal of the 

 Appleton Collegiate Institute, a preparatory school 

 developed on the theories of Pestalozzi and Froebel, 

 in which science teaching was to be made a specialty. 

 From Agassiz's answer nominating me for the po- 

 sition I was allowed to copy a few sentences which, 

 after all these intervening years, I may be pardoned 

 for printing: 



The highest recommendation I can give Mr. Jordan is that 

 he is qualified for a curatorship in the Museum of Com- 

 parative Zoology. I know no other young man of whom I 

 can say that. 



This statement was sufficient, and I at once set 

 forth for Appleton to undertake my new duties. 



students I do not think that my management of the Insti- 

 at tute was of a high order, for I was then only twenty- 



two years old and lacked adequate executive experi- 

 ence. But my teaching was excellent, and I have 

 never known a more enthusiastic body of young 

 people. One of the boys, Charles Leslie McKay, 

 who followed me to Indiana, developed real scientific 

 ability, being afterward sent by Professor Baird of 



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