A LESSON IN NATURAL HISTORY 127 



very important. And you would have felt so too, 

 if naturalists had always been the most interest- 

 ing men in the world to you. Why, I had read the 

 life of John James Audubon until I knew it 

 by heart. There was a picture of Audubon in the 

 "Life" I read that showed him with long hair to 

 his shoulders, and a rolling shirt collar wide open 

 at the throat, that seemed to me very fitting. 

 So I asked mother to cut my shirt collars low 

 just like his ; and I tried to let my hair grow long 

 just like his. Mother did very well with the 

 collars; but I got on terribly with the hair; for 

 it grew up, not down, and looked about as curly 

 as a load of hay. 



But I was a small boy in those days of collars 

 and hair. I was fully three years older the morn- 

 ing when Professor Jenks, the naturalist, came 

 into the Institute museum, with a strange, quick 

 scuff and shuffle (due to paralysis caused by the 

 arsenic used in curing the skins!) and shook me 

 by the hand. If anything had been lacking in the 

 great man it would have been made more than 

 good by that shuffle arsenic in his very bones ! 



He was a short, stout man, past seventy, with 

 snow-white hair and beard, a keen, kindly face 

 that made one think of Christmas, with a quick- 



