FIRST DAY OF THE SCHOOL. 771 



new floor laid there also. This was hardly 

 finished (the last nails were just driven) when 

 the steamer, with its large company, touched 

 the wharf. There was barely time to arrange 

 the seats and to place a table with flowers 

 where the guests of honor were to sit, and 

 Agassiz himself was to stand, when all ar- 

 rived. The barn was, on the whole, not a 

 bad lecture-room on a beautiful summer day. 

 The swallows, who had their nests without 

 number in the rafters, flew in and out, and 

 twittered softly overhead ; and the wide doors, 

 standing broadly open to the blue sky and the 

 fresh fields, let in the sea-breeze, and gave a 

 view of the little domain. Agassiz had ar- 

 ranged no programme of exercises, trusting 

 to the interest of the occasion to suggest 

 what might best be said or done. But, as he 

 looked upon his pupils gathered there to 

 study nature with him, by an impulse as nat- 

 ural as it was unpremeditated, he called upon 

 them to join in silently asking God's bless- 

 ing on their work together. The pause was 

 broken by the first words of an address no 

 less fervent than its unspoken prelude. 1 

 Thus the day, which had been anticipated 



1 This whole scene is fitly told in Whittier's poem, The 

 Prayer of Agassiz. 



