CHAPTER I. 



THE JOURNEY. 



Penikese is a name ever to be remembered by me 

 with the greatest of pleasure, for it was there I 

 passed some of the happiest hours of my life. I re- 

 member it all: the ground, with its undulating billows 

 sodded with the sparing green and brown of low 

 grasses or covered with sandy loam; the waters, with 

 their rusty and smutty rocks rearing their jagged 

 edges above the quiet expanse of the bay, or dashed 

 against by turbulent waves; and the boulders, with 

 their whitened faces, lying confusedly as they had 

 been cast upon the wave-beaten beaches or strewn, 

 like ancient sentinels, here and there about the 

 fields; I picture them all as if it were but yesterday. 

 Then the buildings the laboratories, the lecture- 

 rooms, and the professors' house (the last the, most 

 conspicuous of them all), mean in themselves yet 

 dear from their associations, I think of each and I 

 love each. Ah! Shall I ever experience such free, 

 such happy, such truly joyous hours again? But 

 let me tell you how I happened going to Penikese 

 Island, and what I saw, heard, and did there. 



I had been sitting, one fine morning in early 

 spring, by a cosy grate fire, perusing the columns of 

 my favorite morning paper, when my eyes fell upon 

 a short paragraph which instantly arrested my atten- 

 tion. It was the notice of a ''Summer School of 

 Natural History," and read as follows: 



