144 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



As thin mists are glorified 

 By the light they cannot hide, 

 All who gazed upon him saw, 

 Through its veil of tender awe, 

 How his face was still uplit 

 By the old sweet look of it, 

 Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer 

 And the love that casts out fear." 



And the summer went on, with its succession of 

 joyous mornings, beautiful days, and calm nights, 

 with every charm of sea and sky ; the master with 

 us all day long, ever ready to speak words of help 

 and encouragement, ever ready to give us from his 

 own stock of learning. The boundless enthusiasm 

 which surrounded him like an atmosphere, and 

 which sometimes gave the appearance of great 

 achievement to the commonest things, was never 

 lacking. He was always an optimist, and his 

 strength lay largely in his realization of the value 

 of the present moment. He was a living illustra- 

 tion of the aphorism of Thoreau, that " there is no 

 hope for you unless the bit of sod under your feet 

 is the sweetest in this world in any world." The 

 thing he had in hand was the thing worth doing, 

 and the men about him were the men worth helping. 



He was always picturesque in his words and his 

 work. He delighted in the love and approbation 

 of his students and his friends, and the influence of 

 his personality sometimes gave his opinions weight 

 beyond the value of the investigations on which 

 they were based. With no other investigator have 

 the work and the man been so identified as with 

 Agassiz. No other of the great workers has been 

 equally great as a teacher. His greatest work in 



