for a consideration. Good boys, low on phosphorus, LITTLE 

 used to get him to start their daily themes, and those JOURNEYS 

 overtaken in the throes of trigonometry he often res- 

 cued from disgrace. 



Darwinism was in the saddle. Asa Gray was mildly 

 defending it, Agassiz stood aloof clinging to his early 

 Swiss-parsonage teachings, and the Theological De- 

 partment marched in solid phalanx and scoffed and 

 scorned. Yale, always having more theology than Har- 

 vard, threw out challenges. Fiske had saturated him- 

 self with the ideas of Darwin and 'Wallace and his in- 

 tellect was great enough to perceive the vast and 

 magnificent scope of the "Origin of Species." He pre- 

 pared and read a lecture on the subject, all couched 

 in gentle and judicial phrase, but with a finale that 

 gave forth no uncertain sound. 



The Overseers decided to ask Fiske to amplify the 

 subject and give a course of lectures on the Law of 

 Evolution. 



The subject grew under his hands and the course ex- 

 tended itself into thirty-five lectures, covering the 

 whole field of Natural History, with many short ex- 

 cursions into the realms of biology, embryology, bot- 

 any, geology and cosmogony. 



Fiske was made assistant librarian at a salary of one 

 thousand dollars a year. It was not much money, but 

 it gave him a fixed position, with time to help the . 

 erring freshman and the mentally recalcitrant sopho- 

 more handicapped by rich parents. For seven years 

 Fiske held this position of assistant librarian, and 



143 



