animals were too keen for comfort, never to care much for any one, 

 for then he should not suffer. But that resolution was not easily kept, 

 and he did love and consequently suffer. He made idols very early, 

 and never quite lost the tendency to do so, but he never liked to hear 

 another express the same disappointment he felt. The idols acquired 

 a certain sacredness in his eyes from the very fact of the idealization. 



His father, who was born with the same sensitiveness, frequently 

 said of him that it would require all the prosperity the world could 

 give to make it worth while for him to have been born. To one so 

 constituted, the joy in the universe which made his happiness was 

 the most fitting compensation. Perhaps to this weakness of body, i 

 we may in part attribute that all-absorbing interest in study, the final 

 development of which, in after years, explained his rapid mental 

 advance, and now entitles his name to a place on the list of our botani- 

 cal celebrities. But his early education was not so much a lessoning 

 from books, as by handling the objects of nature and learning her laws 

 from the lips of his father. He was not sent to school till he was 

 twelve years old, with the exception of a few months when seven. 

 He was then sent to the Model Department of the West Newton 

 Normal School, because his natural love of order and routine^ made 

 the home lessons harassing at a time when his mother's cares pre- 

 vented the regularity of attention he braved. 



The discipline of the school was excellent, neither too lax nor too 

 stringent, and he was very happy in it for a time. The feature of it 

 that interested him chiefly, was the daily lesson in Mineralogy, for this 

 fed the taste already acquired for the study of nature Conchology 

 and Botany having been made interesting to him at home. His enthu- 

 siasm about the stones he collected was so great that a kind friend 

 sent him a barrel of Russian minerals. Never did king feel so rich. 

 They were examined, named and labelled in the childish handwriting 

 and spelling, and carefully preserved all his life. A sandstone, from 

 Ehren breitstein, was labelled Ehren's Broad Stone, and this is a good 

 sample 'of his method of learning by ideas rather than by words. He 

 had not a good verbal memory, and could never get rote lessons, but 

 he never forgot anything he learned by the aid of eyesight and ideas. 



His father was clearly of the opinion that the study of nature is a 

 better discipline for the mind than the study of heathen mythology, 

 and it was a great gratification to the son, in after life, to find this 

 very expression in his father's writings. To the boy no new item of 

 knowledge or youthful discovery was satisfactory till he had "talked 

 about it with papa." He would watch at the door of the study, for 

 intervals of leisure, from company and from literary labors, to seize 

 the opportunity for these delightful talks. His father was also in the 

 habit of taking his children to mills and factories, to show them 



