336 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



ing the world with his imagination of things possible and verify- 

 ing his conjectures by experiment." 



His fees as a mining expert were absurdly small ; many of his 

 former pupils acting in the same capacity asked twice and often 

 three times as much as he. Indeed, it was repugnant to him to 

 make out a bill at all ; it was so much easier to give outright than 

 to put a price upon what he did. There were some features of 

 this outside work which he especially prized the exercise of the 

 constructive imagination, the use of rich opportunities, the get- 

 ting things going, and the contact with keen and eager wits. 

 Besides all this, it enabled him to escape from what he con- 

 sidered the limitations of academic culture, from the state of 

 mind that keeps men in the department stage of development. 

 What he particularly wished to avoid was the one-sided experi- 

 ence that falls to the lot of most teachers and tempts them to 

 set up special training, syntax, and gerunds against vital human 

 needs. 



Mr. Shaler had a great fancy for powerful, even though un- 

 trained, men, and gained singular refreshment from being with 

 them. " Personally," he said, " I value what I have been so for- 

 tunate as to gain of acquaintance with very diverse sorts of men 

 more highly than all else that I have won in the way of know- 

 ledge." He often spoke with pleasure of the long talks he had 

 had with a man employed at a mine he sometimes visited in Ala- 

 bama, who had reflected upon most things in the heavens above 

 and in the earth beneath, and had worked out a universal sys- 

 tem of his own. Mr. Shaler insisted that this type of strong 

 uneducated man, while he had little learning, often had more 

 light than those bred in academic places. Face to face with a 

 real man social prejudices vanished. Whereas, as Carlyle says, 

 Dr. Johnson bowed only to a man with a shovel hat, he bowed 

 to a man with any sort of hat or none at all. Excessive conven- 

 tion, to his mind, was like the process of tanning ; according to 

 the ancient sage, the skins of the tiger and leopard when they 

 are tanned are as the skins of the dog and the sheep. He was 



