364 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



they do." In those days there were no despotic butlers, in Cam- 

 bridge at least, to frustrate the somewhat dangerous initiative 

 of most Americans in the matter of beverages. 



So far as the College was concerned, as one looks back upon 

 it, its educational opportunities seemed to run in a mere rill, com- 

 pared with the broad stream of culture set in motion by Presi- 

 dent Eliot, into which all the tributaries of learning now flow. 

 Mr. Shaler's connection with the College was contemporaneous 

 with its most expansive period. That he helped in a general way 

 to enlarge its intellectual and spiritual boundaries there can be 

 no doubt, and it is certain that in the departments with which 

 he was most intimately connected he vivified and uplifted them. 

 His personality filled a void in the University, and it has been 

 said that through him "the missing virtue of sympathy for the 

 student forced itself in." Also by means of his enthusiastic 

 efforts greater sympathy for the natural history side of instruc- 

 tion was gradually won. For many years the upholders of the 

 scientific spirit had to fight every mile of the march toward 

 acceptance. A stream of cold water, directed by the purely 

 academic element, played upon nearly all of his attempts to de- 

 velop and enlarge the scope of scientific teaching as well as to 

 make its approaches possible for any but the foreordained. With 

 the aid of his associates, a body of able men who in some instances 

 were his former pupils, he fought his fight persistently, passion- 

 ately, and so successfully that at length the value of the natural 

 history courses met with universal recognition. 



If Mr. Shaler was a great teacher it was not due merely to the 

 accident of natural gifts. His success was also the outcome of 

 deep meditation, and a deliberate taking account of the re- 

 quirements of the vocation. In a paper entitled "School Vaca- 

 tions," he says: "Although the needs of the pupil control the 

 duration of our school terms, the necessities of the teacher's 

 work are also of a nature to demand much in the way of refresh- 

 ment. The true teacher, he who goes forth to his pupils, who 

 enters into their spirit so that he conceives their difficulties and 



