The secret of it all was, that while his scientific 

 ideals were an integral part of his being, something 

 that he never forgot or laid aside, so that wherever 

 he went he came forward as " the Professor/' and 

 talked ''^ shop " to every person, young or old, great 

 or little, learned or unlearned, with whom he was 

 thrown, he was at the same time so commanding a 

 presence, so curious and inquiring, so responsive 

 and expansive, and so generous and reckless of him- 

 self and of his own, that every one said immediately, 

 " Here is no musty savant, but a man, a great man, 

 a man on the heroic scale, not to serve whom is ava- 

 rice and sin." He elevated the popular notion of 

 what a student of Nature could be. Since Benjamin 

 Franklin, we had never had among us a person of 

 more popularly impressive type. He did not wait 

 for students to come to him ; he made inquiry for 

 promising youthful collectors, and when he heard of 

 one, he wrote, inviting and urging him to come. 

 Thus- there is hardlj^ one now of the American nat- 

 uralists of my generation whom Agassiz did not 

 train. Nay, more ; he said to every one that a year 

 or two of natural history, studied as he understood it, 

 would give the best training for any kind of mental 

 work. Sometimes he was amusingly naif in this re- 

 gard, as when he offered to put his whole Museum at 

 the disposition of the Emperor of Brazil if he would 

 but come and labor there. And I well remember 

 how certain officials of the Brazilian empire smiled 

 at the cordiality with which he pressed upon them a 



