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1883,] 293 
[Lesley. 
The good sense which prompted this request from the side of the father, 
prompted the master also to grant it, and thenceforward the young natu- 
ralist, while being subjected to the same rigid discipline, was not repressed 
in his inclinations for extra scholastic investigation, on a small scale. 
One day silence reigned in the school-room. Everybody was conning 
his task at his seat. The tutor was silently reading at his desk. Suddenly 
there was a great fracas—John Le Conte was scen starting from his seat 
and scrambling on the floor in the middle of the room. He was called 
up to the tutor’s desk to give an account of himself. He held in his hand 
two beetles. He explained that they were rare, that he could not help try- 
ing to catch them, that he had to be quick about it, that he did not know 
that he would make such a noise, etc. The other scholars in great, excite- 
ment sat expecting dolorous consequences for John. But they were dis- 
appointed. The tutor remembered the Major. or perhaps had received 
orders from the upper region. He merely sent the boy back to his seat 
with his beetles , and a warning not to make so much noise another time. 
But he received less mercy from his schoolmates. One holiday the boys 
Were on an excursion in Frederick county. John captured two remarkably 
fine and rare coleopterids—I forget their name, but he always gave it when 
he told the story—and put them into a pill-box. At night two of his com- 
panions stole the box, threw the bugs away, neatly substituted two quids 
of tobacco, and returned the box to its place without detection. Great was 
John’s grief at the discovery. But he never thought on any kind of re- 
venge. He did not know enough Horace then to comfort himself with 
the barren consideration, that Quid quisque vitet nunquam homini satis 
cautum est in horas; but he thought it all the same, in a schoolboy’s way, 
and learned by this experience to keep his shiny-backed pets out of the 
reach of profane fingers. Dr. Horn can best describe to us the care he 
took of his great collections. 
Le Conte loved to tell such personal stories of his early life, and during 
the week preceding his death his mind lived entirely in those remote years. 
Me laughed heartily to himself at the recollection of his adventures. He 
wished to have them published, Why? Was he vain? He was the re- 
verse of vain ; he was a man singularly free from vanity, Why should he 
have had so set a desire to be memorialized after death? I 
out a shade of hesitation, because he had inherited a loving disposition, had 
led an affectionate and sympathetic life, and wished above all things to re- 
tain forever his kind and good relations with his fellow-men. His love of 
his kind was strong. His sympathy with his fellow-workers in science was 
not only strong but unalloyed with baser sentiments. Even when his fine 
scorn of fraud, duplicity, pretension and untruthfulness evoked denuncia- 
tion, I never knew him to depreciate any kind of talent. He was exceed- 
ingly just to just men, and generous towards those who had not had 
talents or opportunities sufficient to give them distinction. He honored 
the old and loved the young. He honored the masters and loved the stu- 
dents of science. He worshiped the shade of his father, and never spoke 
'S 
answer with- 
