FIRST YEARS IN AMERICA 19 



Mr. Burkkardt. He was so different from other boys and 

 so delightful, a most charming boy — just at the age 

 when boys are so seldom charming, and I, only three or 

 four years older and not yet married, was a good play- 

 fellow for him. Dr. Kavenel delighted in him and al- 

 ways predicted distinction for him. We taught him to 

 ride (he as c a Switzer ' had never learnt), and to pad- 

 dle a canoe, and go crabbing, and had very gay times 

 with him at my aunt's little country place, i Belmont.' 

 Then he went to college and I never saw him again for 

 more than twenty-five years. He was a grave quiet man 

 then (not long after his wife's death), and I spoke to him 

 as c Mr. Agassiz,' but he smiled and said, i You always 

 call me Alex.' " 



Do men mature faster in the shadow of the Alps, that 

 certain qualities, which made such a marked and distin- 

 guished personality of the man, were already so evident 

 in the boy? For this quiet youth already possessed an 

 unusual power of concentration, and a gift of accomplish- 

 ing what he intended to do. The thoroughness and ease 

 with which he worked, his great reserve, his sudden 

 explosions of indignation, his quiet and entire devotion 

 to those he loved, his occasional outbursts of mirth, 

 as delightful as they were unexpected, his unfailing 

 charm, — all these belonged to the Swiss boy no less 

 than to the scientific man of cosmopolitan friendship 

 and fame. 



In the fall of 1851 he entered Harvard, at the age of 

 fifteen and a half, with the class of '55. His classmates 

 included such well-known men as E. H. Abbot, E. T. 

 Paine, F. B. Sanborn, Theodore Lyman, Professor J. K. 

 Hosmer, Judges Mitchell and Seawell, Bishop Phillips 

 Brooks, and Francis C. Barlow, the first scholar of the 



