FIRST YEARS IN AMERICA 23 



The four years of hard work, athletics, and simple 

 pleasures sped quickly. Class Day at Harvard was a 

 very different affair in those times. The Cambridge 

 belles of the day tied with their own hands the wreath 

 of flowers that was wound high up around the classic 

 tree behind Harvard Hall. Under the eyes of a gay 

 and eager throng clad in its best, the class in its oldest 

 clothes gathered in a circle about the tree. The chief 

 marshal threw his hat in the ring as a sign for the fray, 

 and there was a wild struggle for a bit of the historic 

 wreath. There were simple " spreads " in the students' 

 rooms, there was dancing on the college green, and the 

 undergraduate life of the class of '55 was a memory of 

 the past. 



On leaving college, Agassiz entered the engineering 

 department of the Lawrence Scientific School. Here, 

 devoting himself entirely to congenial subjects, his real 

 ability asserted itself. He graduated in 1857 with a 

 Summa cum Laicde. Then he turned his attention to 

 chemistry, occupying a desk in the laboratory under 

 Professor Horsf ord. On his return from the West, when 

 settled at his work in the Museum, he took another 

 degree at the Scientific School in 1862, this time in 

 natural history. 



His father's affairs, notwithstanding the fostering 

 care of the son, were in a more than usually deplorable 

 muddle shortly after Agassiz left college. Louis Agassiz 

 possessed but a hazy idea of the value of a dollar, and 

 the modest funds of the household budget had an alarm- 

 ing way of converting themselves into alcoholic speci- 

 mens at the most inopportune moments. 



In order to retrieve the family fortunes Mrs. Agassiz 

 proposed, with the assistance of her stepson, to start a 



