ment and for the melioration of mankind; a leader of men devoted to 

 the progress of science; a patriot, friend and counsellor of Abraham 

 Lincoln in the darker days of the Republic — in short, an exemplar 

 for his race, a man whose purity and nobility are here fitly symbolized 

 in enduring marble for our instruction and guidance and for the instruc- 

 tion and the guidance of our successors in the centuries to come. 



LOUIS A6ASSIZ. 



A Letter from Edward E. Hale. 



Read by Addison E. Verrill, who added interesting personal 

 reminiscences of Agassiz. 



Washington, D. C, December 8, 1906. 



I think that the first time when I ever saw Agassiz was at one of his 

 own lectures early in his American life. This was a description of 

 his ascent of the Jungfrau. I think it was wholly extempore, and, 

 though he was new in his knowledge of English, it was idiomatic and 

 thoroughly intelligible. At the end, as he described the last climb, 

 hand and foot, by which, as it seems, men come to the little triangular 

 plane, only three feet across, which makes the summit, he quickened our 

 enthusiasm by describing the physical struggle by which he lifted him- 

 self so that he could stand on this little three-foot table. He said, "one 

 by one we stood there, and looked down into Swisserland." He bowed 

 and retired. 



I know I said at once that Mr. Lowell, of our Lowell Institute, 

 who had "imported Agassiz," (that is James Lowell's phrase) might 

 have said before the audience left the hall, "You will see, ladies and 

 gentlemen, that we are able to present to you the finest specimen yet 

 discovered of the genus homo of the species intelligent." 



And looking back half a century, on those very first years of his 

 life in America, I think it is fair to say that wherever he went he awak- 

 ened that sort of personal enthusiasm. And he went everywhere. He 

 was made a professor in Harvard College in 1848. But he never thought 

 of confining himself to any conventional theory of a college professor's 

 work. He was not in the least afraid of making science popular. He 



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