Winning Fame. 



65 



revolutions of the primitive world ; considerations 

 which, as you well know, convince only those who 

 give them birth. . . . Your ice frightens me, and 

 gladly as I would welcome you here, my dear friend, 

 I think, perhaps, for the sake of your health, and also 

 that you may not see this country, always so hideous, 

 under a sheet of snow and ice (in Febuary), you 

 would do better to come two months later, with the 

 first verdure." 



Life was too short for the active mind of Agassiz. 

 The days passed too quickly ; every moment had its 

 value, every second its meaning in its accumulation 

 of time. He seemed to appreciate that the mo- 

 ments are but the ticks of the human clock, every 

 one of which brings the running-down time nearer 

 and nearer. An hour, a moment wasted was an ir- 

 retrievable loss and his policy was to make the most 

 of each. This explains the enormous amount of 

 work he accomplished in a comparatively short life- 

 time. New ideas, opportunities for fresh discoveries 

 were ever appearing, and his inclination was always 

 to enter every new field ready to conquer. Not 

 alone a zoologist, but a geologist, botanist, physician, 

 a student of nature, a teacher of nature's secrets in 

 the broadest sense, such was Agassiz, and it is not 

 strange that Humboldt closed one of his letters with 

 the warning that he was attempting too much. No 

 more ice,'* said the savant, " not much of echino- 

 derms, plenty of fish, recall of ambassadors in 

 partibus, and great severity toward the book-sellers, 

 an infernal race, two or three of whom have been 



killed under me.*' 

 5 



