A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE 
15 
on the proliferous stolon. I remember with mortification how I 
floundered helplessly through the first few months in what ap- 
peared to me a hopeless struggle to reach solid ground, until one 
day I happened to find out something new about that stolon. 
It was a very trivial point, but in the exuberance of my first dis- 
covery I showed it to Professor Brooks, and from that moment 
his attitude toward me changed as if by magic. I was f rthwith 
consecrated to the study of the Tunicata. Brooks had, however, 
the habit of suddenly suggesting and urging upon a student a to- 
tally different problem from the one upon which he was working, 
and this caused the greatest consternation among us during our 
earlier years, until we found by experience that he usually for- 
got about the matter in a few days. In this connection I cannot 
refrain from quoting from a letter which he wrote me from Bal- 
timore while I was absorbed in studying the embryology of Ap- 
pendicularia at the Beaufort Laboratory in the summer of 1895. 
''I have just heard from Bigelow," he wrote, ''that the medusa 
which I have been studying (Gonionemus) is now abundant in the 
Eel Pond at Woods Hole. If you could get the embryology and 
metamorphosis, it would make a fine thesis, and I write in the 
hope that you may be disposed to go to Woods Hole at once to 
try to study it, and to get specimens of the adult for me." The 
idea of dropping all of my work and setting out on a journey from 
North Carolina to Massachusetts to collect jelly fishes did not 
appeal very strongly to me, and I remained in Beaufort, but just 
how I escaped from the situation, which was quite embarrassing 
at the time, I do not now remember. 
The recollections of Professor Brooks that are the most vivid 
and interesting ones to me are chiefly associated with our summers 
at the marine laboratories, for it was there, away from the routine 
and greater restraint of the life in Baltimore, that we came to 
know him most intimately and affectionately. In the daily 
companionship with him, for he constantly shared with us both 
the joys and hardships of the work, the lovable side of his nature 
was conspicuously open to us. A thousand incidents associated 
with him at Beaufort crowd my memory as I recall hun there, 
the center of our life, the enthusiastic naturalist, the wise coun- 
