indebted. I shall never forget even the lesser incidents of this
meeting, for this great master by his presence gave an importance to
his surroundings, so that the room where you met him, and the
furniture, stayed with the memory of him. When I first met Louis
Agassiz, he was still in the prime of his admirable manhood; though he
was then fifty-two years old, and had passed his constructive period,
he still had the look of a young man. His face was the most genial and
engaging that I had ever seen, and his manner captivated me altogether.
But as I had been among men who had a free swing, and for a year among
people who seemed to me to be cold and super-rational, hungry as I
doubtless was for human sympathy, Agassiz's welcome went to my heart--I
was at once his captive. It has been my good chance to see many men of
engaging presence and ways, but I have never known his equal.

As the personal quality of Agassiz was the greatest of his powers, and
as my life was greatly influenced by my immediate and enduring
affection for him, I am tempted to set forth some incidents which show
that my swift devotion to my new-found master was not due to the
accidents of the situation, or to any boyish fancy. I will content
myself with one of those stories, which will of itself show how easily
he captivated men, even those of the ruder sort. Some years after we
came together, when indeed I was formally his assistant,--I believe it
was in 1866,--he became much interested in the task of comparing the
skeletons of thoroughbred horses with those of common stock. I had at
his request tried, but without success, to obtain the bones of certain
famous stallions from my acquaintances among the racing men in
Kentucky. Early one morning there was a fire, supposed to be
incendiary, in the stables in the Beacon Park track, a mile from the
College, in which a number of horses had been killed, and many badly
scorched. I had just returned from the place, where I had left a mob of