irate owners and jockeys in a violent state of mind, intent on finding
some one to hang. I had seen the chance of getting a valuable lot of
stallions for the Museum, but it was evident that the time was most
inopportune for suggesting such a disposition of the remains. Had I
done so, the results would have been, to say the least, unpleasant.

As I came away from the profane lot of horsemen gathered about the
rums of their fortunes or their hopes, I met Agassiz almost running to
seize the chance of specimens. I told him to come back with me, that we
must wait until the mob had spent its rage; but he kept on. I told him
further that he risked spoiling his good chance, and finally that he
would have his head punched; but he trotted on. I went with him, in the
hope that I might protect him from the consequences of his curiosity.
When we reached the spot, there came about a marvel; in a moment he had
all those raging men at his command. He went at once to work with the
horses which had been hurt, but were savable. His intense sympathy with
the creatures, his knowledge of the remedies to be applied, his
immediate appropriation of the whole situation, of which he was at once
the master, made those rude folk at once his friends. Nobody asked who
he was, for the good reason that he was heart and soul of them. When
the task of helping was done, then Agassiz skilfully came to the point
of his business--the skeletons--and this so dexterously and
sympathetically, that the men were, it seemed, ready to turn over the
living as well as the dead beasts for his service. I have seen a lot of
human doing, much of it critically as actor or near observer, but this
was in many ways the greatest. The supreme art of it was in the use of
a perfectly spontaneous and most actually sympathetic motive to gain an
end. With others, this state of mind would lead to affectation; with
him, it in no wise diminished the quality of the emotion. He could
measure the value of the motive, but do it without lessening its moral