import.

As my account of Agassiz's quality should rest upon my experiences
with him, I shall now go on to tell how and to what effect he trained
me. In that day there were no written examinations on any subjects to
which candidates for the Lawrence Scientific School had to pass. The
professors in charge of the several departments questioned the
candidates, and determined their fitness to pursue the course of study
they desired to undertake. Few or none who had any semblance of an
education were denied admission to Agassiz's laboratory. At that time,
the instructors had, in addition to their meagre salaries--his was then
$2,500 per annum,--the regular fees paid in by the students under his
charge. So I was promptly assured that I was admitted. Be it said,
however, that he did give me an effective oral examination, which, as
he told me, was intended to show whether I could expect to go forward
to a degree at the end of four years of study. On this matter of the
degree he was obdurate, refusing to recommend some who had been with
him for many years, and had succeeded in their special work, giving as
reason for his denial that they were 'too ignorant.'

The examination Agassiz gave me was directed first to find that I knew
enough Latin and Greek to make use of those languages; that I could
patter a little of them evidently pleased him. He didn't care for those
detestable rules for scanning. Then came German and French, which were
also approved: I could read both, and spoke the former fairly well. He
did not probe me in my weakest place, mathematics, for the good reason
that, badly as I was off in that subject, he was in a worse plight.
Then asking me concerning my reading, he found that I had read the
_Essay on Classification_, and had noted in it the influence of
Schelling's views. Most of his questioning related to this field, and