Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/746

724 best possible way? His thoughts and hopes rose to expectations higher than any of us then understood.

His tall, robust figure, broad shoulders bending a little under the weight of years, his large round face lit up by kindly dark-brown eyes, his cheery smile, the enthusiastic tones of his voice, all these entered into our first as well as our last impressions of Agassiz. He greeted us with great warmth as we landed. He looked into our faces to justify himself in making choice of us among the many whom he might have chosen.

The roll of the Anderson School has never been published, and I can only restore a part of it from memory. Among those whose names come to my mind as I write are Dr. Charles O. Whitman, now of Clark University; Dr. William K. Brooks, of Johns Hopkins; Dr. Frank H. Snow, now Chancellor of the University of Kansas; Dr. W. O. Crosby, of the Boston Society of Natural History, then a boy from Colorado interested in rocks and minerals; Samuel Garman, Walter Faxon, Walter Fewkes, and Charles Sedgwick Minot, all of them still connected with the work at Cambridge; Ernest Ingersoll, then just beginning his literary work; Prof. Scott, of the Normal School at Westfield; Prof. Stowell, of the school at Cortland; Prof. Apgar, of Trenton, N. J.; Prof. Fernald, of Maine; Miss Susan Hallowell, of Wellesley College; Miss Mary Beaman (Mrs, Joralemon); Mr. E. A. Gastman, of Illinois; and other well-known instructors. With these was the veteran teacher of botany at Mount Holyoke Seminary, Miss Lydia W. Shattuck, with her pupil and associate. Miss Susan Bowen. Prof. H. H. Straight and his bride, both then teachers in the State Normal School at Oswego, were also with us. These four, whom all of us loved and respected, were the first of our number to be claimed by death.

Among our teachers, besides Agassiz, were Burt G. Wilder, Edward S. Morse, Alfred Mayer, Frederick W. Putnam, then young men of growing fame, with Arnold Guyot and Count Pourtalès, early associates of Agassiz, already in the fullness of years. Mrs. Agassiz was present at every lecture, note-book in hand, and her genial personality did much to bind the company together.

The old barn on the island had been hastily converted into a dining-hall and lecture-room. A new floor had been put in, but the doors and walls remained unchanged, and the swallows' nests were undisturbed under the eaves. The sheep had been turned out, the horse-stalls were changed to a kitchen, and on the floor of the barn, instead of the hay-wagon, were placed three long tables. At the head of one of these sat Agassiz. At his right hand always stood a movable blackboard, for he seldom spoke without a piece of chalk in his hand. He would often give us a