Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/553

Rh in which he was always the victor, but on one occasion he had challenged a whole class, whereupon the best swordsman was selected to meet him, when he insisted that he had really challenged every member of the class to fight. After four had crossed swords with him and been vanquished the remainder were quite ready to retire. Agassiz with all his genius had no capacity for business and, as he admitted, was incapable of doing a simple sum in addition; nevertheless, he plunged into investigations which to carry out involved the expenditure of large sums of money. Mrs. Agassiz in the charming tribute to her distinguished husband says:

He was frugal in his personal habits. At this very time, when he was keeping two or three artists on his slender means, he made his own breakfast in his room and dined for a few cents a day at the cheapest eating houses. But where science was concerned the only economy recognized, either in youth or old age, was that of an expenditure as bold as it was carefully considered.

While expressing his great appreciation of the many honors given him by distinguished societies, he seemed to be indifferent to the certificates of these honors. As an illustration of this indifference I may cite an experience that a few of us had with an enormous mass of pamphlets which were unpacked and which Agassiz asked us to classify and arrange by their respective subjects. Intermixed with these pamphlets were numerous diplomas, some of them badly wrinkled, attesting to his election as associate or honorary member of great societies and academies, university degrees, and, if I remember rightly, medals of honor also.

Very few are aware of the profound influence Agassiz's devotion to his work and his enthusiasm had on the character of Harvard College. To apply an expression of Froude, he came in to this staid college community like a meteor out of the clear sky. One day as he crossed the college campus I drew a sketch of him: it contradicts every custom and tradition of the Harvard professor since the foundation of the college in 1638. On his head a soft hat, in his pockets his hands, in his mouth a cigar! President Eliot, in his address at the Agassiz commemorative meeting of the Cambridge Historical Society, said that Agassiz's ability in securing from hard-fisted members of the General Court large appropriations for his museum, excited the envy of other departmental chiefs. Yet in obtaining these large sums from the legislature, and from private citizens as well, he finally provoked the habit of liberal giving to the college as a whole. Thus the college grew into a university, and the inception of this growth dates from the advent of Agassiz. His advice was followed in shaping the work of the Smithsonian Institution. A similar influence must be accredited to him in enlarging the work of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. Professor Bache, then superintendent, was an intimate friend