we eyed him gingerly, for
who could tell what he might have in his pockets? Turtles, tadpoles,
snakes, any old monster might be there, and queer stories prevailed
of the menagerie which, hung up, and forgotten in the professor's
dressing-room, crept out and sought asylum in the beds, shoes, and
hats of the household. Before the resulting consternation, masculine
and feminine, he was always apologetic. He was on the friendliest
terms with things ill-reputed, even abhorrent, and could not
understand the qualms of the delicate. He was said to have held up
once, in all innocence, before a class of school-girls a wriggling
snake. The shrieks and confusion brought him to a sense of what he had
done. He apologised elaborately, the foreign peculiarity he never lost
running through his confusion. "Poor girls, I vill not do it again.
Next time I vill bring in a nice, clean leetle feesh." Agassiz took no
pleasure in shocking his class; on the contrary he was most anxious to
engage and hold them. So too, if his audience was made up from people
of the simplest. In fact, for each he exerted his powers as generously
as when addressing a company of savants. He always kindled as he
spoke, and with a marvellous magnetism communicated his glow to those
who listened. I have seen him stand before his class holding in his
hand the claw of a crustacean. In his earnestness it seemed to be for
him the centre of the creation, and he made us all share his belief.
Indeed, he convinced us. Running back from it in an almost infinite
series was the many-ordered life adhering at last and scarcely
distinguishable from the inorganic matter to which it clung. Forward
from it again ran the series not less long and complicated which
fulfilled itself at last in the brain and soul of man. What he held in
his hand was a central link. His colour came and went, his eye danced
and his tones grew deep and tremulous, as he dwelt on the illimitable
chain of being. With a few strokes on the blackboard, he presented
graphically the most intricate variations. He felt the sublimity of
what he was contemplating, and we glowed with him from the contagion
of his fervour. I have never heard his equal as an expounder of the
deep things of nature. He gloried in the exercise of his power, though
hampered by poverty. "I have no time to make money," he cried. He
sought no title but that of teacher. To do anything else was only to
misuse his gift. In his desk he was an inspirer,