therwise perfect English. In the years of our course, we met
daily. He was a good general scholar but with a preference from the
first for natural science and mathematics. He matured into handsome
manhood, and as an athlete was among the best. He was a master of the
oar, not dropping it on graduation, but long a familiar figure on the
Charles. Here incidentally he left upon the University a curious and
lasting mark. The crew one day were exercising bare-headed on the Back
Bay, when encountering stress of weather, Agassiz was sent up into
the city to find some proper head-gear. He presently returned with
a package of handkerchiefs of crimson, which so demonstrated their
convenience and played a part on so many famous occasions, that
crimson became the Harvard colour.

Alexander was soon absorbed in the whirl of life, and to what purpose
he worked I need not here detail. The story of the Calumet and Hecla
Company is a kind of commercial romance which the harshest critics
of American business life may read with pleasure. At the same time
Agassiz was only partially and transiently a business-man, returning
always with haste from the mine and the counting-room to the
protracted scientific researches in which his heart mainly lay. His
voyages in the interest of science were many and long. He studied
not so much the shores as the sea itself. Oceanographer is the term
perhaps by which he may best be designated. By deep sea soundings
he mapped the vast beds over which the waters roll and reached an
intimacy with the life of its most profound abysses. Sitting next him
at a class dinner, an affair of dress-suits, baked meats, and cigars
at the finish, I found his talk took one far away from the prose of
the thing. He was charming in conversation, and he set forth at length
his theory as to the work of the coral insects, formed after long
study of the barrier reefs and atolls of remote seas. His ideas were
subversive of those of Darwin, with whom he disputed the matter before
Darwin died. They are now well-known and I think accepted, though
unfortunately he died before setting them forth in due order. They are
revolutionary in their character as to the origin of formations that
enter largely into the crust of the earth. In this field he stood as
originator and chief. He gave me glimpses of the wonderful indeed,
as we cracked our almonds and sipped the sherbet, his rich voice and
slightly foreign accent running at my ear as we sat u