oj li CD m -D o a a m a THE DAYS OF A MAN VOLUME ONE 1851-1899 HULDAH HAWLEY JORDAN, 1876 THE DAYS OF A MAN BEING MEMORIES OF A NATURALIST, TEACHER AND MINOR PROPHET OF DEMOCRACY BY DAVID STARR JORDAN ILLUSTRATED VOLUME ONE 1851-1899 J '*"' h A' t\\ Jungle and town and reef and sea, I have loved God's earth and God's earth loved me, Take it for all in all! Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York WORLD BOOK COMPANY 1922 WORLD BOOK COMPANY THE HOUSE OF APPLIED KNOWLEDGE Established 1905 by Caspar W. Hodgson YONKERS-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK. 2126 PRAIRIE AVENUE, CHICAGO By way of advancing their ideal of service, which is expressed in the motto "Books that apply the world's knowledge to the world's needs," the publishers present The Days of a Man, by David Starr Jordan. In these memoirs the reader will find not only the fascinating story of an active life of human service, but evidences of a philosophy that embodies a real science of living. Dr. Jor- dan is a master hand at adapting scientific knowledge to the needs of men, and in these pages he reveals much of his secret of fur- thering human happiness and enriching life JDM: n-i Copyright 1922 by World Book Company Copyright in Great Britain All rights reserved TO BARBARA'S MOTHER WITHOUT WHOSE QUIET INSISTENCE THIS BOOK WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN BEGUN AND EXCEPT FOR WHOSE KEEN SYMPATHETIC CRITICISM AND UNFAILING HELP IT COULD NEVER HAVE BEEN COMPLETED FOREWORD FOR half a century the writer of these pages has been a very busy man, living meanwhile three more or less independent lives: first, and for the love of it, that of naturalist and explorer; second, also for the love of it, that of teacher; and third, from a sense of duty, that of minor prophet of Democracy. If he had his days to live over, he would again choose all of the three. The friendly reader will not fail to note that the record is essentially objective - - simply the story of what one man did and saw in the world about him, being always eager to know the Cosmos as it is, and never unduly distressed at his inability to "remold it nearer to the heart's desire." The same critic - - should he read far will also observe that the author rarely mentions any one of whom he must speak disparagingly, or ventures to judge harshly those errors in judgment or failures in will from which no one in public or private life was ever exempt. As stated in the text, this work is essentially a record of friendships; but even as thus considered it is far from complete. For in the author's varied ex- perience as teacher and as executive, he depended on the willing cooperation of his associates aid granted in an unusual degree. To every one who has shown him sympathy and tolerance he is very grateful. In the actual working out of remembrances he has received help from many sources, most of all from his wife, who has wrestled with every para- graph, both in manuscript and proof. To Charles C vii 3 Foreword H. Gilbert and Barton W. Evermann he is especially indebted for jogging his recollection as to details in which they were concerned. As Agassiz often said, ''Memory must not be kept too full or it will spill over." He is further under obligation to Professors M. Anesaki of the Imperial University of Tokyo and K. Hara of the Imperial University of Kyoto, who gave a critical reading to Chapters xxvi and xxvii. Finally, for any errors in fact or interpre- tation which may have slipped through anywhere, he craves indulgence. DAVID STARR JORDAN March, 1921 C viii CONTENTS BOOK ONE (1851-1879) PAGE CHAPTER ONE i 1. Puritan ancestry - - John Jordan - - Rufus Jordan Hiram Jordan - - Huldah Hawley Jordan John Elderkin Waldo 2. "Going West" -The Jordan farm-- A glacial pond Cranberry pond - - Rufus Bacon Jordan -"The Human Harvest" -Mary Jordan Edwards 3. Birthplace East Coy Creek Gainesville Early recollections -- Quilting bees -- The old clock -- Playing soldier A long drive No whipping - - To Rochester -- A tragedy of pride Overpowering fear - - Timidity and mystery CHAPTER Two 19 1. Learning to study "Speaking pieces" The Red Eric "False color sense" Tendency in- herited Mapping the stars Mapping the world Other reverberations Eric's shells Barbara's birds 2. Turning to Botany - - Flowers of spring In- terest in flowers and trees Portage and Sil- ver Lake Difference in floras Painting the flowers No songbird 3. Dickens Thackeray Bret Harte Macau- lay and the poets The Atlantic Monthly Introduction to politics Abolition versus Union Greeley and the Tribune Harper's Ferry and Sumter Emancipation The call for men War poets Death of Lincoln 4. Castile Academy - - The Female Seminary The study of French John Lord Jenkins Gainesville Zouaves - - Learning chess A broken nose In South Warsaw Coasting /7V? Contents PAGE 5. Woods Hole and Noank George Brown Goode Goode the naturalist Goode the man Verrill and Hyatt Mystic River CHAPTER Six 129 1. Indianapolis Indianapolis High School Enter Gilbert Maywood warblers - The Manual of Vertebrates Marriage to Susan Bowen 2. McCulloch Pauperism Reed Harrison The McKinley tariff- - Dr. Fletcher Riley Thompson Two friends at large 3. At Cumberland Gap Shaler The mountain camp Butler University Joint studies Sisco of Lake Tippecanoe The Johnny Darters - Rafinesque Rafinesque in Kentucky Catalogue of fresh-water fishes 4. Copeland's death Indiana Medical College Doctor of Medicine Wiley Not a clerical - Concerning medicine - - Great discoveries Floating matter in the air 5. Efforts for a university position Wisconsin Princeton - - Vassar Michigan Cincinnati Imperial University of Tokyo -- Handicaps CHAPTER SEVEN 1 54 1. Harlan and McCreary Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge White and black -- Ocmul- gee Basin Stone Mountain Hayes and Tilden Greeley's defeat 2. Invention of the telephone Speaking across the continent Printing a letter Explora- tion of Southern rivers About Asheville - Buncombe County Mitchell's Peak The Santee Basin Stephens Rome again Trout of the Northwest 3. Second trip South A tragic situation Change in angle of vision The Rhododendron Trail - - Smash Wagon Ford Falls of Tallulah Contents PAGE Natural History talks Native songs - Patting songs Typical negro melodies Re- ligious refrains Beaufort The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond Brooks 4. The "Baird School" -Theodore Gill --Mas- ter of Taxonomy Coues Coues' dread of visitors His good advice Jordan and Gilbert Dall and others Edward Drinker Cope Fishes of Ohio again Joseph Henry BOOK TWO (1879-1891) CHAPTER EIGHT 183 1. Dissension at Butler A dangerous move Back into line European trips 2. A sudden transfer Successor to Richard Owen Indiana University Humbug or godlessness Grand Old Men of Indiana 3. Abolition of competition Robert Owen and Maclure Say Lesueur The Owen Broth- ers Neef Troost Too many drones Rapp and the Angel Stone 4. New neighbors The Bates School of Philos- ophy The town Only one at a time --An unpopular book Early-day students "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 5. Geodes Trailing Arbutus Boisen Brown County CHAPTER NINE 201 1. Government service on Pacific Coast De- tails of investigation Los Angeles The Palos Verdes San Diego The "Last Chance" "Mr. Law" Big game fishing around Santa Catalina 2. Santa Barbara Sudis Flying Fishes Method of flight Opening Indian mounds San Luis Obispo The Black Current Millie- Christine - - Monterey - The Hagfish Mis- sion San Carlos -- Carrying the faith --An- il xiii 3 Contents PAGE 4. Old-school presidents - - Bionomics Foibles of university heads Value of higher educa- tion -- Making friends Growth of Indiana University A wise board of trustees Alumni trustees Death of Susan Bowen Jordan CHAPTER THIRTEEN 303 1. Alfred Russel Wallace Henry George Wendell Phillips Beecher - - Western hospi- tality Roosevelt and reform Rooseveltian epithets A joyous nature Roosevelt as naturalist Love of birds -- Rooseveltia brig- bami Deep-sea explorations Anent the An- anias Club --Civil Service in Alaska -- The tennis cabinet "His Favorite Author" -At his best Roosevelt's strength and weakness 2. The prey of spoilsmen - - Foulke -- Slain for the Republic Merit, not politics -- Civil Service in Yellowstone Park --At the White House McKinley's method - - Funston's promotion The Mugwumps - - Partisan tricks CHAPTER FOURTEEN 319 1. A call to Iowa President McBride The Jardin des Plantes In the mountains A noted guide "John Brown's body" A second visit to Pensacola 2. Evolution of the college curriculum The dregs of learning A radical suggestion Disper- sion of river fishes Marriage to Jessie Knight A Huguenot Puritan Admiral Knight Willoughby Lake Quebec Sainte Anne de Beau-Pre Luray Jordan's Law Gemi- nate Species Collecting in Virginia Joint studies of classic fish and fish names -- A village lost 3. In Colorado-- A splendid find Twin Lake Yellow Fin - - Uncompahgre Pass Lost arts - Utah again Contents PAGE 4. Government investigation in the Yellow- stone A painted chasm "Story of a Strange Land" A curious foreshadowing Barren streams Lupine Creek Yellowstone River Two Ocean Pass Bringing in new trout Problem of the Golden Trout Species formed in isolation Helping nature out CHAPTER FIFTEEN 344 1. "Schaking" on the Britannia- -Fjord and fjeld The Kaiser at Stallhjemskleven Odde and the Skjaeggedal On foot to Stor Ishaug Birch gradation A moonlight drive House of the Thousand Terrors Linguistic expe- riences The Passion Play The Alice Blanche A mountain refuge A life of devotion Val Tournanche On the Matter- joch Snowbound in August A dazzling world An amazing disclosure 2. Function of the State University White's telegram Leland Stanford and his errand A God of Love Offer accepted First visit to Palo Alto Secretary Elliott Guiding principles - Plan of organization of the new uni- versity Coulter -- Swain - - Bryan East in search of professors An untried field BOOK THREE (1891-1899) CHAPTER SIXTEEN 365 1. Leland Stanford Junior Plans for endow- ment Laying the corner stone Seeking expert advice An offer declined 2. The tall tree The University estates - - The fine art of horse breeding -- Motions of the horse The kindergarten Sale of the stud 3. Encina Hall The architects of Stanford Uni- versity The Quadrangles The Patio - Color contrasts The Arboretum Palm Avenue C xvii 3 Contents PAGE 4. A California Trianon Peter Coutts Adorn- ing nature Disappearance of the "French- man " Alcoholic fauna - - Ordered out - Pioneering A prohibition town City fa- thers Saving the live oaks "Uncle John" 5. Naming the streets --Don Caspar de Portola Provision for women The Museum In- stalling the general collections Family treas- ures The boy Leland 6. Our new environment Sierra de la Santa Cruz Sierra del Monte Diablo Monte Diablo The golden poppy Miles and miles of bloom The Lick Observatory The Coast redwood A noble outlook CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 394 1. Skepticism and apprehension Advice and warning Changed conditions 2. The opening day A true Golden Age The first faculty of Stanford University - - Turning to younger men Stillman The Indiana group Some of the "Old Guard " - Not all re- mained Non-resident professors Harrison on International Law 3. Adventurous youth Handling Encina - Dropped off the edge of the campus - - No smok- ing in the Quadrangle Sunday services - Our padre 4. The Daily Palo Alto The Sequoia The Cha- parral Early characters Thoburn "In Terms of Life" Prayer-- "Four-leaved Clover" Hoover "De Re Metallica" - The women of Stanford Friends and disci- ples Wilbur Not forgotten The second generation 5. "Frosh" and "Prof" Students of mature age The first football game - - University out- ings Senior-faculty games- "Fanned out" "A Faculty Meeting" -The audience re- assured -- Successful vaudeville -- A contest in C xviii 3 Contents PAGE politeness The "Antigone" Die Luft der Freiheit 6. Changes in policy - - Limitation of numbers of both women and men - - Entrance requirements - Large liberty of election in preparation - Radical and conservative - - Why Eastern stu- dents came -- Educational ideals -- Charm of California -- Students as helpers -- Fraternity chapter houses CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 428 1. The Yosemite Sequoia washingtonia -- Other giant conifers - - How to tell fir from spruce - Cheerful tales of the Sierra - - Yosemite and Lauterbrunnen - - Nevada Fall and Rheinfall 2. Floodmore Joyous excursions -- Californiacs "She first loved us" -Two seasons in Cali- fornia The Missions -- San Diego San Luis Rey San Juan Capistrano Santa Barbara San Antonio San Juan Bautista and Santa Clara Dolores The Pious Fund 3. A Chaucer scholar Other strong men - - Smith as poet Wing at home and abroad Mary Sheldon Barnes Kellogg A varied career -Charlotte Kellogg -- George Clark -- Fair- clough's war service Tried and true CHAPTER NINETEEN 447 1. California's first automobile -- University ex- tension Luther Burbank Tribute by De Vries A reverent evolutionist Moses and Howison Pragmatism Ritter Phoebe Hearst Susan Lincoln Mills An auspicious combination 2. The singer of the Sierras Coolbrith, Cheney, and Markham "The Man with the Hoe" The splendid, idle forties - - The Land of Sun- shine group The dean of anglers -- Good cit- izens too Muir and Keith Jack London Frank Norris C xix 3 Contents PAGE 3. Ambrose Bierce His awful humor Fitch and Millard A great occasion lost Liter- ary journalists A grim old fighter 4. Stebbins, Wendte, and Brown Voorsanger Other friendly neighbors Olney The Cooper staff Stallard 5. Sutro Valentine and Mills A strong woman General Lowe The Mission Inn. A Sac- ramento trio The Bidwells A monumental romancer The Baron of Arizona 6. Welcome guests An interesting career A Bismarckian critic Lapses from German grace "Primitive" Americans -- Our greatest preacher CHAPTER TWENTY 478 1. Death of the founder-- Southern Pacific owners - An unforeseen dilemma In the Probate Court Leland Stanford's funeral 2. His early life General merchant - - War gov- ernor Railway builder The last spike United States Senator Kindness of heart Religious attitude Freedom from entangle- ments of church or party Training for useful- ness in life Value of cooperation Waste of labor - - To dignify labor - - An open road to edu- cation Need of competent teachers Suc- cess not measured by numbers Equal educa- tion for women Increase of individual effi- ciency - - Value of time - - Farm loan project 3. Defect in enabling act Welton Stanford The panic of 1893 -- Professors as personal servants -The bag of gold A monthly al- lowance Contribution by professors The crisis at Vina The "freezing out" process - Pioneer reception Stanch supporters 4. A staggering blow Government aid to Cen- tral Pacific --Two valuations -- No help from partners "Stopping the circus" Favorable Contents PAGE decisions Appeal to Supreme Court Cleve- land's intervention Harlan's decision 5. Obstacle of debt Mrs. Stanford's anxiety Putting Stanford into the California Constitu- tion A valuable burden The Jewel Fund Efforts to legalize a last will and testament A cold opinion Forlorn hope Rigid econ- omies Blanket deeds Unflinching devotion A sacred trust CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 511 1. Need of a new residence The "woodpecker tree" The orchard Our friends the quails Other feathered tenants Some monkey folk Maternal yearnings A simian Mazeppa Loro Bonito A difficult accomplishment Coloratura duets Furry invaders 2. Save the Redwoods The Big Basin statute California Redwood Park The Pinnacles Reserve Lake Tahoe Desolation Valley and Heather Lake The Tahoe dyke Up and over Rockbound Circuit of Lake Tahoe The Bret Harte country Plumas County Lassen's Butte 3. An inclusive memoir on American fishes Good helpers University extension "The Physi- cal Basis of Heredity" Collecting at Mazatlan New friends-- A nightmare Love and science Ygnacio Our gringo Colorado A paradise of birds Good talkers Hidden treasure Ygnacio's escopete 4. The Pioneers graduate The Yellowstone again Mountain chipmunks The Devil's Wood- pile A national university Hoyt's efforts Opportunities for research Influential advo- cates Argument before the Senate Real scholars not partisan Discussions pro and con Faction in science - - Election as president After the great fire Natural History groups H xxi Contents PAGE Active and honorary memberships Loro Bonito now learns the Stanford "yell" Mrs. Stanford's gratitude Herbert C. Nash CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 545 1. Fur Seal problem Elaine's mare clausum Breeding homes Roving habits Disastrous effect of pelagic sealing Contention of the Unites States Paris Award 2. Early records First estimate as to numbers Land killing of males My associates A capable group The British commission Through Alexander Archipelago A great achievement Removal to Annette Island New allegiance Sitka Glaciers and vol- canoes Unalaska Dolly Vardens big and small Arctic flora St. George 3. St. Paul --The Aleuts The "Roblar Man" -Puzzled experts Apollon's big halibut To Zapadni and back A tale of the Mist Islands Deep-sea fishes The first Bogoslof -The last 4. Life on the Pribilofs The white seal Count- ing harems The old fellows leave The little Blue Fox Fox walks An odd countenance Cruel eyes Marie Corelli and the Gray Sea Lion The Hair Seal 5. "Through storm and fog, by luck or log, We sail as Bering sailed" Greater Britain A tempt- ing offer Stories told to children Youthful critics "The Care and Culture of Men" "The Innumerable Company" Foster and Hamlin To end pelagic sealing Richard Olney Li Hung Chang 6. McKinley's Cabinet John Sherman McKinley and Sherman John Hay - - Mar- rack's speech "Lessons of the Tragedy" We make the laws xx Contents PAGE CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 577 1. To Bering Sea once more Klondike gold Muir Glacier Cleveland's idiosyncrasy Bowers "Steve" Elkins - - Moser to the rescue An agreeable change - - War at Karluk - - Bel- kofski The Sea Otter Much gold but no food A Treasury order Costly disregard of national resources 2. Fair weather A new factor Attacks of Uncinaria lucasi Complete eradication Branding Fencing a failure The Fur Seal's stupidity His teachable cousin Short mem- ories On the Satellite -- British discipline The gay homes of Nikolski -- Luscious dishes Bering's death on Tolstoi Mys Steller's fate 3. Medni precedents Picturesque Glinka Moser confers a boon Poetic inspiration Sending for the mail Hooper's tact and wis- dom A master seaman Fog as a blanket to sound Trying to be funny The Roble cat Fatal detail A frantic editor "Scios- ophy" A profitable hoax Fur Seals extinct on Guadalupe Island 4. The diplomatic commission British reluc- tance Our predicament A way out Fresh complications Vostochni invaded Sir Wil- frid Laurier Kakichi Mitsukuri and his strange offering Foster calls on me for a speech 5. Fur Seal report Treaty of 1911 Credit where credit is due Efforts to neutralize the treaty Menace of unchecked pelagic sealing Unsound reasoning Killing of superfluous males a necessity Value of expert knowledge Continuous observation CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 613 I. Atrocities in Cuba A special envoy Sink- of the Maine McKinley's advisers Wood- xxiii H Contents PAGE ford unfairly discredited Dewey at Manila "Lest we forget!" Anti-imperialism See Mark Twain: "To a Person Sitting in Dark- ness" Democracy turned imperialist Eu- genic studies Darwin on war selection "The Blood of the Nation" "The Human Harvest" "War and the Breed" Mrs. Stanford and world peace 2. To the Southwest Lummis and The Land of Sunshine Cliff-dwellings Bound for the Grand Canyon Primeval place Erosion two miles deep A tough job Earth sculpture Hairbreadth escapes of John Hance The wrathful chub 3. On to Acoma Pueblo towns and people Communal defense The Acoma mesa Coro- nado visits Acoma Revolt and massacre Wise concessions The house a fortress Acoma trails Pottery Fine courtesy Camera magic Dizzy ways Supplicating the gods 'A gallo race The white man's incantation 4. Enchanted Katzimo Legend of Katzimo "Disenchanting" the mesa Hodge's expedi- tion Evidences of habitation A furious ride Precarious hold Trophies from the top Safely down The prairie dog Bur- rowing owl An astonished rattlesnake Strange customs Home-loving aborigines CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 638 i. A long holiday Siestas alternating with fiestas The adored Presidente View from Chapul- tepec An exquisite outlook "Los Toros" at Guadalajara Abundant hospitality Great estates seized by the people Striking contrasts Mount Orizaba Exotic lands Alpine heights A problem in Ichthyology The coralillo Diaz the man La planta animal My mother's death C xxiv U Contents PAGE 2. The Hall of Fame Odd omissions Civic Forum Medal Medal of Honor 3. Camping in Kings River Canyon An irrep- arable loss Relics of antiquity The North Palisade "Yosemites" University of Cali- fornia Peak Ouzel Basin Stanford Univer- sity Peak Breaking waves of granite Alps and Sierras contrasted 4. Oom Paul's obstinacy Britain's moral re- sponsibility Imperial expansion The Kai- ser's telegram- -A gross lapse Why free- dom matters Mob and herd instincts Campbell-Bannerman Smuts 5. Inauguration of Benjamin Ide Wheeler "Eat- ing one's way through" President Barrows APPENDIXES: A. Colonial Genealogy 665 B. Inaugural Address, Stanford University, Octo- ber i, 1891 688 C. Extracts from Certain Personal Letters of Mrs. Jane Lathrop Stanford 691 D. From "Lest We Forget" 695 E. Appeal of the Anti-Imperialist League, 1899. . . . 699 F. How Barbara Came to Escondite 701 G. Brief Mention of Certain Graduates of Stanford University between 1892 and 1899 707 C xxv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Huldah Hawley Jordan, 1876 Frontispiece OPPOSITE PAGE Hiram Jordan, 1886 6 Mary Jordan Edwards, 1873; Lucia Jordan Beadle, 1895; Rufus Bacon Jordan, 1860 14 Barbara Jordan, 1898 28 David Starr Jordan, August, 1868 44 John Henry Comstock; Anna Botsford Comstock; Melville Best Anderson; William Russel Dudley 56 John Caspar Branner, 1896 66 Andrew Dickson White, 1868 78 David Starr Jordan at Graduation, 1872 96 Louis Agassiz, about 1857 no David Starr Jordan, 1874 124 Susan Bowen Jordan, 1879; David Starr Jordan, 1880 . 132 Herbert Edson Copeland, 1876; Charles Henry Gilbert, 1880 140 The "Angel Stone," New Harmony 194 Ruined Mission of San Juan Capistrano 204 San Carlos Borromeo in Carmelo, 1880 212 Point Lobos 218 Mount Rainier 224 Reunion of Class of 1883, Indiana University, June, 1920 248 Rjukanfos, Thelemark, Norway 256 Matterhorn from Near Schwartzsee (Lac Noir) .... 262 Refuge Hut, 1881 268 Edith Monica Jordan, 1909; Harold Bowen Jordan, 1906 300 Jessie Knight Jordan, 1886 and 1898 326 Knight and Eric, 1908 354 Leland Stanford, Junior; Jane Lathrop Stanford; Leland Stanford 366 Horses on the Palo Alto Ranch 370 Inner Court, Stanford University, 1891 374 Outer Quadrangle, Stanford University, 1903 380 Inner Court and Memorial Church, 1909; Looking through Triple Arch, Inner Court, into Memorial Court .... 386 C xxvii 3 List of Illustratio?is *J OPPOSITE PAGE Charles David Marx; Ray Lyman Wilbur; Edward Curtis Franklin; Douglas Houghton Campbell 398 David Starr Jordan, 1891; Wilbur Wilson Thoburn; John Maxson Stillman 406 Herbert Hoover; Vernon Kellogg 410 Henry Rushton Fairclough; Clelia Duel Mosher, M.D. . 414 The President at the Bat, 1895 420 Redwoods, La Honda; Prune Trees, Santa Clara Valley 430 San Francisco de Assis de los Dolores in Fiesta .... 438 "Rolling Foothills "on the "Old Farm" 458 Leland Stanford, about 1890 480 Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford, 1850 494 Francis E. Spencer; Samuel Franklin Leib; Timothy Hop- kins 500 The Garden, 1898; the "Woodpecker Tree" 512 Barbara Jordan, 1895 530 Bering Sea, Showing Position of Pribilof and Commander Islands; St. Paul Island, Pribilof Islands, Alaska . . . 548 Joint British-American Commission for Fur-Seal Investi- gation, Unalaska, 1896 552 Sitka, Alaska 556 Fur Seal Rookery on Lukanin 560 Second Bogoslof as It Rose from the Sea, 1883 .... 564 Muir Glacier 578 Fur Seals on Old Landslide, Palata 592 Joint British-American Diplomatic Commission, 1897-98 602 Gateway to Acoma; On the Modern Trail 626 Partial View of Acoma Pueblo 632 Lummis-Jordan Party on Top of the Enchanted Mesa; Enchanted Mesa from the Southeast 636 Puente de Ixtla, Morelos, Mexico 642 North Palisade from Summit of Mt. Woodworth; Kear- sarge Pinnacles and Lakes 650 xxvii BOOK ONE 1851-1879 THE DAYS OF A MAN CHAPTER ONE "!F we know ourselves well," says Barrie, "we know our parents also." Conversely runs the old Shinto maxim, "Let men know by your own deeds who were your ancestors." Again, according to Erasmus Darwin more than a century ago, each man is but "an elongation of his parents' life." He is, in fact, the elongation of two lives - - and (be- hind these) of thousands of others more or less divergent, else he could have no individuality or be really himself. Such originality as may be his comes from new combination, not from acquisition. When a child is once born, "the gate of gifts is closed"; nothing more comes unsought. He may henceforth expect nothing new, but must devote himself to the adjustment and development of his heritage of potentialities received through father and mother. Each one, then, is a "chip of the old block," but not that alone; each is a composite of many chips of many blocks - - a fact which obligates me to say something about my ancestry. This was p w itan made up of common men farmers, teachers, ancestry preachers, lawyers and their womenfolk, all of the old Puritan stock, every one of their earlier forebears (so far as we know) having migrated hope- fully from Devon for the most part, or in some cases from London, to build up new fortunes in the free C i 3 The Days of a Man 1809 air of a New World. Among them occur the names of Waldo, Adams, Gary, Hull, Bacon, Holly, Fowler, Foster, Graves, Dimmock, Wight, Lake, and Drake, 1 the line last named harking back in Devon to Drakes, Grenvilles, Courteneys, Prideaux, Gilberts, and De Quincys. John John Jordan, my great-grandfather, served in the Jordan Revolution; in after years he was justice of the peace at Moriah on the hills above Port Henry on Lake Champlain in Essex County, New York. Be- hind him and his father, Elijah Jordan, a Baptist clergyman of Litchfield, Connecticut, stood Rufus Jordan, supposed to be a certain Rufus known to have left Jordan in Devon to seek his fortune in America. John Jordan's old farm was a barren and stony tract strewn with crystals of red hematite, the common iron ore, which my father used for shot in squirrel hunting. Half a century later, and long after my grandfather, another Rufus Jordan, had sold this property, it acquired large value as one of New York's great sources of iron, and on it now stands the considerable town of Mineville. Rufus Rufus Jordan I remember as a dark and wiry little Jordan man w ith large black eyes, and an intense dislike for the political group which he called "the Feds." His death occurred in 1862, when he was seventy-nine years old. Of my paternal grandmother, Rebecca Bacon, I recall only that she was a slender, keen- eyed, quick-spoken old lady who sat by the winter fire. My father, Hiram Jordan, was born on February 12, 1809, which date, it will be remembered, was also the birthday of Darwin and of Lincoln. A little 1 See Appendix A (page 665). C 2 3 My Parents less than six feet in height, he was spare, wiry, and Hiram very athletic. As a youth he used to be able to J rdan clasp his hands and jump through them, a feat I also was once able to perform, but which I have been unable to compass for a good many years back. A clever hunter in his earlier years, Father possessed a large degree of woodcraft, though later in life he refused even to own a gun. With no very marked originality, yet quick to see a point and adopt from others, especially from my mother, he was a keen observer, a man of great energy, and of considerable ability as a speaker. His conception of duty was firm and unflinching; he used no form of alcohol or tobacco, and spent a large part of the latter portion of his life fighting the liquor interests in his county. Having been a strong Abolitionist before the war, he was from the first a vigorous supporter of Lincoln's policies. Active in behalf of all educational move- ments, he served for a long time as trustee of the public school of his district, and as a teacher himself for ten or twelve years was locally noted for skill in instruction and maintenance of order. By religious belief he felt in harmony with Unitarians and Univer- salists alike, becoming finally a pillar of the local Uni- versalist church. Although of a cheerful disposition, he was undemonstrative and often silent for a long time if his feelings had been hurt. He never laughed aloud, so far as I can remember, but for that matter neither have I except in an elephantine way to amuse the children. My fun I always take internally. Huldah Lake Hawley, my mother, was born in Hulda Whitehall, Washington County, New York, July 9, Hawley 1812. A woman of large stature and strong, re- J rdan ligious character, though liberal as to details of C 3 3 The Days of a Man 1837 faith, she had a distinctly original mind, a broad outlook on attairs, considerable native literary skill, and (for her time) a good English education. At writing she was rather clever. Of her verses, which he copied neatly in an elaborately ornate hand, my father was very proud. 1 Mother, too, had been a successful teacher, and for some time after their marriage my parents maintained on the farm a private school with a few resident pupils. Of David Hawley, my mother's father, a man of large build and generous mind, with a personal influence unusual for a frontier farmer, I had little direct knowledge, as for some years before his death he suffered from ill health which confined him to the house. His father was the Reverend Sylvanus 1 One of my mother's poems, still preserved, reads as follows: WHAT is OUR HOPE? When we shall sink in drooping age, When friends depart, when sorrows rage, And earth's frail joys all fleeting go, What balm remains for mortal woe? Is this our hope that we shall reign With God, our Saviour, free from pain, While millions of his children dwell Mid ceaseless flames in endless hell? Though tender offspring there we see Wailing in hopeless agony, Yet we with heartfelt pleasure hear Their groans and sighs, nor drop a tear? Ah no, we hope that one and all Shall rise at their Creator's call, From sorrows, sin, and death made free, And all in Christ new creatures be. This precious hope can give us peace When all our earthly comforts cease And make us with our dying breath Shout, Where's thy victory, boasting Death? HULDAH JORDAN Gainesville, N. Y. January 22, 1837 C43 1830] W^aldo Ancestry Holly of Stratford, Connecticut, our different spelling of the surname having been adopted by the children of Sylvanus' first wife, Huldah Lake, of which group my grandfather was one. Huldah Lake Holly was regarded as a gifted woman, and for her my mother was named. Two of the Holly descendants of the last century, Alanson and Birdsall Holly, became distinguished civil engineers. My mother's mother, Anne Waldo, a third or fourth cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and reputed to be a person of uncommon refinement and depth of insight, I never knew. She belonged to a well- known family widely honored in Connecticut and Massachusetts, her father being Judge John Elderkin John Waldo of Canterbury, Connecticut, at the time a local leader of the "Federalists," who viewed with alarm the democracy of his age. In one of his speeches he decried the "hard times in Connecticut," and insisted that there would "never be good times again until every farm hand would once more work all day for a sheep's head and pluck." He then went on also to say that the trouble lay in the " little red schoolhouses scattered over the hills, which preach the doctrines of equality and se- dition." I should here explain that my mother, who preserved the record, was in no way sympathetic with these views of her august ancestor. To return now to my more immediate story, it was in the year 1830 or thereabouts that my grand- father, Rufus Jordan, accompanied by his wife Re- becca, his sons Hiram and Moses, and his daughters C 5 D The Days of a Man 1830 "Going Lucina, Lydia, Rebecca, and Mary, left Lake West " Champlain and moved across the country after the fashion of those times in what was afterward called a "prairie schooner" to the Great Holland Purchase in western New York, a group of townships then mostly included in the county of Ontario. The first halt was at Arcadia 1 in what is now Wayne County, a rich farming country which nevertheless seemed to the wanderers less healthy than the Adirondacks from which they had come. Accordingly, after a stay of a few years, they moved still farther west- ward, settling in what was at that time a part of the township of Warsaw, then in the county of Genesee. The land they selected was high and rolling, crossed by the bright, clear headwaters of Oatka River, a smaller tributary of which became known as "Grandpa Jerdan's Creek." Later the southern half of Genesee was separated from the rest to form Wyoming, with Warsaw as county seat, the six-mile-square township south of Warsaw being first known as Hebe after the classical fashion of those days. 2 This name was later changed to Gaines- ville in honor of General Edmund Pendleton Gaines of Virginia, a :< hero in the siege of Fort Erie" in the War of 1812- -a transformation I have always regretted, as I should have chosen 'Hebe" rather than Gainesville as a birthplace. 1 Here at that time lived Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, who "translated" the famous plates of the Book of Mormon reputed to have been dug up in the neighborhood, the original hieroglyphics of which were read (according to tradition) by the aid of two magic glasses, the "Urim and Thummim." 2 A system initiated by one of the head surveyors of the great tract of central New York to the east of the Holland Purchase, each township mapped by him having received a name drawn from his Latin repertory. Examples still extant are Ithaca, Utica, Troy, Syracuse, Rome, Ulysses, Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and Hesiod. HIRAM JORDAN, I 886 Migration of Jordans and Haw leys During the journey from Arcadia to Warsaw, the Jordans had fallen in with another migrating group similarly bound, consisting of David Hawley, his wife, Anne Waldo, and his three sons and three daughters, who were moving from Whitehall (county seat of Washington County) near Lake George. On the way, Huldah, the eldest, became engaged to my father, to whom she was married at Warsaw on May 22, 1833. The young couple now bought an attractive farm situated on the highway leading from Gainesville to Warsaw, six miles away. Across The the road was a magnificent forest of sugar maples, J rdan the finest I ever saw, and along our side, in front of the house, Father planted an avenue of the same trees. The farm itself, comprising at first only 100 acres, afterward grew to 150 and finally to 225, thus extending backward from the road for three quarters of a mile. To the west and about the house the ground, being ''maple land," was very rich. Several of the hills farther back, however, were originally largely covered with hemlock trees, and where the hemlock grows the soil is always light and poor. The hills that crossed the farm were, in fact, part of a broad terminal moraine of a vanished continental glacier, and to the north of the house rose a steep ridge made up entirely of glacial debris. On the A glacial farther side lay a small, deep glacial pond, full in the winter but going almost dry in summer. This we stocked with catfish Ameiurus melas locally known as "bullheads" (in New England : ' horned pout") brought from Silver Lake, a much larger glacial relic eight miles to the northeast. On the little tarn with its eager and toothsome fishes, I had my first lessons in angling - - and in swimming as : 7 D The Days of a Man 1833 well. And I still remember vividly my first experience there with my father; as he stepped into deep water with me, the little boy, clinging to his neck, I said: "/ guess Mother better come!' Cranberry Farther back was a noted cranberry pond, a huge pond spring of pure, cold water without inlet or outlet, covering nearly three acres, but with only a few rods of clear space, the rest being covered by a floating network of coarse water-moss Sphagnum - held in a firm grip by the entangled roots of the two species of cranberries. Through the network at intervals were holes kept open by muskrats. On the Sphagnum grew abundantly two rare orchids Calopogon and Pogonia - - with other unusual plants, notably the beautiful little Swamp Laurel Kalmia glauca - - while the whole area was surrounded by a fringe of blueberries of two species, and the rare Swamp Holly - - Nemopanthes. In 1874, my father having inherited a sum of money from an uncle, Moses Jordan of West Chester, Pennsylvania, we were enabled to build a new house : and to purchase, as already implied, con- siderable valuable land, including what was left of the maple forest mentioned above, which adjoined the original property. After Father's sudden death on June 10, 1888, the whole place was leased for a time to my nephew, Ernest R. Beadle, and later sold by my mother. I was the fourth of five children. The eldest, Lucia, who married James Beadle, a neighbor, was a woman of high intelligence and noble disposition, a graduate of the local "Female Seminary" there being then no colleges for women and the author 1 Burned in 1916. C 8 ] tus 18623 Brothers and Sisters of clever verses, mostly of a satirical turn. She died in 1889 in Chicago, at the home of our sister Mary. My older brother, Rufus Bacon Jordan, was a # tall, dark youth of grave demeanor and gentle and Bacon refined nature, with, nevertheless, a very charac- J rdan teristic fund of dry humor. As a boy his passion was for horses, as mine was for sheep. About a horse there was nothing he did not know, and he was intensely interested in all horse traits and activities. Thirteen years younger than he, I held him in absolute worship, and I still remember the long period of loneliness and distress after his un- timely death. Night after night I would dream that it was not true and that he had returned safe and sound. In the spring of 1862 he went to Washington with James Beadle to enlist, but being immediately stricken down with "army fever," was sent home to die. The day they brought him back I was in a new clearing, engaged in the congenial task of burn- ing stumps, when Lucia came rushing across the field to tell me that if I wanted to see my brother alive I must hurry to the house. In 1907 I dedicated "The 'The Human Harvest," dealing with the biological Human effects of war, ' To the memory of my brother, Rufus Bacon Jordan, of the Human Harvest of 1862." l 1 I do remember in the far-off years, Through the long twilight of the August nights (The nights of half a century ago) I waited for my brother, whom I loved I waited for my brother, and he came Came but in dreams and never came again, For he was with the Sisterhood of Fate; Man is; Man is not; Alan shall never be. From "In the Wilderness"; Stanford Phi Beta Kappa Poem, 1912. C 9 3 The Days of a Man My only other brother, Hawley, died in infancy. Mary Mary, a very intelligent and handsome girl three Jordan years younger than I, was the third woman to enter Cornell University. There she became engaged to Edward Junius Edwards, a former fellow student at Lombard University, where I taught for a year after graduating from college. Minneapolis has long been her home. For some years before his death in 1915, her husband interested himself in genealogy, and during the process of working out his children's ancestry, half of which was also mine, he brought to light many unknown or forgotten details of family origin and connections. Mrs. Edwards is the mother of six, Arthur (Stanford, 1900), Paul, Junius, Flora (Mrs. Bailey), Marjorie (Mrs. Blake), and Mary Edwards. Binh- I was born on the I9th day of January, 1851, in place the old brown farmhouse, left unpainted in my boy- hood to save money so that we children might be educated. Originally - - that is, in the early days before my father bought the farm it had been a wayside inn, a habit never quite abandoned. It stood on the county road one mile northeast of the village of Gainesville, fifty miles south of Roch- ester, and sixty southeast of Buffalo. Vines covered the front of the house, and I therefore used some- times to say that. "I became a botanist in self-de- fense." The Gainesville of my day consisted chiefly of two long streets meeting at a right angle. Just south of their junction a large stream, East Coy Creek, flowed obliquely through the town on its way to the Genesee n 10 3 18513 Home Town River. The "East Coy' apparently came by its EastCoy name in a curious way. Six miles to the south, and Creek for some distance parallel to it, runs a sister stream bearing the alleged Indian name of 'Wiscoy," which, naturally suggesting 'West Coy," by im- plication made our creek the 'East Coy." Above the town this was dammed to form a mill pond, in which I used to swim and fish for bullheads. Below the town and down through the woods trout were always plenty, a fact the world at large has been slow to discover, for whenever I revisit the region, I still find big ones abundant under the bridge on the road to East Pike. Other kinds - - sunfishes, darters, minnows, and suckers - - are also common there, notably the speckled 'Johnny Darter" and the slim, low-backed, pirate-rigged fantail darter, - charming, tiny creatures which interested me in my youth and have been near to my heart ever since. Ordinarily the stream could be waded almost any- where by an enterprising boy, though at intervals there were deep holes for swimming and for washing sheep. In the spring, however, it often became a raging torrent, flooding the neighboring fields and sometimes carrying away the bridges. The village- -or, as we called it, "the Creek" counted five or six hundred people, the only " foreign " Vllle element being a considerable group of farmers from the North of England. At the junction of the two main streets stood the 'Female Seminary"; adjoining it rose the three principal churches, Con- gregationalist, Methodist, and Universalist. Archi- tecturally of the usual New England order, with tall, sharp spires, they were painted white and C ii 3 The Days of a Man Ci8c6 flanked by horse sheds. In their yards grew the wild caraway, a spicy condiment which furnished welcome relief to children during the long sermons and congregational singing. Across the stream was the largest store, and near by an inn which bore the conspicuous and sometimes inaccurate name of 'The Temperance House/' Abutting on these was a small common running steeply down to the creek, on the bank of which, farther up, stood the big gristmill and still farther on, the mill pond. Early My first clear recollection is that of a little object recoilec- J n a re( j calico dress skipping down the path past the first row of currant bushes on the way to the well. A remarkable well, I may say, very clear and cold, tapping deep streams from underneath glacial deposits. For it we then used a chain pump, and as the water leaked back over the valves in the chain it seemed to me to keep saying, in a deep guttural, "Red worm, red worm!' My next definite recollection is of being at the house of my cynical uncle, Francis Jenison, and of explaining to him that 'yesterday I was four; today I'm five!" At about the same time I dis- tinctly recall shouting for Fremont and Dayton, and asking my brother Rufus - - referring to the rival candidates, Buchanan and Breckenridge what "a brecken ridge" really was. A year or two later Rufus undertook to teach me to handle a horse, and set me to leading one across a field. But the beast traveled faster than I could, and kept circling around me. Growing impatient at my clumsiness, Rufus said to my mother: "That c 12 n 18563 Home Life boy never will have any sense;" but she replied that he "mustn't talk so to a mother; he will learn as he grows up." Throughout my childhood, cooperative quilting Quilting parties were a common social feature, groups of bees neighbor women gathering of afternoons at the various houses to help each other out. In this way a good deal of work was agreeably accomplished with a minimum expenditure of time and perhaps a maximum of gossip. For the process, as most of my readers know, two layers of cloth of the de- sired dimensions- -usually of vari-colored squares or strips of calico sewed together in simple or intricate design - - and with generous interlining of cotton batting, were stretched over a wooden frame l and quilted through and through by hand. The result was a "comforter" worthy of the name. Often also the finished article was most attractive, and some of the patterns, I am told, were both famous and difficult. Today the :< puff' of simple design and frequently of expensive material has crowded out the old-fashioned quilt, as the demands of modern life leave little leisure for piecing bits of calico! Once when a "quilting bee" was on at our house, I walked about under the frame and got playfully thumped on the head by the thimbles of the women working above. I remember also being considerably puzzled by a proposal of marriage from one of the ladies present. This I took somewhat seriously, though it seemed to me best to wait a little while, as I might perhaps do better. Moreover, I had already 1 This was so adjusted that the quilt lay perfectly flat and three or four women worked on each side. Then, as they continuously progressed toward the middle, the finished portions were rolled under out of the way, the side slats being made movable for that purpose. C 13 3 The Days of a Man 1858 assured my sister Lucia that when I grew up I would marry her. One of my youthful duties was to help sew strips of cloth together for rag carpets which were woven in a loom, the same the women of the family some- times used for the making of homespun cloth. Where each strip was of a solid color we planned distinct patterns, the different shades and widths alternating regularly; in inventing such designs I acquired some little skill. When the colors were broken, the result was called "hit or miss." The old Among my earliest memories is that of a large, dock old-fashioned timepiece which inoffensively attended to its own business when : 'the folks' 3 were there, but had a distressing and eerie way of pounding out the slow minutes whenever I was left to myself. The psychological effect of a big clock on young boys has perhaps never been fully appreciated, for as soon as they are alone the thing seems to devote special attention to them, ticking off the time with exasperating leisure and an insistent loudness which it never otherwise possesses. As a boy of seven or eight I used to amuse myself by walking along the rail fence which bounded the farm, meanwhile imagining various historical epi- sodes. Each rail, for instance, would represent the career, easy or difficult, of some king or other. A little later I occasionally worked out on European maps visionary campaigns in which I imagined one nation after another fighting to correct its frontier; in these conflicts, my hero (usually named David Emanuel Starr) always had the proper idea as to national boundaries! This particular fantasy, how- ever, soon merged itself into my later and really L H 3 MARY JORDAN EDWARDS, 1873 LUCIA JORDAN BEADLE, 1895 RUFUS BACON JORDAN, 1860 18583 Home congenial task of map drawing, to which I shall again refer. Among my youthful treasures was an old bayonet Playing brought back from Vermont by John Jordan from soldier the Revolutionary War. Of its previous history I never knew anything more, and I recall nothing of its final fate. But in those days, like other boys, I played at war, making a large collection of spool soldiers with which to supplement my tin armies of Austrians, Sardinians, and French. From deep-cut spools which had carried coarse thread I fashioned my choicest grenadiers; experimenting, I found that they would stand better with the top sawed off, and best of all if the bottom were plugged with lead. Spools with shallow cut for fine thread, being mere infantry, I valued less, and the fatalities among them from pea-shooting artillery were very heavy. Out of this early period I recall a long, delightful A long trip with my father, who had to take a load of wheat drive to the village of Cuyler on the Genesee Canal in Livingston County. That drive gave us a better opportunity to get acquainted than we had ever had before, and I found him surprisingly interesting and friendly. For he was sensitive and reticent, and left intimate relations mainly to my mother. He was very proud of his children - - she knew their inmost feelings. It has seemed to me that the average boy does not understand his father as well as he should, while on the other hand fathers often find it hard to keep in touch with their growing boys. To take a trip together is a fine way of de- veloping comradeship. C is 3 The Days of a Man 1859 N O Corporal punishment, by the way, was not a whipping factor in my development. So far as my memory goes, I was never whipped by either of my parents or by any one else. Punishment, threats, and rewards played no part in my upbringing. TO In my eighth or ninth year I had another wonderful Rochester journey, this time with both Father and Mother. Taking a horse and buggy, with a little stool for me, we drove fifty miles to Irondequoit, near Roch- ester on Lake Ontario. This was a long outing, but full of interest. We stayed at the home of a rela- tive who owned a fine peach orchard, and there I made acquaintance with the luscious fruit which would not grow on our colder hills. We then went twenty-five miles westward to the town of Albion (Orleans County) by way of the 'Ridge Road," which marks an ancient shore some thirty feet higher than the present lake level and running parallel with it from the Niagara River eastward to the St. Lawrence. This highway was a "plank road" -that is, one covered with thick planks of pine or hemlock, the highest type of road-making of its day. The current phrase of the period, "two- forty on a plank," meaning a mile in two minutes and forty seconds, indicated the greatest speed then attained by a trotting horse. That trip to Rochester stands out in my memory as a sudden disclosure of the great world which I have ever since tried to explore and understand. An automobile would now cover the entire round trip in five hours. Even as a boy in school, though large and strong, I hated all quarreling. But I remember having at about the age of nine a very bitter fight over some C 16 3 18593 The Sense of Fear incident long since forgotten, with an antagonist A older than I, though smaller. The tussle took place f pride on a pond covered with ice. Both being afflicted with "the tragedy of pride," neither was willing to give up, and the combat ran on unduly. The final result was "peace without victory." In this, or in any other bout in which I have engaged, I do not remember actually losing my temper. During all my career I have acted upon Senator Benton's motto, "I never quarrel, but I sometimes fight." And only once, so far as I recall, have I ever felt an overpowering sense of fear. This experience ing fear occurred when I was nine years old. I was then engaged in carrying a bucket of young pout from our little tarn to plant them in the "Cranberry Pond." The only open space of clear water in that "quaking bog" was very deep, and shadowed on the land side by tall hemlocks; out into it ran a fallen trunk on which one could walk for a certain distance. Under the trees it was dark, and in their tops the winds were moaning loudly. Meanwhile I could see on the shore three weird "deadfall' traps, each baited with a sheep's head to catch predatory foxes. As I approached the open water, the noise in the trees, the sight of the skulls, and the loneliness of the whole scene all at once combined to give me a sudden panic. Dumping the fish into the wet moss at my feet, I ran back along the log and scuttled home. For no rational cause at all I felt a cold chill of fear which I still remember, and which enables me to understand similar emotions in other people under great stress. But I myself have never had the same feeling again. The nearest approach to it came at about the same time, when, looking out C 17 3 wer- The Days of a Man 1860 from the village schoolhouse, I saw flames bursting through the windows of the '' Female Seminary." Shrieking "THE SEMINARY is ON FIRE!" I gathered up my books and made for home, a terrified youngster. Timidity Nevertheless, while I have always been more or less immune to fear as ordinarily understood, I have at times felt ashamed of my inability to make quick decisions in an emergency. Moreover, as a child I was rather shy away from home and in the presence of strangers. For instance, I still recall a bewilder- ing timidity whenever I went to Warsaw, Castile, Hermitage, and Perry, noisy towns where nobody knew me; and it took a long time to outgrow that sense of being a helpless stranger in those unac- customed places. I also felt an awed sense of mystery whenever 1 drove with my father along the brink of what we called : 'the Gulf," later known as Rock Glen - - a narrow, dark chasm with vertical walls about two hundred feet high, through which the infant Oatka 1 River has cut its way for a couple of miles down to the valley of Warsaw. But when I came back from college ten years later, the town seemed very small, the hills not so high as they formerly were, and the distances absurdly short. Recently even Wyoming County (twenty-four miles square) seemed of trivial dimensions when I motored over it in a day. 1 Pronounced 0-at'ka. C 18 3 CHAPTER TWO MY very early education I received at home, and I Learning cannot remember when I did not know how to to read. But according to my mother it was in her lap, as she rested and read Greeley's Tribune, that I began to pick out letters, and then words. At about the age of nine I first went to school, the un- graded district school at Gainesville which I at- tended for four years, and was then "put in the Fourth Reader." From Orlin Cotton, the teacher, to whom as a lad I owed a good deal in various ways, I had much sympathetic encouragement. Under him I studied Latin, and for writing lessons (in place of conventional copybook tasks) he allowed me to make an annotated catalogue of the rulers of every nation of which I was able to secure a history. My first impulse in this direction had come from being set to list the kings of Israel by a teacher in Sunday school. And there also I had some helpful "Speaking voice training, being encouraged to "speak pieces" at church gatherings. In this effort I took a good deal of interest, doing fairly well, as I remember. After all, there is no great difference between appearing before a Sunday-school audience and addressing a congress or mass meeting. My last selection, I recollect, was J. T. Trowbridge's poem on Bolivar; this was in 1865, just after the death of Lincoln. In school I used to do my lessons very rapidly and then often amused myself by inventing or re- C 19 3 The Days of a Man 1861 calling stories of adventure, which I illustrated by rough drawings on a slate or on scraps of paper. My particular cronies seemed to appreciate those efforts, but both tales and pictures have been long since forgotten by their author. In those days I read eagerly the few books of travel I could secure, espe- cially Dr. Kane's account of his polar expeditions. Having dug out and equipped a toy boat, I named Tb f "Red it the Red Eric, regretting, however, that it lacked Eric " the "red cedar plankings" of Kane's little craft. A special idiosyncrasy of mine, never outgrown and virtually never modified, is the feeling for color in letters. This appeared as soon as I had anything to do with the alphabet. Growing older, I was surprised to find that some really intelligent people fail to see that "S" is always a bright yellow, "R" a vivid green, "X" and "Z" scarlet, "O" white, 'V and 'Y' blue, and so on. Such association of color with letters is now known to be not in- frequent, and goes by the clumsy technical name of "False Pseudocbromcesthesia or "false color sense." This is folor not really a perception of color, simply an association with color, which appears in persons who are sensi- tive in peculiar fashion to word and color values. On this subject I have in later years written two papers. It is first to be noted that the color scheme of each person is a purely individual matter, not derived from any objective source; also, that it is perfectly clear and definite when first recognized Tendency and does not change ; further, that the tendency is inherited hereditary. When Eric, my youngest child, was eight years old, not having previously referred to this matter before him, I said: 'What color is 'A'?' 'Red," he promptly answered. I then obtained his C 203 18643 Love of Astronomy whole chromatic scale. Five years later I once more raised the question. Again he immediately replied that "A" was red, and repeated in substance the same series as before. He, moreover, seemed slightly surprised that any one should fail to see the difference between red "A" and yellow "E." One of my nieces also has similar color associations with letters, but her vowels are mostly colorless, blue "G" and green "S" being brightest, while with Eric the reverse is true. My earliest scientific interest was in the stars. Mapping While husking corn on autumn evenings I became the curious as to the names and significance of the celestial bodies. At the age of thirteen I had com- pleted a series of maps of all the visible stars, indi- cating their magnitudes and the boundaries of the constellations. Going out from the house, I would measure roughly with a pencil the position of four or five stars at a time, and then return inside to plot them on my chart. To block out the constellations, I had recourse to Burritt's "Geography of the Heavens." That passion of mine persists curiously in the middle name I have ever since borne, and which I myself chose for two reasons. The one sprang from my love of astronomy, the other had to do with my mother's great admiration for the writings of Thomas Starr King and her profound respect for his personality. I ought also to say that while the name Starr does not appear in my ancestry, the descendants of the noted Comfort Starr have formally adopted me as one of the "tribe." With astronomy I turned toward terrestrial ge- ography. This has really been my main passion in c 21 n The Days of a Man 1865 Mapping life, and around it all my scientific work has built tbe itself up. I now made elaborate colored maps of all parts of the world, copied from wherever I found material - - no regular atlas being at that time accessible to me: township maps of the counties of New York, county maps of the different states, and provincial and other maps of the rest of the globe. These were done with more persistence than clever- ness, but their broad range enabled me in after life to look upon the whole world as of one piece. The eagerness I then displayed rather worried my mother, who thought I ought to be doing something more relevant, and once she hid all my material, hoping to turn my attention to something else. other My youthful passions for astronomy and geography reverbera- were curiously paralleled in Eric's mental develop- ment. When about seven years old, entirely on his own initiative he suddenly acquainted himself with the names and positions of the stars he could see. This diversion overlapped an earlier hereditary ''reverberation," the study of maps, though with me the order was reversed and I made maps while he planned elaborate itineraries. I once asked him to name the capital of Greece. "Athens," he replied. "Of Scorpio?' I quizzically inquired. "Antares," was the instant answer, as if state and constellation were organized alike. Quoting then from Manilius the following lines: Below his girdle near his knee he bears The bright Arcturus, fairest of the stars 'Who was that?" I asked. And to my astonish- ment he calmly replied : " Bootes." But having made a list of the constellations with variable stars, that C 22 3 18983 Hereditary Tendencies interest with him, as with me, gave way rather suddenly to a deeper one in living organisms - things we could study intimately because we could lay hands on them. I turned to flowers, he to shells. Eric's At the age of eight, away from home and family for shells the first time, he sent me a written list of the fossil shells he had found in Santa Monica Canyon. There, as the guest of Mr. George W. Edmond and with encouragement from his host, he had matched the pictures in Ralph Arnold's monograph on the fossil mollusks of southern California. The relations of genus and species he seemed to understand perfectly. Two years later he modestly remarked to a family friend: "I don't like to talk about it, but I know more about shells than my father does." Which was literally true. And I may add that his first scientific paper, 'Notes on a Collection of Shells from Trinidad, California," with descriptions of two new species of Odostomia, and written at the age of fifteen, was recently published by the United States National Museum. In my daughter Barbara, who at seven years Barbara's spontaneously took up the study of birds, the same power of discrimination as to the meaning of natural classification was even more perfectly developed. The affinities of any newly acquired bird she seemed to understand instinctively. For instance, when she first held in her hand the glossy black Pbainopepla, she declared that it belonged to the waxwing family, a conclusion reached by ornithologists after much discussion. One day, also, I brought home the skin of the female of a rather insignificant-looking streaked sparrow from southern California and left it without explanation. I had not taught her to use the books C 23 3 The Days of a Man 1865 on Ornithology, but when I returned I found that she had got at them and reported correctly that the little bird was Amphispiza belli. It should perhaps be explained that these and similar details regarding the children are here given at the special request of a psychologist interested in problems of heredity. Turning Botany was my deepest youthful interest. In- to deed, on my first day at school, I drew out from the library a little book on flowers. Studying the heavens in winter, in the summer I gave my spare time to the listing of the plants of our region, be- ginning with "Wood's Botany ' : as a guide, but turning afterward to the more difficult and more exact "Manual" by Dr. Gray. The country round about my home was very rich in wild flowers, and in my early botanical studies I perhaps strained a point by adorning the conveniently white walls of my bedroom with the names of the different plants as I identified them in turn. At school no attention was paid to this interest of mine. Fortunately, however, I soon made a helpful acquaintance, a curious old man, Joshua Ellenwood by name. Though he lived a lonely life on a poor little farm, and wholly lacked scientific education, he had nevertheless wandered far and wide through the country round about, and had come to know most of the plants. His vixen wife held in scorn the "eccentric 53 tastes of her husband, who was, more- over, ailing and was considered by most of his neighbors as shiftless and a waster of time. C 24 D Study of Flowers In the over-long winter, snow lies heavy on the Flowers Wyoming hills. With me as a boy the yearning for f spring used to rise to a passion long before the spnng swelling of the buds. The early flowers were a constant joy, - - the succulent spring beauty, dainty rue-anemone, '' half-venturing liverworts in furry coats," bloodroot, wake-robins of three species red, white, and striped - - the blue, white, and yellow violets. Later came the blue phlox, pink and fragrant azaleas, lobelias blue and scarlet, man- drakes with their fruits " sweetish and nauseous, eaten by pigs and boys," the tall meadow lilies, the little laurels of the swamps and the big ones of the cliffs, and (perhaps most charming of all) fantastic orchids in summer, and the blue fringed gentian in the fall. Trailing arbutus, the first flower to greet our fathers at Plymouth Rock, I never knew until I went to Ithaca, for it is found only under the pines on dry uplands and in maple districts like ours pines grow only in swamps. Flowers I loved as flowers that is, as things of interest beauty but I liked them the better because of in the appeal they made to my scientific curiosity J r regarding their habits and locations, and (especially trees in later years) their origins and relationships. Ac- cordingly I enjoyed the little ones as well as the big, and half a dozen little ones of different species, even though not beautiful, meant more to me than a hundred big ones all of a kind. A special proof of scientific as distinguished from aesthetic interest is to care for the hidden and insignificant. A love for trees went with my passion for flowers, and the fact that our country exhibited several wholly different types of forest never failed to hold C 25 3 The Days of a Man 1866 my interest. In the woods about our home the beech and maple ruled exclusively, with only oc- casionally a cucumber magnolia, basswood, birch, poplar, or tree of other kind. Barren ridges were occupied by hemlocks, and the swamps by black ash, pine, spruce, tamarack, and balsam fir, with fringes of aspen and birch. In the regions farther east - - from Perry to Ithaca and beyond - oaks, both white and scarlet, dominated - -with, however, a good deal of hickory, chestnut, and pine. Portage In the oak and pine region lay the scenic features of the country, the noble gorge of the Genesee at Lake P rta g e an< ^ the placid Silver Lake at Perry. To both of these I went even more for rare flowers than to enjoy the scenery. Through Portage Gorge the Genesee has cut its way some ten miles from Portage Station to Gardow, the vertical walls of hard, greenish sandstone rising in places to over 400 feet, the river meanwhile plunging down three superb cataracts. Silver Lake, a dainty sheet of water about four miles long and one wide, was in my boyhood a favorite resort for picnics and for religious and other assemblies, as well as for boating and fishing. At that time groups of farmers often spent a night there, drawing long nets or seines, and bringing home the next morning wagon-loads of whitefish, black bass, pickerel, perch, and bull- heads. Silver Lake fills the smallest and westernmost of a long array of former gorges - - thirteen in number - excavated by water before the glacial period, then widened and all but one, Oneida, greatly deepened by grinding ice, after which they were transformed C 26 3 Flora of Wyoming County into lakes by moraines damming their original out- lets. Oneida, set east and west crosswise of the glacier, is broad and very shallow, contrasting sharply in this regard with all the others. Cayuga, at the head of which lies Ithaca, is the longest and largest of them all. Silver Lake I used to visit with special botanical interest, for there I found white and yellow pond lilies and the purple pickerel weed, plants which grew nowhere else in our neighborhood. And in the oak woods about I used to gather the fringed gentian in its season. Under the pine and around the rocks at Portage were still other interesting forms. The county, I came to recognize, had three entirely Difference distinct floras, besides the special flora of the spruce ^floras and balsam swamps. One, as already indicated, belonged to the beech and maple woods, one to the oak lands, and the other to the rocks. Afterward, in college vacations, I continued my studies of the plants of the Genesee region, and presented for my graduating thesis as Master of Science at Cornell in 1872 a paper entitled "The Flora of Wyoming County." This was a rather intensive study of the local relations of plants to soil and other con- ditions. Unfortunately I had no training in drawing and I Painting never learned the art of perspective. But at about the fifteen years of age I began painting the wild flowers of the neighborhood, and people to whom Mother proudly showed my pictures said I had "genius." Certainly I had a talent for discriminating color and form; my efforts, however, never went beyond the sketching of flowers and fishes to preserve their bright colors, and in recent years the making of C 27 3 The Days of a Man 1866 gorgeous cartoons to please Eric. 1 The lack of training in these regards I have always regretted, not alone because it would have been a direct help in my scientific studies, but also because the accu- rate use of line and color is a factor in mental training and a "means of grace" in the affairs of life. NO Another art in which I should have taken great songbird pleasure was denied me by Nature. A favorite winter diversion of the youth of my time was the ''singing school." Everywhere in the country villages of that region, classes were formed by some musician, usually from a larger town near by. Being mildly interested in musical notation, and having an accurate sense of time, I was at first regarded as a promising pupil. But my sense of pitch was very faulty, and one teacher finally said that "I might perhaps some day learn to sing, but he didn't see how." And I never did. Meanwhile, though not a singer, I was good at athletic sports. In jumping, especially in high jumping, and running I excelled; and I made some progress in boxing, wrestling, and fencing with wooden swords. Dickens Along with my developing interests in science, the world of literary fiction was suddenly opened up. This came through my introduction to "David Copperfield," then just published. One of our 1 Some of these, done over in black and white and accompanied by ap- propriate jingles, were published as "Eric's Book of Beasts." L 'envoi reads as follows: I write and paint in doggerel; Though all the muses shriek and yell, I go serenely on my way No matter what such folks may say! C 28 H BARBARA JORDAN, 1898 i8663 Early Reading neighbors, a man of some literary insight, who was about to read the book aloud to his family, invited me to join them, and in his home I heard the story from beginning to end. Later I read "Little Dorrit," "The Old Curiosity Shop," and "The Pickwick Papers," followed by the rest of the long series. But becoming acquainted with "Pendennis," ' Henry Thackeray Esmond," and "Vanity Fair," I found greater mental stimulus in Thackeray than in Dickens. I also felt a certain satisfaction in a remark of Becky Sharp, which I ventured to apply to myself. "If I had had a husband like that," said she, "a man with a heart and brains too, I wouldn't have minded his large feet!" Later still the early tales of Bret Harte Bret 'The Luck of Roaring Camp," 'Tennessee's Harte Pardner," and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat' 3 impressed me strongly with their fresh vigor in the portrayal of frontier character and their picturing of noble scenery. At that time, still a boy who had not yet wandered far from the old farm, I little thought that one day Calaveras and Tuolumne, "the Santa Clara wheat," and : 'the gin and ginger woods" would be part of my normal environment! My father had a fair library - too much of it, however, given to works of religious controversy for which I cared little, being already pretty firmly established in "liberal" views. But in the collection Macauiay were several books of poetry; and I remember read- and the ing Macaulay's History under the impression that poets it was fiction of a very interesting kind. Of the poets on our shelves both Byron and Moore fasci- nated me, although in Moore I enjoyed mainly the satirical, not the sentimental, verses. The following lines especially still linger in my memory: C 29 3 The Days of a Man 1859 Why is a pump like Viscount Castlereagh? It is a slender thing of wood Which up and down its awkward arm doth sway And coolly spouts and spouts and spouts away In one weak, washy, everlasting flood. The But my keenest literary satisfaction was derived "Atlantic from The Atlantic Monthly, which my father took If//"' r r / during the entire war period, and to which, for that matter, one of us has ever since been a subscriber. For during all these years it has retained its unique original character as a journal of high ideals in literature and politics. The Atlantic essays of Emerson, Holmes, Lowell, and above all Thoreau, had a good deal to do with shaping my intellectual tastes and in strengthening my fundamental ideals of democracy. Intro- My first reactions to politics I date very clearly back to a sermon delivered in Gainesville in 1859 by Uriah M. Fiske, a Unitarian clergyman from Boston. Mr. Fiske was an Abolitionist. Referring to the Dred Scott Decision of the United States Supreme Court, confirming the Fugitive Slave Law, he said: 'When this verdict was rendered there was joy in State Street - - and in Wall Street - - and in Hell." 1 This set me to thinking and to asking questions of my mother. The rumblings which preceded the Civil War, as well as its final outbreak, I remember distinctly still more keenly the struggle itself, overshadowing the land like a black cloud which would never be lifted. 1 Another of Mr. Fiske's striking epigrams was also fixed in my mind: "The Almighty can accept his creatures without a passport from the church below." C 30 U 1 8603 Rumblings of Civil War Before the war began, my parents had diverged Abolition somewhat from each other in political matters. To versus Father, Abolition was the main issue, so that he inclined toward Greeley and the Republicans on the ground that, the slavery question being a moral one, it was not in the category of popular rights. My mother, a thoroughgoing believer in popular govern- ment, favored the Douglas Democrats, of which her brother, David Waldo Hawley, was a leading local exponent. And I remember hearing her maintain in 1860 that the platforms of both Lincoln Re- publicans and Southern or Breckenridge Democrats violated alike the principle of "popular sovereignty' in that both wished to determine arbitrarily the future status of new territories. The Southern Democrats, for example, wished to legislate slavery into them, the Republicans to legislate it out. Douglas Democrats, on the contrary, believed that the people immediately concerned should decide for themselves. But the attack on Fort Sumter, fol- lowed by the ordinances of Secession, led all Douglas Democrats to stand by their patriotic leader in his support of the war. Thus Father, the ardent Abo- litionist, and Mother, the equally ardent Unionist, then met on the same ground, "squatter sovereignty " being no longer an issue. Throughout the war Greeley's Tribune, Forney's Greeley War Press, Harpers Weekly, and The Atlantic dibe Monthly came to us regularly. The Tribune, es- pecially, molded the opinions of millions by means of its owner's powerful and sincere editorials. It was therefore a great surprise and a mortal blow to Greeley that when in 1872 he was nominated for the presidency on a platform of moderation and C 3i 3 The Days of a Man 1859 conciliation, the partisan momentum of his former Republican adherents carried them into violent opposition. Harper's In the various incidents of the war, the rise and Ferr y fall of its military leaders, I took a continuous mterest - As a boy of eight, I recall seeing pictures of John Brown, Green, Copeland, and the rest of the little band at Harper's Ferry posted in Card's Grocery, the local post office. Later the same window showed us Major Robert Anderson and his men, who were fired upon at Fort Sumter by Beauregard and the hot-headed youth of Charleston; Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, also, shot in Alexandria for hauling down a Confederate flag. My early impressions of Lincoln were naturally drawn from those around me; my -own appreciation of his greatness of character has grown steadily from that first knowledge of him and his work. It was not until about the middle of the war, however, that people understood his determination to save the Union by freeing it from slavery, its worst curse. The Emancipation Proclamation marked an epoch in history. But it took us a long time to see that Lincoln was greater than Seward, greater than Chase, greater than any or all of his Cabinet. The call After the war began, every community responded for men to the call for men, a demand utterly foreign to the experience and hopes of the North. One after another the boys went away, among them, in the spring of 1862 as I have said, my brother Rufus and James Beadle. The camp near Portage Bridge, where the first enlisted men of our section were drilled, I distinctly remember. Meanwhile I took the keenest interest in the events of the struggle: C 32 3 18653 In War Time the dismay after Bull Run, the bloody conflicts in the Wilderness - - Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Spottsylvania Court House - - the dreary marches and countermarches in the malarial shades of the Chickahominy, the slaughters at Cold Harbor and Malvern Hill, the encouraging victories in the West more than offset, however, by the distressing failure of one general after another in Virginia ; and finally the varying encounters from Petersburg to Appomattox, by which the brave armies of the South were outworn and broken up. I read with emotion Stedman's stirring appeal War poets " Abraham Lincoln, give us a man ! " ] and the vivid sea poems 2 of Henry Howard Brownell, a naval officer, our "Battle Laureate," as Oliver Wendell Holmes called him. With Lee's dramatic surrender under the old apple tree on the red-clay slope across the stream 1 Not a leader to shirk the boastful foe And to march and countermarch our brave Till they fade like ghosts in the marshes low, And the swamp grass covers each nameless grave. Nor another whose fateful banners wave Aye in disaster's shameful van: Nor another to bluster, swear, and rave Abraham Lincoln, give us a man! 2 From "The Bay Fight" I quote the following: Drayton strode to the prow, Drayton the courtly and wise, Kindly cynic and wise; You'd hardly have known him now With the flame of fight in his eyes. Fear a forgotten form, Death a dream of the eyes, We were atoms in God's great storm That sped through the angry skies. C 33 3 The Days of a Man Ci866 Death from Appomattox Court House, an immense feeling / of relief swept over the nation. But the murder of Lincoln in the midst of his plans for generous re- construction left the Ship of State rudderless, and the event seemed to cast a new shadow hardly less appalling than that which so recently had lifted. Yet we had a feeling of relief that Seward, who in public estimation was then comparable to Lincoln, still survived. The various aspects of reconstruction were very confusing to me, as to others. A spirit of revenge, foreign to Lincoln himself, was unfortunately, if naturally, roused by his tragic death. This threw the control of affairs into the hands of the most extreme group, and the lack of any broad mind and moderating heart threatened to leave the Southern question an enduring wound in the history of our country. But I am not writing of war or recon- struction, only giving the impressions of an eager boy who was beginning to realize the nature and needs of his country. Meanwhile, my parents felt that I had outgrown the district school, and proposed to send me to an academy, the institution of that day corresponding to the modern high school. Within eight miles of my home there were then three academies. Current biographical notices ascribe my preparatory edu- cation to the largest of these, that of Warsaw, where, however, I was never enrolled. My brother Rufus had taken his academy course at Pike, the next town to the south of Gainesville; nevertheless, it C 34 H Preparatory Schooling was finally decided that I myself should go to Castile, five miles to the southeast. There a family ac- quaintance was willing to board me comfortably at a nominal rate, and it being reasonably near home, I could walk back and forth at week-ends. In due season, therefore, I presented myself at Castile the Castile Academy, and was seated with an Academy excellent boy whose name I do not now recall. But everything they talked about I had previously been over. I was, moreover, decidedly homesick, and so after two days I went back to my mother, pleading that there was no use in my staying at Castile, as I already knew all they were teaching there! This was indeed mainly true as far as mathe- matics, science, history, and English went, but from the boys themselves I might have gained much knowledge of human nature, for I was then dis- tinctly "green." My further education was now continued in an The unforeseen fashion. Two young women from Female "Mount Holyoke," Miss Hardy and Miss Eldridge, had some time before established the "Gainesville Female Seminary," of which my sister Lucia was a graduate. The school was naturally modeled on the ideas and plans of Mary Lyon, founder of Mount Holyoke and the pioneer in the higher education of women. At the age of fourteen being thought a youth of promise and otherwise apparently harm- less - - 1 was admitted to classes with the girls, a privilege also accorded at the same time to one other boy, Egbert Cunningham, son of the local Congregationalist minister. At the Seminary my studies were French, algebra, geometry, and penmanship, in all of which the C 35 3 T'he Days of a Man [1866 instruction was good, and I came to write a surpris- ingly "neat" hand for a boy of my size and careless, The study easy-going temperament. I learned also to read f French about as readily as my native tongue. Thus, during the long winter evenings, I used to entertain my mother with French tales which I translated as I went along. In that way we com- pleted the whole of 'Telemaque" and "Corinne." But my French teacher, Miss Kilbourne, a typical and charming old maid with long corkscrew curls, did not speak the language, and our only guide in pronunciation was Fasquelle's grammar, so that I had much to learn in that regard when I entered advanced classes at Cornell - - still more when, long after, I undertook scientific work in Paris. John Among other good things of this period I enjoyed Lord the friendship of John Lord Jenkins, the minister who succeeded Mr. Cunningham. Jenkins was an amateur geologist and used to take me and some of the Seminary teachers on various excursions, during which we enthusiastically hammered away at the crystalline boulders brought down from Canada by the glacial ice and scattered all over western New York. Occasionally also we found Devonian fossils, and everywhere and always objects which awakened my interest in the make-up of the earth. Mr. Jenkins urged my parents to send me to college. Mother, being a little hesitant, said: 'What will he find to do when he gets through ?' : " Never mind that," replied my friend. "He will always find plenty to do; there is always room at the top." This maxim, now conventional, was new to us then, and it stuck in my memory. c 36 : i866H Baseball Along about this time the wholesome American sport of baseball came into vogue. The modern game had then been developed out of the old loose one commonly known as i( rounders," although we always called it baseball; this was played with an indefinite number of bases, and the soft ball was thrown directly at the runner. At Gainesville we soon heard of the new sport, and the village black- smith was accordingly sent over to Buffalo to see how it went. The glowing accounts he brought back led to immediate results. At once we formed a team, the "Gainesville Zouaves," flaunting a mlle uniform of brilliant scarlet Zouave trousers and white shirts, and announced ourselves ready to play against clubs in neighboring towns. From that time up to 1909 I took part every year in some sort of match game. At the age of fifty-eight, while president of a university and with a steadily lower- ing batting average, I reluctantly abandoned the sport so far as my own participation went. In the " Zouaves" I began as left fielder, for I was very good at catching fly balls; I was also the best base runner, being able in those days to leap any ordinary fence. I was afterwards promoted to the rank of second baseman, and later I became a hard hitter. My greatest achievement along this line occurred in my junior year at Cornell, when on the old Willow Avenue grounds in Ithaca I made three consecutive home runs, the ball in each case passing over the roof of a house supposed to be beyond the center field. It has long been a matter of mild interest to me that my baseball career began about simultaneously with that of : 'Pop" Anson, creator of the famous C 37 3 The Days of a Man D868 Chicago team, and with that of A. G. Spaulding, leading manufacturer of baseball goods. Sometimes I used to think that my style of hitting bore some resemblance to Anson's, being preferably of "grounders" along the base lines. Learning Playing baseball with the boys at "the Creek," I chess amused myself with chess at home. This game I learned by going over the records of Paul Morphy and other champions of the time, as reported in the Philadelphia Press. I thus made some special study of the different recognized openings. In college I became first president of the original Chess Club, and was for much of the time the best player. My greatest weakness lay in failure to convert a tra- ditional opening into an effective attack. After grad- uation I seldom played, as I found the effort quite fatiguing when added to other close mental work. In 1866 I began to attend teachers' institutes. At one of these I won a small prize for the best essay on a bouquet of flowers, the basis of my superiority being that I knew each kind by its two names, the common and the scientific. In 1868, while planning to teach school and with a position already engaged at Cold Creek in Allegany County, I went to an institute at Warsaw. There they made up a ball team of which I was selected as first baseman, while my friend, Will Smallwood, a youth of fine wit and large stature, then a college student at home on his vacation, served as pitcher. At one point during a game with the local club, a very high fly being popped up, Smallwood and I both went after it. In A broken a smart collision each was downed ; I myself was led nose off with a broken nose, which, being badly set, has C 38 3 Teaching a Village School ever since remained slightly askew. That mishap forced me to give up the Cold Creek position and thus made very material changes in my life, as I shall presently explain. When I recovered from the accident, my father proposed me as teacher of the Gainesville school, a venturesome suggestion at the best. Moreover, as he was sole trustee, the proposition had to be voted on by the people of the district. The decision went against me, the opposition declaring truthfully that I was only an overgrown boy of seventeen, not adequate for the responsibility. Meanwhile, how- in South ever, at South Warsaw, a manufacturing suburb of Warsam the county seat, a teacher had been bodily thrown out by the boys, a habit in that particular school, which was then considered the most unruly in the county. Some thirty years before, my father had taught there and had broken in the turbulent ele- ment. They now needed the same discipline again. I undertook the task, and through a regime of "blood and iron" mingled with conciliation, I managed to hold the position until the end of the term, - - that is to say, from November to March, - when I entered upon my college course. As a matter of fact certain circumstances were in Coasting my favor. On either side of the town stretched the long slopes of the great hills bounding the Wyoming valley, and often after school I used to go out coast- ing with the pupils, sometimes sliding as far as two miles at one run. Thus was established a friendly truce neutralizing the hard feelings occasionally engendered in the schoolhouse by the use of a nice maple ferule which I at first employed more fre- quently than I should now think wise, and which the C 393 'The Days of a Man 1868 boys afterward burned - - an incident I pretended not to notice. On the road, in the woods, whenever relations were humanly personal, I always got along finely with all kinds of students. But in my first classroom a species of terrorism seemed to be de- manded. I used sometimes to envy other young men for their "executive ability," a quality which I apparently did not then possess. Perhaps it ripens slowly; for in my long experience as uni- versity president it was usually thought to be one of my strong points. Home In going over my early life I remember nothing which I can fairly count as an obstacle. My mother was intelligent, well-read, and sympathetic. My father, as I have said, was proud of his children and gave us what help he could afford - - sometimes more; for until the latter part of his life he was always more or less in debt and had no particular skill in financial matters. From the age of fourteen on, therefore, I myself carried the small family purse and attended to all payments. It was good training, but I must confess that on three occasions I was an easy mark for the older heads with whom I came into competition, each time in connection with a deal in sheep. During my youth our lack of money did not worry me, because I knew very few who had more, and those few made little display of their wealth. The farmers of the region were as a rule self-respect- ing and fairly well off. Among the twenty or so indigent families in our neighborhood, the obvious C 40 3 1 868] Farm Environment cause of poverty was either feeble-mindedness or intemperance. At home, the household was friendly, helpful, and happy, not missing what it had never had. I know of no better environment for a child than simple contentment in such an atmosphere. Too much spending money brings its perils, and in America lack of money is the easiest of all obstacles to surmount and remove. The chief real drawback of farm life in those days Chief lay in the prevalence of infectious diseases, against draw ~ which parents had no way of guarding the children. Mary and I went through diphtheria together, after- ward scarlet fever, and later measles. No one then knew how to treat these maladies and many children died, as we came near doing. Fortunately, however, we were attended by a capable physician of the old school, Dr. Zurhorst, 1 a bluff Englishman of kind heart and crusty manner, but ignorant, like every one else, as to the real nature of the plagues which ravaged our country communities, for bacteria were at that time still undiscovered. Outside the house things were not always to my Farm taste, and for some phases of farm work I had a work distinct dislike. My father at sixty, as I once remarked, "could still do a bigger day's work than he ever got out of me." I never loved to stow away hay, hoe potatoes, milk cows, or pile up stones. Nevertheless, I did enjoy using the cradle to cut a good field of wheat, I liked clearing up brushy land, and I was intensely interested in the care and breeding of sheep. 1 Pronounced "Zirst." Similar eccentricities were universal among our English neighbors; thus Kershaw was "Cassia," Sherwood "Shuard," Gillespie "Glasby." n 41 3 The Days of a Man 1864 In J862 Rufus bought a flock of about thirty of Dorset lambs of high grade. Leaving for the war immediately afterward, he asked me (then eleven years old) to take care of the beasts, a duty I as- sumed with great enthusiasm. In time I had tamed the whole flock so that they would not merely eat out of my hand but follow me everywhere, and to each I gave a name. Drawing partly from my nascent knowledge of French, I christened them "Honnete" "La Noblesse" "La Paresse" " Daran- court" '' Caulaincourt" as well as "Columbiana," "Wild Gazelle," "Black Gazelle," and the like. For ten years - - that is, until I left college - - 1 sheared the whole flock every year, and faithfully kept a record of the amount of wool furnished by each one. Father in the meantime had bought a number of Paular merinos, a breed with very fine wool. But merinos are not immune to hoofrot, an infection then current and easily transmitted from one sheep to another by simple contact with the grass over which an infected animal has trodden. To this disease the Dorsets are practically resistant. In a youthful way I really gave considerable in attention to the care of our flocks, and the first scientific paper I ever published (Prairie Farmer, 1871) was a discussion of "Hoofrot in Sheep." In it I described the pathology of the infection which separates the layers of the hoof, causing the member to become swollen and feverish, thus making the animal hopelessly lame. To my mind the so-called virus behaved like a living thing, its "seed" trans- ferable bv contact. Such was indeed the case. */ Every virus is a living thing, an aggregation of microbes, though no one had so far demonstrated C 42 3 18643 Care for Sheep that fact. The particular germ of hoofrot, moreover, was long unknown, but I am told that recent studies have shown it to be a pus-forming Streptococcus- -S. pyogenes - - akin to the forms which cause nasal troubles in man; with a good microscope I might perhaps have made important discoveries. Carbolic acid being at that time unknown, tar caustic was my only available antiseptic. But for permanent remedies cure I was forced to fall back on caustics: first, nitrate of silver, which proved too expensive, next, chloride of antimony - - harsh, but fairly effective - and, finally, a shallow hot solution of sulphate of copper (blue vitriol), which was probably the best. In a bath of this last we stood the sheep, with hoofs properly trimmed, until their feet were saturated. 1 In 1864 I bought on my own account one hundred badly infected animals. These I succeeded in cur- ing, but the sudden ending of the war brought down the price of wool from one dollar to thirty cents a pound, so that my new flock was carried through the winter at a loss. Accordingly, when spring Peddling came, I selected the least desirable and drove them shef P across the country, selling them one by one where I could. Some, being very tame, went as cossets or family pets. The best Dorset and Paular ewes I retained for friendship's sake, a few of them until they were ten years old and I had left college, the farm having been meanwhile transformed into a dairy. 1 Nitrate of silver I found to be the remedial agent in a secret cure which my father bought to try out. It contained also alkanet and oil of sassafras, both introduced to mask its character, the one being a red dye, the other lending a pleasant but deceptive fragrance. Chloride or butyr (butter) of antimony was then already in use among sheep raisers. Blue vitriol had been recom- mended by the well-known sheep breeder, Henry C. Randall. C43 3 The Days of a Man 1865 Charing Other tasks, not uncongenial but more laborious swamps than the care and breeding of sheep, fell at times to my lot. On the farm were a number of small spring- fed swamps unavailable for cultivation until they were drained. In them the common timber was the black ash, interspersed with occasional thickets of aspen on the drier places. One of my duties was to cut down and burn the trees and brush preparatory to drainage. In the outlets of some of the swamps I found the bog ore of iron, but no use has ever been made of it. Boiling The making of sugar from the sweet sap of the sa P sugar maple - - Acer saccharum - - is a regular yearly matter in our part of New York. The flow com- mences with the melting of snow in March and continues until the leaves begin to expand, at which time the sap takes on a bitter flavor. Our grove was a small but very good one. The spring I was fourteen, it was turned over to me, and I myself tapped the trees, gathered the liquid, boiled it down, and made the sugar. Apple I was also much interested in our apple orchard. culture Around the house stood a number of large and fine old trees. In my childhood Father extended this orchard up the steep moraine bounding the bull- head pond. At about the age of ten I used to record regularly the number and kind of apples on each of the young trees he had added. Afterward he and I together planted a row in alternate angles of the zigzag rail fence bounding the farm on the south. I must, however, confess that neither physically nor intellectually did I ever exert myself to the limit of possible effort. Yet in college it was commonly C 44 3 DAVID STARR JORDAN, AUGUST, 1 868 l8 68] Methods of Study said that I got more done than any other two men, though I "never seemed to be busy." The truth is, I learned very early to do my formal work in the shortest possible time and to keep always ahead of the class. Unfortunately I was always far-sighted, Far- and though my vision in general was phenomenally good, it really involved eyestrains not realized for many years, but a serious drawback at forty. After I left college, bookwork by artificial light became more and more trying, so that from the age of thirty- five on I have been practically debarred from using my eyes for night study. Indeed, for more than thirty years my wife has helped me out by reading aloud in the evenings, and still more by critical and constructive work on manuscripts I have not been able properly to revise. Such limitations are partly responsible for my ability to skim ordinary English and French books a page at a time and still get their substance. (With German I never had the same success, but the fault lies with its syntax and not with me!) At the same time, although my reading has been very wide both in science and in modern history, narrower limits than I could have wished have been set upon it. I am therefore thankful for every piece of intensive study, in whatever line, which I made before executive responsibilities were thrown on me. During all my life my strongest mental power has Memory been the ability to recall clear pictures of what I have seen. I rarely forget a landscape, an animal, or a flower, though among men I remember names better than faces. The world I live in is a world of details rather than of generalizations - - which C45 : The Days of a Man 1868 Nature is said to discredit even as she "abhors" a vacuum. Eager \ think the word "eager" best described my but . temperament as a boy. Indeed, I cannot recall a patient -IT r i moment since when 1 was not eager tor something. Nevertheless, this quality has been always more or less obscured by a shield of optimism which friends call " poise," and toward which my stature has no doubt contributed. In early life I became accustomed to work persistently toward desired ends and then take the upshot calmly. Moreover, I never worry over a mischance, once it is past. In some degree the two traits, eagerness and a sort of patient opti- mism, though seemingly contradictory, have always gone together in my make-up. I recognize also two other tendencies in lifelong competition. From my father I inherited a disposition to proclaim even from the housetops any fixed opinion, especially if unpopular. From my mother I have the impulse quietly to ignore differences when nothing is to be gained by outcry. Religion At about the time of their marriage my parents left the Baptist church because of their doubts as to "eternal damnation," a leading tenet in those days. Ultimately, as already implied, they joined the Universalists. I was therefore brought up under strong religious influences untouched by conven- tional orthodoxy. My father kept abreast of the writings (in part controversial) of Theodore Parker, William Ellery Channing, James Freeman Clarke, Thomas Starr King, and their followers. I myself C 46 3 I86/U The Puritan Conscience early acquired a dislike for theological discussion, be- lieving that it dealt mostly with unrealities negligible in the conduct of life. Consequently I never had to pass through a painful transition while acquiring the broader outlook of science and literature. But both my parents had the Puritan conscience and were very rigid as to personal conduct, depre- cating all forms of idleness and dissipation generally. We children naturally developed a similar attitude, I suppose because we were " built that way." The fact that other boys were doing any particular Personal thing had not the slightest influence with me. My morals father, as I have said, and my brother Rufus also, did not smoke or use alcohol in any form. I myself never even once tried to smoke. My only lapse in this regard was in taking a single whiff of the Pipe of Peace or Calumet passed from the senior to the junior class at Cornell in 1872. Many years ago I formulated my views on smoking as "Three Counts against Tobacco": First, nicotine, the essential content of tobacco. Counts is a deadly poison, acting in small quantities - against as a nerve irritant under the guise of a sedative. Any tobacco drug, however, which affects the nerves tends to put them out of order, thus deranging the most delicate of all machinery. Second, nicotine retards the development of the growing boy, and weakens virility. Third, the tobacco habit begets a lack of consideration for the rights of others, pollutes the air, and causes much discomfort to those not hardened to it. Furthermore, to be hardened is not a sign of strength, but rather an indication of loss of sensi- tiveness on the part of nerves which should be delicately alert. The advice given by Professor The Days of a Man 1867 George F. Swain of Harvard to his graduates in Civil Engineering, "Let your competitors smoke," seems to me good sense. Attitude In the matter of alcohol my theory has been as toward j-jgjd as mv practice. Accepting the validity of conventional temperance arguments drawn from physiology and the need of social sanitation, I press the case still farther. The sole purpose of alcoholic drinks is to force the nervous system to lie, and thus to vitiate its power of recording the truth. Men use alcohol, weak or strong, to feel warm when they are really cold, to "feel good" without warrant, to feel emancipated from those restraints and reserves which constitute the essence of character building. Alcohol is a depressant, not a stimulant, appearing as such only because it affects the highest nerve- operations first. Its influence impinges alike on the three chief mental functions, sensation, reason, motion. It leaves its subject uncertain as to what he sees or feels, hazy as to cause and effect, and unsteady as to resultant action. No man of high purpose can afford to endanger the validity of these nerve processes which register his contact with reality. Cards As to cards, in deference to my mother's wish and because of my own conviction, I never touched them until after leaving college. With me personally it was not a question of right and wrong but a saving of valuable time for better things - - study, athletics, and outings. In my sixteenth year Mr. Jenkins preached a sermon on the need of man for a divine revelation. To this discourse I remember listening with what n 48 3 1867!! Religious Revivals I thought an open mind and at the end concluding that the case was not proved. Earlier (at about the "A prayer age of eight) I had made some tests of prayer. When **'" a toy boat I had built became entangled on the pond in the crotch of a log from which only a north wind could release it, I prayed for a north wind ; by morn- ing the boat had arrived in port. I was thus en- couraged to petition, although unsuccessfully, for some things I knew I ought not to have. With other youths of that time I was exposed to Religion the peculiar institution known as the "revival." and In western New York the Methodist Episcopal Church had been split by the secession of a group called Free Methodists or "Nazarites," who be- lieved in intense emotionalism and the need of a spasmodic transformation to "a state of grace." One of them, a famous evangelist named Gilbert Delamatyr, painted the horrors of hell in vivid colors and scorching language ; in his way he was an orator, not a clown, as some later exhorters have been. The general effect of his discourses was to create in believers a violent nervous disturbance so that some rolled on the floor, shouting incoherently. The re- action which followed when the blood-flow became relatively calm again was taken as a "new birth" and pledge of salvation. Often, however, the results of these emotional spasms were distinctly mischievous as to both sanity of life and personal morals. At such meetings I was never moved. But the Congregational Church undertaking in its cool way what it also called a revival, I rose and went forward with the others looking for "conversion." I was sincere enough in this matter, but it made no real difference in my life so far as I remember, and was The Days of a Man 1870 accompanied by no special "conviction of sin." As an irresponsible boy I certainly did foolish and selfish things at times, I have often done them since, - - but I was never malicious and never in- tentionally interfered with the rights of others. In any event, the quiet personal influence of Mr. Jenkins was far more effective for sound living and religious development than any emotional impulse derived from his preaching. Camp Revivals were often held in connection with reli- gious outings in the woods, lasting several days and known as "camp meetings." Once during my Cornell course a number of us walked over from Ithaca to a gathering on Seneca Lake. There we were welcomed as brands to be snatched from a godless institution, and were assigned a place to sleep in a "gospel tent" at the other end of which a prayer meeting was going on. One brother praying vociferously, "O Lord, come down and crack our shells!' mean- ing break down reserve Melville Anderson (a minister's son, by the way) called out a little too loudly: "There is a fellow over there who wants his shell cracked!" C 50 CHAPTER THREE As I have said, the accident at Warsaw changed my winning a previous plans. Up to that time I had been prepar- Cornell ing, though somewhat vaguely, to enter Yale College sc a1 (as it was then known) at New Haven. Meanwhile, however, Cornell had been founded, free scholar- ships were offered, - - one in each of the Assembly districts of the state, and a competitive exami- nation for the Wyoming County scholarship was accordingly held at Warsaw. Leaving one of the older boys temporarily in charge of my now subdued school, I went and took the test. Three other candidates appeared, two of them already in college - one a Cornell senior, in fact. I was successful, however, and having duly received my appointment, 1 in March, 1869, I entered the new university with only seventy-five dollars in my pocket, but rich in hope and ambitions. Those prerogatives of youth were not to betray me, for I was able to pay practi- cally all my way through college mainly by botanical work and by instruction in botany - - and at graduation I again faced the world with seventy- five dollars. Meanwhile I had made a point of asking my parents for little except apples and the like, for with the end of the war father had lost considerable money carrying over sheep and some 1 With youthful naivete, writing ahead to the registrar to make the necessary arrangements for entrance, I explained that I was eighteen years old, six feet tall, and weighed 180 pounds! At that time I was a strong, muscular, though sparely built and somewhat round-shouldered, young fellow, a good athlete, as I have elsewhere said, especially in sprinting and high jumping. c 51 : The Days of a Man 1869 other interests which fell suddenly in nominal value - debts, however, remaining undiminished. Arriving at Ithaca, I put up for one night at the Clinton House, the first real hotel I had ever visited, which impressed me as both luxurious and convenient. Next day, with a companion, I took a room on Linn Street at the foot of the Uni- versity Hill. Here I got my first job, that of nailing one's j atn on a neighboring house. Not long after I removed to Cascadilla Place, a huge stone edifice, formerly a sanitarium, then transformed into a dormitory for professors and students. At Cascadilla I paid my way by waiting on the table, a service mostly undertaken by the boys. In this art I acquired some dexterity; but as a whole it was the most distasteful form of work I ever tried, a fact which gave special zest to all my later experiments in earning money. The following autumn I moved to a two-story frame building owned (and put up) by students in what was at that time called "Uni- versity Grove," a little thicket just behind the spot afterward chosen for President White's residence, the first of a long series of professors' homes. "The Establishing ourselves in "the Grove," we at Grove" once formed a boarding club, first in the little T the farmhouse which was then the center of the Col- Strug" lege of Agriculture, later at the Grove itself. This impecunious table venture was known in the early days as "the Struggle for Existence," familiarly "the Strug." The range of fare was not wide, but our scanty earnings, mainly derived from digging ditches and husking corn, scarcely warranted high living. Nevertheless, on the door I twice posted C 52 3 1870] "The Struggle for Existence' remonstrant verses signed Nihil, 1 bewailing our steward's dependence in the one case on parsnips, in the other on graham mush. One of my rebellious outbursts has been lately re- vived by an indiscreet friend. Had I expected the verses to survive beyond the empty condition which provoked them, I should have tried to do better: Once we were blithe and gay, Sang like a bird all day, Fed on hot muffin; Turkeys our table graced, Oysters appeased our taste Served up as stuffing. O for a biscuit white, Such as our sisters bake! O for the doughnut light, Such as our mothers make! Even a wedding cake, That were variety! But no, 'tis graham bread, Beans, peas, and graham bread, Parsnips and graham bread, Larup and graham bread, So, till we're gray and dead, Dead from Satiety! The leading spirit in the management of the house was Roswell Leavitt, a student from Maine, con- siderably older than the rest of us, in fact, quite aged in our eyes, - - extremely clever in literary ways but at the same time always behind in his studies and never learning what to me was a very important lesson of college discipline, the value of time and the necessity of getting things done before 1 "Nihil fit! Fellow citizens, let us give three cheers for Nihil, the man who fit. He wasn't a strategy feller!" JOSH BILLINGS c 53 : The Days of a Man they are wanted. At the Grove we met weekly for what we jestingly called a "Soiree litter air e" ; on these occasions the record of the past week's doings was read, and selections from current stories or verse were presented by the various members. Once I ventured on some character studies in which Leavitt was pictured as "a tall pine of Aroostook" (the county in Maine from which we assumed he came) in the upper branches of which the winds sighed and sang. He retorted with the following: A withered pine that's only green at top, Given half in scorn, the other half in jest; The emblem suits me, let the insult drop "In hoc spe vivo;" I accept the rest. The My first roommate at Cornell was a young en- thusiast, a wild-haired and original character, Isaac Newman Lounsbury Heroy, afterward a conspicuous Methodist preacher in Orange County (New York). After the first year, I shared a room with William Russell Dudley, a lad from North Guilford, Connecti- cut, who came with a letter introducing him as a young botanist in whom I would be interested. For although still an undergraduate, I had already been made instructor in Botany. It was in that year (1870), I believe, that the title "instructor" was first used in a university definitely to denote a teacher of lower grade than assistant professor. Before me, Theodore B. Comstock, since noted as a mining engineer, had occupied a similar position; and two others, John Henry Comstock in Ento- mology, and Oliver H. P. Cornell in Chemistry, were later appointed instructors, so that the rank became definitely established. n 543 18703 William Russell Dudley Dudley, a devoted lover of flowers and possessed A poet- of fine literary taste and ability, was also one of the noblest and purest youths 1 have ever known. His unfailing courtesy and absolute sense of justice endeared him to all. Our mutual friendship was lasting and intimate. During my instructorship he gathered the plants for class use, and together we roamed over all the hills and to all the waterfalls within thirty miles of Ithaca, on both Cayuga and Seneca lakes. A list of the plants of the lake region, begun by me, was afterward completed and published by him. Upon my graduation in 1872 he took my place, afterward becoming assistant professor in the department. In 1891 he was chosen as professor of Systematic Botany in the newly organized Stanford University, a position he held from 1892 to 1909. He then retired on a Carnegie pension and died not long after. 1 His successful career as a teacher and student of Botany and Forestry may have surprised his practical father, who once expressed some skepticism as to the value of a love of flowers. During a visit I paid to the family home in the summer of 1871, 2 Mr. Dudley said to me: 'There comes Willie across the fields with his hands full of flowers. I wonder if he can ever make anything out of that." Equall}^ closely associated with me was another young botanist in my own class, Herbert Edson Copeland from Monroe, Wisconsin. Copeiand was 1 For further reference, see Chapter xvin, page 440. 2 While in Connecticut at that time I had an opportunity of visiting Yale, and also of going out to East Rock, where the three "Regicides," -judges who condemned Charles I, GofF, Whalley, and Dixwell, lived for a time in 1649 under a sheltering boulder. On this they carved the words, "Oposi- tion to tyrants is obedience to God," using but one " p " for economy's sake. C 55 3 The Days of a Man 1872 a wiry, dark, athletic, tremendously enthusiastic fellow, a surprisingly able writer, with a touch of Emerson's quality and especially of Thoreau's. He was also an eloquent and fiery speaker. Of all the young students of science I have ever known he, I think, showed the greatest promise, not only for intensive and original work but for versatility and broad-minded interest in public affairs as well. For a long time he was said to have been Cornell's best student in both English and Latin, as well as one of the very best in science. A sentence out of his earnest address as Commencement orator in 1872 clings in my memory, 'I am proud of but one Copeland, a negro who died at Harper's Ferry, with John Brown." An account of our later cooperation in scientific research and reference to his untimely death will be found in a subsequent chapter. My friendship for Dudley and Copeland was in cemented and extended when, with William A. Kellerman, another young botanist, we joined the recently organized Cornell Chapter of '' Delta Upsilon," of which three other good friends, John Henry Comstock, John Casper Branner, and Jared T. Newman, were already members. For our personal aspirations were in harmony with theirs as well as with the avowed purposes of the fraternity itself. Delta Upsilon had been founded at Union College, Schenectady, back in the *4o's. Established origi- nally as a non-secret society, it sometimes even admitted outsiders to its meetings; and its motto, C 56 : JOHN HENRY COMSTOCK ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK MELVILLE BEST ANDERSON WILLIAM RUSSEL DUDLEY 18723 Delta Up si Ion 4 ' Aucaio. mro^'/a; ' - "right foundation" -was held to have no importance beyond the expression of an id^al, although the Greek initials of other fraternities supposedly covered some secret. As a group, Delta Upsilon was opposed to secrecy as well as to carousing, and condemned the nocturnal tricks which were so prominent a feature of college life in those days of prescribed courses, when studies and professors were regarded as enemies by the "reluctant student." My relations with the local chapter were extremely helpful. With scarcely an exception the members were youths of fine personality and wholesome influence. We stood at that time as the center of the "independent" or "non-fraternity" group; rep- resenting this element, I was elected class president at the end of my junior year. In many institutions Delta Upsilon had been rather the rallying point for students intending to be clergymen or professors. At Cornell it took a scientific turn, and we three botanists joined it, as I have said, because of our liking for others of our kind. 1 Comstock, "John Henry" we called him, who had a The good deal of skill in the ringing of bells, first paid his way as Comstocks Master of the Chimes and later as assistant to Dr. Wilder in Zoology. In his tireless enthusiasm for Entomology, he gave special lessons to a group of .three or four, Copeland and my- self among the number. Afterwards thirteen of us sent a petition to the faculty asking that those private lessons be recognized as university work. Our request being granted, Comstock was made instructor in Entomology, from which position he rose in time to be professor. He became, more- over, the recognized leader in his branch, and under him al- 1 In this work the author has considered it desirable to set in small type several sections mainly of technical or personal interest. These are distinguished from extracts or quotations in the same type by a short line at the beginning and the end. C 573 The Days of a Man [1870 most every younger entomologist of standing in the country has at some time or other studied. He married Anna Botsford, a Cornell graduate of later days, an artist and a naturalist especially interested in insects. Mrs. Comstock's big heart and genial nature, varied acquaint- ance, and sympathy with young people have made their home a center of student life for upwards of forty years. Her fine and accurate work in the illustration of her own and her hus- band's books commands the admiration of naturalists, and her efforts in recent years for the promotion of nature study in the lower schools of New York State have been very success- ful. The devoted friendship of both the Comstocks is one of our joys in life. Branner Branner, a big, broad-shouldered, enthusiastic, jolly-tempered and the youth with a fine wit, a most delightful story teller, from others Dandridge in eastern Tennessee, we hailed as "king of the wassail and jack of the rebels." He came to college with the intention to enter the Presbyterian ministry. Science, how- ever, as events have plainly proved, was his proper field, and he turned definitely to Geology, in which subject he became in time a leading world authority. But of him, my lifelong friend, my colleague also for more than a quarter-century, I shall have frequent occasion to speak. Mrs. Branner, whom we have also long held in warm affection, is a graduate of Vassar and sister of Horace Kennedy, one of our favorite "brothers." A forceful member of the science group in Delta Upsilon and also of "the Strug" was Edward Leamington Nichols, a rosy-cheeked boy of excellent caliber, afterwards for more than a quarter of a century head professor of Physics at Cornell. Another "youngster of excellent pith" was Herman L. Fairchild, geologist, now for thirty years or more professor in the University of Rochester. 1 Among others not scientifically inclined but much beloved were Newman, already mentioned, afterward an attorney in Ithaca and for many years also a member of the university board of trustees; John Manley Chase, a youth of rare per- 1 Members of the local chapter of Delta Upsilon who became eminent in science, but who entered Cornell after I left, were Simon Henry Gage, physi- ologist; William Trelease, botanist; Leland 0. Howard, entomologist; and Theobald Smith, bacteriologist. C 58 3 18703 Fraternity Brothers sonal charm, now in business in San Francisco; Caleb Dexter Page, from the lumber woods of Michigan, a delightful singer, who also went into business; and Milton Campbell Johnston, before and since a sturdy farmer of Otsego County. In the fraternity group of my day we counted also a couple of boys from overseas. One was a young Russian engineer of unusual ability by the name of Dobroluboff, familiarly known as "Double up and roll off," which then seemed a picturesque transliteration! In 1876, after his first return home, he came back to America in connection with the Russian exhibit at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Later he fell into politi- cal disfavor, and the Cornell Ten Year Book prints after his name the grim phrase, "Executed for Nihilism in 1880." The other alien, a delight to us all, was Riokichi Yatabe, a brilliant Japanese who became professor in the Imperial Uni- versity of Tokyo, and later head of the first Japanese Normal School. Some years afterwards he was drowned in the surf at Kamakura. Outside the fraternity my most intimate friend was Melville Anderson Best Anderson, an enthusiastic and brilliant student of serious and literature. We had first met as companions in misery, bal- Brayton ancing plates at Cascadilla, and as fellow members of "the Strug" with its idealistic outgrowth, "the Grove Literary Society." We later established an affectionate association, still unbroken for half a century. In witness of this fact, on my seventieth birthday January 19, 1920 Anderson read before an intimate group of friends, a noble poem in my honor, lauding beyond their merits certain qualities which I happen to possess. With Alembert W. Brayton, a scientific student who at- tracted my special interest because of his originality and versatil- ity, I came to have afterward, in Indiana, many close relations, forming a tie not weakened by thirty years of separation. 3 As already indicated, membership in Delta Upsilon was to me and my comrades a wholesome and help- ful experience. But one who has been intimately C 593 The Days of a Man 1870 concerned with college problems for the better part of a lifetime cannot fail to admit that there are two sides to the fraternity question. And my readers will perhaps permit me to devote a few pages (which may be skipped at will) to a general discussion of the matter. College The "Greek Letter Fraternity' 1 is an institution frater- peculiar to America and wholly unlike any society found elsewhere. Social and literary clubs, associ- ations for pleasure or deviltry, exist in some form wherever young people are gathered together. But a college fraternity differs from the others in being more permanent and more general in its purposes, and in having under one organization representative chapters in various institutions of learning. Studenten- The German Studenten-Corps is not at all of the CoT P s same sort. That apparently exists for the obvious immediate aims of drinking and dueling, both reputed to conduce to the development of " nerve." A Corps student should be prepared to swallow with- out embarrassment three steins of beer in quick succession, and to fight promptly with any one of his caste who stares or scowls at him. Scars on the face (the more conspicuous the better) are the prized and visible testimonials of courage. The general purpose of the Corps and its Kneipe is to teach the conventional manners of the aristocrat, to sing loudly, clearly, and in unison, to carry beer without nausea, and to fight duels without flinching; its final aim is the perfection of the military spirit. The singing is worth while. But the best type of German student does not, as a rule, belong to these noisy, generally dissipated, and intolerant sets. And in 1913 I was told that since the century began 1870] Honor Societies Corps membership had fallen from about seventy- five per cent of the student body to twenty per cent. In 1910 I met in Berlin the president of a student : * Total Abstinent, Gesellschaft" The parent of modern Greek Letter groups arose Phi as a medium for encouraging youths of promise. Beta This was the "Phi Beta Kappa Society," founded at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, on December 5, 1776 not a fraternity in the modern sense, but rather a means of granting honors in literature. The persistence and expansion of Phi Beta Kappa has been a prominent factor in our colleges and universities, the actual members in each institution electing each year a certain number of associates from the higher classes; the institutions themselves, however, have not, as a rule, formally recognized the organization. Phi Beta Kappa had not been established at Cornell at the time of my graduation. Through the interest of the local group at Stanford I later became a retroactive member. In science, Sigma Xi, founded by Professor Henry Sigma xi Shaler Williams at Cornell in 1896, of which I was a charter member, runs parallel with Phi Beta Kappa in literature. For the main address at the banquet of the society's first general convention at St. Louis in 1903, I chose as my title our motto -- a-rrovSij &VTJOV which I translated as "Comrades in Zeal." Within the last twenty years other scholarship soci- eties have arisen, with membership confined to pro- fessional schools Law, Medicine, Engineering, and Journalism. But there are among students, as we have seen, other bonds than those of scholarship. This fact C6i 3 The Days of a Man 1870 special gave rise to the many national college fraternities features (and sororities, the "sister" form among young women) which assumed from the first a relationship and intimacy never contemplated by Phi Beta Kappa. The element of secrecy also, real or pre- tended, was early adopted by all except Delta Upsilon, in imitation of the Masons and other fraternal organizations, and in earlier periods was used to cover numerous pranks and deviltries. Sometimes also a fraternity led in political combi- nations both in college and out. A special feature was the law or custom by which a man enrolled in one group could never afterward legitimately join another. In the beginning, election to a fraternity was a distinction and so sometimes it is today. In Delta Upsilon and some other groups no freshmen were originally eligible, a rule later abandoned The through the exigencies of the "Chapter House." Chapter p or a b out thirty years ago fraternities everywhere House , i r i- i entered on an entirely new set or conditions, due to the acquisition of individual residences in which the members generally live, and to the support of which each one contributes. A degree of uniform temper is necessary within the group, and the house must be kept filled ; members should, of course, have the money to pay their share of the general expenses, though the possession of ample means is hardly a proper gauge of personal worth. Furthermore, while the Chapter House promotes closer friendships and coordination of ideals, it also involves other disadvantages to which Delta Upsilon has been subject not less than others, and which I may briefly enumerate. 62 3 1870^ The College Fraternity Privacy may easily tend to careless living. As a Downward matter of fact, some time since, many fraternities tendencies throughout the country bade fair to degenerate into drinking clubs. Within the last ten years this condition has been remedied by the attitude of self- respecting university faculties on the one hand and the action of the central committees of the various national fraternities on the other. I need not insist that a competent university management must and will find ways to suppress student drinking wherever or in whatever form it may appear. Dissipated men are centers of corrosion, and it is not worth while to waste educational energies on those who make bad use of them. This the German universities also have found out. Professor Eucken once spoke to me bitterly of the mischief done by "the beer phi- listine" and by returning alumni who claim that Jena has lost its " spirit ' : because the students are turning sober! In general, moreover, scholarship standards are Fraternity lower in the fraternities than among ' barbarian' 1 standards students. For this there are several causes. Greek Letter groups often choose their initiates before they really know them, and freshmen with apparent social availability often run the shortest course; strong men, on the contrary, usually ripen late and are seldom early picked as "winners." Fra- ternity men on the whole, also, are specially occupied with "student activities," which of course afford good drill in executive work, but should not replace mental training. The man who leaves college with the most exact knowledge and the widest horizon of understanding will keep ahead through life. Finally, the occupants of a Chapter House fre- The Days of a Man 1870 Wasted quently spend altogether too much time in loafing, energy smoking, playing cards, and talking in desultory fashion about things not worth while. Daudet says of certain men that "they sat around, they did not think, they did not speak just smoked." The use of tobacco is a handicap to either teacher or student. Recalling once more the advice of Professor Swain, both should 'let their competitors smoke." One thing, however, is perfectly clear: if the residents in any chapter fall steadily below par, something is wrong with its membership or its mode of life. As a college teacher for forty-five years, and a fraternity man still longer, I do not condemn the system as a whole, because I know from experience that great good may come of it if all cooperate to worthy ends. For that, however, fraternities must first rise above their easily besetting sins idleness, snobbery, lavish expenditure, and dissipation. As for the sororities, their standards are naturally higher on the whole than those of the young men. They are, nevertheless, affected by the same general problems, except, of course, those of dissipation. I would by no means seem to imply that the evils mentioned above are, or have been, confined to the groups just under discussion. Various forms of in- dividual deviltry due to an exaggerated or perverted sense of humor may break out at almost any time, anywhere. Andrew D. White, the first president of Cornell University, mentions in his autobiography two affairs on which I can throw a little light. The first was the printing and distribution of a so-called C 64 3 1870] Incidents at Cornell "mock program," a disreputable document setting The forth (in obscene fashion) the alleged peculiarities mock of the different participants in an approaching public progra performance. This poster was the work of one or two sophomores, and its purpose was to slur the freshmen. Having failed to detect the individual wholesome culprits, the president suspended all the officers of Discipline the class, although he was fully assured that as a whole they had had no share in the affair itself. As I- remember, the students generally knew who wrote the poster; he was, in fact, one of the men actually suspended. White's action stirred up opposition among the students, and as a contributor to the Cornell Era - the college daily I was asked to write an editorial protesting against the punishment of innocent indi- viduals for the sins of somebody else over whom they had no actual control. I wrote, but not what had been requested. My effort (somewhat vigorous, I thought) denounced the vulgar performance and all connected with it, and supported the president in his efforts to make it clear that public indecency would not be tolerated. The editor declined to publish what I turned in, but White's vigorous action put an end to that kind of performance. The other case was distinctly unique. A student, A student Philip H. Clark, mature-looking and bearded after P rank the fashion of his time, came before the faculty on the charge of impersonating a professor in a lecture given by him in Dundee, Yates County. Clark replied: "I did give a lecture in Dundee. I do not know what other people said, but I did not call myself a professor." And the faculty was obliged to let it go at that. But we boys knew that the C 65 3 The Days of a Man 1871 E. L. R. manager of the affair was one Eaton La Rue Moses, a Moses remarkable youth, short, stubby, rosy-cheeked, red- haired, and round-faced, who belonged to the class of '73 and came from Dundee. Not exactly scholarly, he was nevertheless possessed of certain extraordi- nary kinds of cleverness. He had all sorts of un- canny information; he could write essays on any side of any question he was in fact one of the college "characters." In 1871 he produced an essay on "What I Saw in Alsace-Lorraine." Of course he had never been there, but having read the news- papers, as he read everything, in omnivorous fashion, he was able to frame striking pictures and relate touching stories. He then persuaded Clark, himself a clever and reckless fellow, to deliver the essay as a lecture in Dundee, and had him billed as Water- man T. Hewett, a young assistant professor in the department of German. When Clark was called up as I have related, he further exonerated himself by the plea that the people said his lecture was far more interesting than those of most of the Cornell professors they had heard - -which was doubtless true. Moses, being a printer by profession, drifted about after graduation from office to office, growing more and more rotund, taking on more and more the aspect of a Buddhist idol, until he finally settled in A poiiti- Jamestown, Chautauqua County. There he aspired cal . to be "the power behind the throne" in local politics, and his views on all manner of topics were expressed in crisp and cryptic language, with a wealth of expletive Mr. Roosevelt might have envied. He was always the center of a more or less admiring group curious to know what he would say next and C 66 3 JOHN CASPAR BRANNER, 1896 * Women at Cornell who, at his death in 1918, paid him the honors due to a hermit philosopher who emerged at intervals to discuss worldly matters in current slang. Cornell began with monastic traditions, and up Three to the fall of 1870 no women had carried on regular women studies there; in that year, however, Emma S. $ wneers Eastman, Sophy P. Fleming, and my sister Mary were allowed to attend classes, with the under- standing that if at some future time women should be formally admitted to the university, their work should be counted toward a degree. As a matter of fact, in September, 1873, coeducation was formally established at Cornell, and Sage College, a dormitory for women built by Henry W. Sage, was opened for their reception. All three of the pioneers were excellent students, and won the respect of everybody acquainted with them. Miss Eastman (Mrs. L. A. Foster) became prominent as a suffrage lecturer. Miss Fleming, a girl of delicacy and refinement, taught for many years; recently our acquaintance was pleasantly renewed when I found her acting as "house mother" in a sorority at the University of California. My sister, as I have said, married and thereafter devoted herself to home making. Our general lack of social intercourse with women, Lack of I have felt to be a real misfortune. Thrown back social _ upon ourselves, we learned too little of the amenities of life ; ignorance of the best conventions was there- fore a distinct handicap with most of us for some time to come. For college men there is no other influence so wholesome as that of educated women, and there exist no conditions more favorable for the C 67 3 amenities The Days of a Man *" v' choice of a life mate than are found in a coeducational institution. This of course is not the whole story, but to my mind the advantages both to men and women distinctly outweigh all incidental drawbacks. The Fortunately for me and several others, there was Mitchell O ne cultured home where we were always welcome - that of three sisters by the name of Mitchell who lived in a red farmhouse beyond Cascadilla Creek. Our friendship with Miss Minnie, the youngest, now Mrs. Barnes, was wholesome and helpful at a time when social opportunities were scanty. The paucity of womankind in whom we had an intellectual interest tended to turn our thoughts perhaps unduly toward what I then described as Glimpses of the golden future, Foretastes of the fair to-be, and tinged all our poetical effusions, whether serious Era" or not. Four of us in 'The Strug" - Leavitt, poetasters Anderson, Dudley, and I - - had some skill in the making of verses, which we read at our weekly meetings, and often printed in the Era: Poets of the better era, Poets of the Cornell Era, Knock the spots all off from Shakespere; so we stoutly asserted, before an incredulous world. One of my efforts, entitled "To Minnie," was sung by her to the blithe tune of "Cocachelunk," an air then popular in college circles. The poem read as follows : In the castles grim and stately, In the halls where grandeur reigns, Stood of old the Mastersingers, Chanting high, heroic strains : 68 : .. Verse Making Notes which ring down through the ages, The Wakening men to nobler life; Minnie- Urging them to deeds of valor, song Raising heroes in the strife, While the idle Minnesingers Sang in some fair lady's bower Lovelorn ditties, soft and tender, Songs to while the passing hour. Merry lives they lived, and careless As a moth in summer's sheen, Till they slept, and nature o'er them Loving spread her bedquilt green. When a boy I dreamed that ever In the world's black moral night I would be a Mastersinger Heralding the coming light. But, alas for youth's ambition! Idly now I drift along; And I'm but a Minniesinger, And my life's a Minnie-song. 1 5 Many of our contributions, however, were in serious vein. Dudley in particular wrote some things that were really fine. And Anderson's flights were for the most part distinctly literary, harking back in a degree to the Miltonic manner and fairly presaging his masterpiece, a translation of the "Divina Commedia" in its original terza rima. Leavitt's verse was pleasantly human, dealing gently with current affairs. For example: 1 It should perhaps be added that our good friend was some years older than any of us, her devoted admirers. C 69 3 The Days of a Man 1872 Grove life is pleasant, and methinks These lines may serve as swift-forged links Unpolished but w 7 ith greater power To hold, each set, its pleasant hour Safe from Oblivion's wasting touch And selfish Care's corroding clutch. Of my verse Anderson used to say that I often started in to make a beautiful picture and then threw mud at it, that being his interpretation of my sense of humor. It is true that most of the lines I then wrote were farcical. I made, however, some serious metrical translations, especially of lyrics by Goethe. In the last term of my senior year I was chosen class poet and acted in that capacity on Class Day in Commencement Week. On that occasion I read "An Arthurian Legend," a humorous epic detailing the adventures of one Arthur B., a A classmate, "late of Bedford, England,' 5 on his way birthday to a birthday party staged at Free Hollow, some ^ r miles out in the country, on a furiously rainy night, April i the first of April. The class song previously chosen was for some reason rejected on the morning of the very day. The committee then ordered a new one to the tune of "Araby's Daughter," shutting up Copeland and me in separate rooms, each with instructions to produce a set of suitable lines. Mine happened to meet with favor, the burden being: We love thee and honor thee ever, Cornell. Upon leaving college, for the next fifteen years I wrote no more verse, a few whimsical effusions excepted. But shortly after my second marriage in 1887 I was impelled to work out some serious thoughts in poetic C 70 3 1872] Music and Poetry form. A few of these, representing a narrow vein of fancy, have always seemed to me worth while. 1 Real poetry (as distinguished from mere verse) Music a has always had a compelling hold on me. Music, closed unfortunately, has been more or less of a closed book book, though I take delight in what may be called "Songs in Words of One Syllable." Ballads, old or new, minor laments of oppressed races, - - all direct appeals from the heart of man or nation, simply and nobly phrased, - - stir me as they do others. Recently the setting to music of some of my own lines by an accomplished composer, Herman T. Koerner of Buffalo, has given me a special pleasure. But the intricacies of chamber music and the like, "the structure brave, the manifold music" of Browning's "Abt Vogler," fail to touch me. During my college course three poets, Browning, Emerson, and Lowell, strongly appealed to me. To a degree, also, I found satisfaction in Longfellow, Holmes, and Brownell. Of foreign poets, Schiller pleased me most; his dramas well repay the agony incident to German syntax. Of Browning (as well as of both Emerson and Favorite Lowell) I already knew something before going to P fts college; a tiny volume entitled "Lyrics of Life" had fallen into my hands, and profoundly impressed me, though parts of it were grievously obscure. At that time one of our neighbors, a Scotchman named Mclntosh, wrote a doggerel review which I thought then (and still think) had a certain value: 1 A number of my poems, written at intervals and mostly while at leisure on the sea or on trains, have been privately printed (but never published) under the title, "To Barbara, and Other Verses." n 71 3 The Days of a Man 1869 "Lyrics "Lyrics of Life" by Robert Browning, of Life" "Confound the thing," said my neighbor, frowning; "I've read at 'em, dug at 'em over and over, But hang me if I can discover A glimmer of meaning from cover to cover!" My neighbor's disposed to be dull, however. I sent to Boston at once and got one. The frontispiece is attractive, very; Six little girls, the largest is reading. If she understands it, then ought one Older than all of them put together And still have a dozen years to spare. Nevertheless, our critic finds himself almost as baffled as his neighbor, though he does make some exceptions: Count Gismond, Evelyn Hope, The Glove, A flight on Fame, and some stanzas on Love How they brought the news from Aix to Ghent, Though the errand which sent Roland away on such headlong speeding I've yet to learn, 'tis not told in the reading. But that is all, let the Lyrics be hooted; Never were sentences so involuted And twisted and turned, so all unsuited For simple folks! Let the Lyrics be bruited And burned and booted and tossed sky high! The No, not all of them! Beautiful Evelyn, critic Nothing more tender for souls to revel in relents Reading that over has made civil, and I spare 'em all for Beautiful Evelyn! Entering the university, I found Browning gener- ally appreciated there. Anderson especially took great satisfaction in him, and we used to read to- gether "The Flight of the Duchess," 'A Toccata of Galuppi's," "Love among the Ruins/' " Andrea : 72 n Favorite Poems del Sarto," and other poems which illumined places we hoped some day to visit. But I never felt that the labored crabbedness of Browning was an element of strength. In a poem on Florence written a few years ago I referred to the two ol "Casa Guidi" who as Singers of all time Wrought deathless themes In jagged rhymes. Among Lowell's poems those which most impressed me were "The Present Crisis," 'The Washers of the Shroud," and "The Biglow Papers." Emerson's "Boston Hymn" particularly appealed The to my adolescent, inherited instinct for moral " Bosto i . Hymn exhortation : The word of the Lord by night To the watching Pilgrims came and so to me it came. God said, I am tired of Kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear each morning brings The outrage of the poor - were lines that made upon me a deep and lasting impression, as did also the warning which follows: In daylight or in dark My thunderbolt has eyes to see His way home to the mark. Among prose authors my reading in college was Bret extensive, as much so as circumstances would permit. Harte At the Grove we read all the Bret Harte stories that had already appeared, and in my junior year I ventured on a little lecture tour to neighboring C73 3 Tboreau Andersen's tales Beauties of nature The Days of a Man 1:1871 towns, delivering a talk on Bret Harte and the Sierras, which I termed "The Men of No Account." 1 As a talk it was none too coherent, and it doubtless went over the heads of the people; but it enabled me to say some things I then thought true, and probably some of them really were. On one occasion I heard a critic declare : "There is too much sang-froid in his talk - - too much sing-song, you know." But of all authors who influenced my thought and writing while at Cornell, I should put Thoreau first. Something about his crisp, crystalline sentences always appealed to me. His love of nature, his sharply defined silhouettes of the beasts and trees, especially his appeals for personal freedom, made on me a profound impression. His address on John Brown, for example, affected me more than any other political writing whatever; not so much because of the tragedy which called it forth as for the illumination thrown by it on Brown's life, death, and purpose the suppression of all thought of self, by which the man became "Old Brown no longer, but an Angel of Light." Curiously enough, another writer who influenced me was Hans Christian Andersen. The simple, gentle phraseology of his fairy tales suggested a style which I have sometimes used for children's stories as well as for grown-up satire. One other great source of inspiration, not alien to that derived from good literature, lay open to us in the natural beauty of environment, especially in the three fine months of our New York year, May, 1 At about the same time Anderson went among the people with a lecture on Milton, walking home four miles one night with a package of shirts in lieu of a fee. C 743 1872] College Prizes June, and October. With spring came flood-tide in the waterfalls and a burst of flowers in the ravine, melting blue vistas down the lake, and long stretches of green in the south-lying valley. Later when . . . Autumn came And laid his burning finger on the leaves, w r e rejoiced and were glad. Tingeing our every memory of Cornell is the ineffaceable charm of the University's setting. During my college course a number of money prizes were offered for excellence in different subjects. I tried for three of these, and for different reasons failed to secure any of them. The first was offered in Botany in my first term. My knowledge of the subject matter then far outran my experience in writing examination papers, and the prize went to a classmate who reversed these conditions. The next prize was one in Entomology. But by Prize the committee's decision three of us had done in equally well, and the money was therefore to be equally divided between Frederic W. Simonds, a geologist, now professor in the University of Texas, Comstock, and myself. "Simonds had made the neatest and most accurate drawings, Jordan had written the best paper, and Comstock seemed to know the most about the subject." Simonds and I now held a conference. We two had money enough in sight for another college year not clearly visible, to be sure, but plain to the eyes of hope. Comstock was already feeling C75 3 The Days of a Man [1872 the bottom of his pocket. But he couldn't afford to leave his insects to go out to make money, and we couldn't afford to lose him. Besides, he deserved the prize, for it is better to know animals than to write about them nicely or to adorn one's knowledge with fair pictures. So we stood back and let him have the money he needed and had really won. Prize in The third prize was offered in my senior year in History Modern French History, and we were informed that no award would be made unless at least five persons presented themselves for competitive examination. As a matter of fact there were just five possible candidates. One of these (a young fellow who afterward became president of a so-called "American University" which offered paper degrees in Australia and England) had borrowed all my elaborate notes on White's lectures, and combined them with his own. He then asked especially that his notebook might be considered in the competition. This request involving a patent unfairness, I went off to the glens on the day set for the examination, which was accordingly not held. Personally I do not believe that universities should offer prizes for work, or should grant honors of any kind if these are viewed purely as a stimulus to scholarship. No scholarship worthy the name rests on outside rewards; every true student works for the sake of knowledge. If he competes for prizes a legitimate proceeding, of course it is probably because he needs the money, not the Custom stimulus. And soon after our day the custom was abandoned abandoned at Cornell, as it did not fulfill the ex- pectations at first entertained by the president. C 76 3 CHAPTER FOUR THE new institution had begun its work amid Andrew D. great enthusiasm and as a fountain of educational ff/blle as hope. Dr. Andrew Dickson White, its leader and president, was then only thirty-six years of age. Because of his short height and rather slender build, I used to say that he was "a little man who looked as though he might have been big if he had wanted to," for he gave the impression of entire competency. He was an effective and impressive speaker, with a ready command of choice English. His addresses in defense of what we afterward called the "de- mocracy of education," as well as those in favor of religious freedom, were classics of their kind. His relation toward students was always delightful, and he had a special genius for group inspiration that is, for influencing a large number at once toward higher aims. I doubt if any other American uni- versity executive has been his equal in these regards. Even President Eliot, with his great intellectual power, keen, analytical discrimination, and accurate scholarship, seemed to lack somewhat in personal sympathy. Possessed of ample means, after graduating from Yale College White spent three years abroad in study and travel, returning to fill, for seven years, the chair of History and English Literature in the University of Michigan. While at Ann Arbor he was deeply impressed by the educational ideals of the distinguished first president. Dr. Henry P. C773 The Days of a Man 1868 Tappan, who, more than any one else, fixed the purposes of our state university system. In 1864, during another visit to Europe, he did loyal serv- ice in behalf of the Union cause, especially in England. News of his nomination as state senator for his native town of Syracuse, New York, now recalled him to America. During his subsequent service in the state senate of which he was the youngest member he came into close association with Ezra Ezra Cornell the oldest whom he gradually Cornell brought into sympathy with his own educational ideals. These relations, which ripened into a warm friendship, led to results of the highest importance. After a long and bitter fight against adverse interests represented in the legislature, the details of which I need not discuss, the state accepted Mr. Cornell's gift of a commanding college site at Ithaca on Cayuga Lake, supplemented by the sum of $500,000 as the nucleus of endowment for the proposed uni- versity initiated as a result of the Morrill Act of The 1862. This federal statute, the work of Senator Moniii Justin Morrill of Vermont, provided for the founding in each state of an institution which should give instruction in Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in addition to the usual courses in the Liberal Arts and Sciences. To that end each state was awarded its quota of "scrip." l In nearly every case, unfortu- nately, scrip was sold cheaply, "on a glutted market," without effort to locate land. But Cornell Uni- versity, despite a pressing need of funds in its 1 Official warrant for the possession of unoccupied or unsold government land, at that time mainly confined to the region west of Lake Michigan. Under the Morrill Act, scrip was distributed on a basis of representation in Congress that is, according to the relative population of the various states. n 78 n ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, 1868 Foundation of Cornell University early development, held on to the New York allot- ment of 700,000 acres. This it was enabled to do through the unselfish interest of Mr. Cornell, who Mr. first selected the tracts with excellent judgment Cornell's and then advanced large loans upon them. Millions of dollars were thus saved to the university, though Mr. Cornell was violently attacked on the ground that he was "planning to rob the state, seeking to erect a monument to himself.' Concerning these wanton slanders, he merely remarked that he was "glad they were made in his lifetime," for such attacks are hard to answer later on. The Morrill lands being finally sold at a good price, the insti- tution was firmly established with great potential resources, following which, on the founder's advice, White became its first president. The early years of my Alma Mater, though rela- pioneer tively crude and cramped, were enriched by an enthusiasm enthusiasm hard to maintain in days of prosperity. And the pioneer impulse far outweighed, to our minds, any deficiency in coordination, equipment, or tradition. At that time we were all young together, freshman students, freshman profess- ors, freshman president, without experience, or tradition to guide or impede. But we had youth and we had truth, and not even the gods have those ! It was a favorite theory of Ezra Cornell that students should be able to pay their way by manual and other labor; and in the beginning, therefore, we c 79 : The Days of a Man Ci868 Student were encouraged to work at grading and the digging employ o f ditches for fifteen cents an hour. Most of us proved to be fairly good at our jobs, though some found that they involved too great a draft on time and strength. A certain number, however, persisted, and so carried themselves through college, and the report that a student without money could pay his way soon brought to the new institution very many extremely able men. There higher education was no longer an expensive luxury, a privilege of the rich; nor yet a matter of charity, a dole to the poor. Digging for the foundation of the McGraw Build- ing, we pioneers often saw Mr. Cornell, a tall, spare man, grave and kindly, with characteristic dry humor- -a Lincolnish sort, "paring down his speech to keep a reserve of force and meaning," as Thoreau said of John Brown. Democracy At the outset Cornell had declared: "I would of the found an institution in which any person can find instruction in any study;" this revolution in higher education it was White's duty to carry into effect. Not that the university could or did teach literally everything, for no institution has ever yet been rich enough to undertake such a task. The important thing was the recognition of "the democracy of intellect," the solid basis of the elective system. Then for the first time in the history of education, perhaps, the aristocracy of discipline was officially and successfully challenged. The student was not to be driven over a prearranged curriculum, or "little race course," which should entitle him at the finish to a time-honored badge of culture. On the contrary he was to have access to that particular 1 8683 Foundation Ideals of Cornell form of training which would most strengthen and enrich his life; whatever his capacity for usefulness, it should have the right of way, and he himself was to be the judge. All students and all studies, there- fore, were to be placed on an academic equality, for what will nourish one may not serve for another. But the university was of course to ensure that each subject be sanely and lucidly presented, and each piece of work be honestly and loyally done. Because the new institution thus stood fundamentally for the rights of every human faculty, men came from all over the nation to its pioneer classes, especially in Natural Science. Meanwhile, however, things of Things the spirit were not forgotten; Lowell, as well as of the Agassiz, came as lecturer at the very beginning. spmt And at White's request Lowell wrote the lines inscribed on the great bell Comstock used to ring every morning: I call as fly the irrevocable hours, Futile as air, yet strong as Fate to make Your lives of sand or granite awful powers: Even as you choose, they either give or take. The young president cherished, moreover, a special faith in noble architecture as a means of culture. Some day he hoped there might arise on the old Cornell Farm groups as fine as those that cluster about the towers of Magdalen, and a chapel as exquisite as that of King's College. He had faith also in the inspiration of personality in the class- room. So the current grind of daily recitations, with its petty marking system, gave way to laboratory and lecture, and the old plodding and prodding which smothered all interest in teacher and taught c si : tion in education tion The Days of a Man D868 yielded to real contact with objects and ideas. In White's words, the traditional college of the day was as stagnant as a Spanish convent, and as self-satisfied as a Bourbon duchy . . . [its'] methods outworn and the students as a rule confined to one simple, single course, in which the great majority of them took no interest. Another novel feature, already suggested, was the presence of men from sister institutions as non- resident professors. Agassiz and Lowell, both from Harvard, visibly represented cooperation in edu- cation, though before White's time universities were prone to regard themselves as competitors. And Agassiz once told me that a Harvard overseer re- proached him for his labors at Cornell, saying that he and Lowell were "traitors to Harvard" in thus helping to build up a rival institution. Fortunately those two big men did not thus narrowly interpret academic duty. Nor did White himself; and he urged graduates of early days to " stand by the state universities, for in them lies the educational hope of the republic." Coeducation, then gaining a scant foothold, chiefly in the West, also entered into his plans, as I have already made clear. For he firmly believed that men and women could develop together intellectually to their mutual advantage men thereby growing more refined and sensitive, women more sane and self-contained. In like manner engineers and literary students, he thought, would also help each other, the former gaining by contact with spiritual ideals, the latter through acquaintance with immutable fact. c 82 n I868J Above All Sects Is Truth He also often said, in substance, that the most precious possession of any nation is found in the talents and genius of its youth, all other matters of politics and government being comparatively of little moment. Even were all natural talent saved and augmented, we should still have none too much of it in the land. Then give it a chance. The university should be open to all, helpful to all, without regard to caste, sex, color, or condition. Furthermore, in the matter of religion also, White Liberalism took an advanced position distinctly rare at the ai time, when most of the colleges were under some form of denominational control and purely secular education was viewed with suspicion. It was a general custom, therefore, to denounce Cornell as "godless," the final argument with many, and to label its president as a foe to religion because he advocated the absolute separation of education from sectarian bias as well as from domination by any traditional form of discipline. To such minds, the loftier the character of a man who stood out- side the church, the greater menace he. In their eyes, consequently, Emerson Lincoln even - - was a stumbling-block. Cornell's position was clearly defined. White eloquently defended religious and educational toler- ance, as did also Goldwin Smith, one of our first and ablest professors, who came from Oxford. Among other gifts made by the latter to the uni- versity is a stone seat inscribed with the motto, "Above all sects is truth' 5 -twin to Goethe's famous phrase, "Above all nations is humanity." The gripping power of these doctrines lay in their embodiment in human personality; they were lived before our eyes. C 83 : The Days of a Man D868 Another factor, characteristic of British and Ameri- can institutions generally, strengthened the bonds which united professors and students at Cornell. This may be defined as sympathetic cooperation. Meaning It lies behind the endearing term "Alma Mater," f which I never heard used for a German university. ff mfl Goethe, indeed, spoke of Jena as "liebes, ndrriscbes Mater T . . , r Nest. But Jena in those days was a center ot student debauchery, and the "dear, foolish nest" abounded in costly folly. Some one once asked a student from the University of Prague if he loved it. " Love it ! No, I hate it ! " " And why ? ' : ' Because it's a State affair." But with the American con- ception of the State as a cooperative commonwealth, educational relations are wholly different, and the state university is thought of as "Alma Mater" by- thousands of men and women. Having behind it no element of the compulsory and its degrees not essential to professional advancement, it stands in a very different relation and is loved by its alumni quite as warmly as Harvard or Yale. The Uni- versity of Prague, a creation of soulless officialism, has as a whole no personality. It could no more be the object of love than a post office; it serves mainly as the door to professional preferment. Looking A second great advantage possessed by American forward institutions is that they are never complete, but always look forward to something better. This gives a perennial impulse toward progress. The German university, on the contrary, is from the first a perfect representative of its type, with practi- C 84 3 18683 Future of the American University cally no hope of betterment. In 1871, Willard Cornell Fiske, professor of German and a believer in German and n I efficiency, wrote for the Cornell Era a discouraging comparison between the newly founded institution at Ithaca and the University of Berlin. Prussia and New York State were then about equal in territory and not far apart in wealth and population. Berlin emerged full-fledged from the very first, with adequate libraries, laboratories, and faculties; there was no hesitation, delay, or parsimony, no need to wait to consult or persuade the people. Cornell began in the mud of a poor hill farm on the edge of a country village, with a group of boy professors, few books, no traditions, and no achieve- ments, its growth dependent on the uncertain will of a self-governing commonwealth. It thus started far behind Berlin and was steadily losing. Three years had passed, three laps in the course. 'The race is on," said Fiske; "who bets on the Empire State?' Today Cornell has passed her fiftieth lap, and is stoutly forging ahead; her gains in wealth, prestige, influence, most of all in active efficiency, - - are above cavil. Already her sway over the world of thought and action outranks that of Berlin. She has no apology to make to any one. As for me, I "bet on the Empire State!" The severe limitations bounding German education are shown in the subordination of the university to the Kultur system of which it is a part. Once at Stanford, discussing university organization, I touched on the apparent anomaly that in America, the land of democracy, a university head has auto- cratic powers, while in Germany, the fountain head of autocracy, the Rector as they style him - - is C 85 D The Days of a Man Ci868 chosen by his fellows and has practically no authority, whatever slight control he does exercise being dele- gated by his colleagues. These remarks of mine came somehow to the notice of Dr. Rudolf Virchow, the distinguished physiologist. Later, to one of my audience, Dr. H. Rushton Fairclough, then at work at the University of Berlin, Virchow said: Autocracy You tell Dr. Jordan that I think he is mistaken. No greater in the autocracy exists in education anywhere than in the Prussian German universities. But arbitrary power is vested in the Minister university o f Public Instruction, not in the Rector, who is mainly an honorary figure. Each professor is regarded as an agent of the government. Sectarian Through most of the last century, American colleges colleges had served as agents for the spread of denominational religion. Indeed, it was not an uncommon thing for college presidents to plead that if you let your college die, your church would die, too. But as many of the collegiate institutions were quite imperfectly endowed, they were not able to maintain adequate standards; and while they boasted that their small numbers permitted close contact between students and professors and so brought the young people directly under moral and religious influence, the very opposite was often the case. When teachers are few, ill trained, ill paid, and worn out, their personal hold over youth may be very slight. Dependence on fees, moreover, tended to laxity in regard to both scholarship and behavior, for to dismiss even a single student meant the loss of needed money. And for the purpose of advertising, many weak institutions boasted of their attendance, as though relative worth could be measured by enrollment merely. Occasionally, also, C 86 3 i868] "Free Must the Scholar Be' such claims were dishonest - - as, for instance, when college catalogues were padded by including scholars in a preparatory or grammar school, or (in one case of which I knew) even children taking private lessons in music! White in his autobiography graphically describes his early exasperating experience at Hobart College, a small denominational institution at Geneva, New York, from which he went on to Yale; but Hobart, with all its patching and fitting, was by no means one of the worst of its class. And the gradual The introduction of the elective system, however un- flfctive welcome, worked a great change for the better even in such colleges, because it enabled the student to select the subjects he wanted, and especially the men who held his attention. Under the old plan even at Yale, as White so clearly shows, real teachers and eminent scholars worked at a great disadvantage, being compelled as they were to hear and mark daily the recitations of " reluctant students." To condemn the elective system, therefore, because it does not make a scholar out of every youth it touches is to show little conception of the rank failure of the old regime. Those who have criticized President Eliot's unreserved adoption of the new one at Harvard forgot or never realized the intellectual lassitude among young men submitted to a pre- arranged discipline awakening no interest and with no visible relation to present tastes or future career. Volition or vocation one or the other is the Scholars backbone of all real scholarship. Men and women self-made draw mental nutriment only from what their minds assimilate. Scholars must make themselves, and find joy in the process. 87 3 The Days of a Man D868 Under the old system of prescribed studies and daily marking, the hurdles to be leaped during the four years' race consisted mainly of successive books of Greek, Latin, Pure Mathematics, and Philosophy. No wonder the lads who had thus suffered together used to meet at midnight to burn Euclid or the Anabasis! But do the young fellows of today ever burn their libraries of history, science, or engineering ? From the first Cornell Register, 1868-69, I quote the following: The idea of doing the student's mind some vague, general good by studies which do not interest him, does not prevail. The variety of instruction offered enables him to acquire such knowledge as is likely to agree with his tastes, encourage his aspirations, and promote his work in life. - The general change from prescribed courses to the of elective system led to the enormous increase in prescribed um ' vers i t y attendance which began in the 'QO'S and courses . J , is so conspicuous at present. When Cornell opened, the president, remembering the great influence for good he himself had derived from the lectures of eminent scholars, arranged, as I have said, for a series of non-resident professors: Agassiz, Lowell, George William Curtis, and Goldwin Smith (who decided to remain permanently with the institution) ; afterward Bayard Taylor, John Stanton Gould, and others. Agassiz, whom later I came to know well, was there before my arrival; but to all the rest I was privileged to listen as a college student. A more charming speaker than George William Curtis I have never heard. His was said to be a 18683 Non-resident Professors "silver tongue," and his gracious lectures on the George living writers of England, especially Thackeray, Dickens, and Carlyle, made a vivid and lasting impression. His independent political stand, more- over, influenced us profoundly. As a Republican he courageously opposed the spread of the spoils system in his party, thus becoming the recognized leader in civil service reform. I well remember his saying at the National Convention of 1872: 'I went into this convention a free man, with my own head under my own hat, and a free man I mean to come out of it!' 3 That proclamation marked the breach between "Mugwumps" and "straight" Republicans, a movement which led in 1884 to the defeat of Elaine as representative of the "Stalwarts," or thick-and- thin partisans. Lowell was a broad-shouldered, energetic, noble- j amf s looking man with a bushy, red-black beard and a ^ssei very pleasant voice. But his lectures made less moe impression on us than those of Curtis, notwith- standing the veneration in which we all held him - chiefly because his topic, Early French Literature, dealt with less familiar subjects. Speaking of Curtis and Lowell - - close friends - I distinctly recall two incidents which occurred soon after my arrival at Cornell. As I walked one day across the fields beyond Cascadilla Creek, I spied two men in shirt sleeves lying under a tree. Not recognizing either at first, as their lectures had not yet begun, I joined them for a friendly chat. After- ward, greatly elated, I went straight home and wrote four lines of verse (or what I thought to be verse) reminiscent of Browning's "And did you once see Shelley plain?' 3 C 89 3 The Days of a Man 1869 Once in his shirt sleeves lying in the grass, Under the shadow of a chestnut tree, I saw James Russell Lowell face to face, And the great poet rose and spoke to me! 1 Not long after, attending service at the Unitarian church, I was ushered into the same pew with Lowell "a seat among the gods," it seemed to me. Bayard Taylor gave a most interesting and in- structive course on Early German Literature. An- other delightful visitor was Thomas Hughes, author of the famous "Tom Brown" books. At the Cas- cadilla reception which followed his address, I first helped pass around strawberries, ice cream, and cake, after which I put my apron in my pocket and became a guest. In the field of History which deeply interested me, not as a record of battles and intrigues but as the '' biography of man" -we had excellent in- struction. Ancient History was taught by William Channing Russel, the vice-president, whose lectures were both effective and well planned. More appeal- ing to me, however, were White's courses in Medieval and Modern History. These covered particularly the later years of France, including the French Revolution; they were accompanied by an exten- sive syllabus, with bibliography. White, as I have indicated, used language in a noble fashion, choosing words of dignity and strength, and leaving sentences to linger in the memory. His lectures I therefore took down very fully, writing them out so that the 1 It is hardly necessary to add that his companion was George William Curtis. : 90 n 18713 Instruction in History product bore at least some resemblance to the original, and deriving great pleasure in the process. The lectures by Goldwin Smith on English History were immensely helpful. Because of a sort of de- Smith tached attitude, he was not as inspiring as White, but his judgment and dignity of character impressed us strongly. He was the first, and for years the only, British Liberal with whom I came in contact. During the last of my college course I got well acquainted with him, and we maintained an inter- mittent correspondence until toward the time of his death at Toronto in 1910. During the Philippine War he wrote me that he thought our American fever for imperialism and expansion :< contained a very large element of sheer vulgarity; at bottom, the desire to get in line with the worst elements of Europe." To all of which I then assented, and still assent. As for courses in American History, we were not so fortunate, though it was one of White's cherished ideas that Cornell should take the lead in that branch. The high schools generally taught some- thing of it in an elementary way, with partisan and patriotic basis, but no college had previously provided for serious study of our democracy. In 1871, there- fore, White selected Dr. George Washington Greene George w (grandson of General Nathanael Greene of the Revo- Greene lutionary War) as professor of American History. This amiable gentleman read his lectures in a mo- notonous voice and most uninteresting manner. Soon he was discovered to be using a printed book, his own story of the Revolution. A few members of the class then bought the text, and nobody paid any further attention to the reading. The Days of a Man But as befits a new institution, most of the pro- fessors were active young men chosen with rare judgment by our youthful president. Notable among them were two of Agassiz's students at Hant Harvard, C. Frederick Hartt in Geology and Burt G. Wilder in Zoology. Hartt was a most interesting man, with rare quality as a classroom lecturer and unusual skill in gaining the trust and affection of Survey students. About 1870, following Agassiz's expe- f dition to Brazil, Hartt was asked to take charge of Brazil t j ie g eo iogical survey of that country, a work upon which he entered with enthusiasm. Returning to Ithaca, he brought back many fossils and other materials for study; on some undescribed Brazilian brachiopods which we made out to be of the Helder- berg period, I got my first experience in Paleontology. Then from among his Cornell students he proceeded to organize an eager staff: Branner, Rathbun, and Orville A. Derby for Geology; Herbert H. Smith for Geography; and myself for Botany. Leaving again for South America, accompanied by the others, he arranged for me to follow after gradu- ation. I never went, however, as his death occurred not long after. Branner then succeeded him as geologist of Brazil for about seven years, coming back to graduate at Cornell and to take part in the geological survey of Pennsylvania. From that service he was called by me in 1885 to the chair of Geology at the University of Indiana. Rathbun also spent several years in Brazil; on his return to this country he first entered the United States Fish Commission, but was afterward made assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and director of the United States National Museum, a joint C 92 3 18703 Science Teachers position he retained up to the time of his death in 1918. Derby remained permanently as director of Derby the Museo Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, where he died in 1916. Hartt used to say that he had made at least one great discovery in going to Brazil, and that was Derby! Wilder's special interest concerned the comparative wilder anatomy of nerve structures. Very methodical, though at the same time original, even unique, - sometimes to the verge of eccentricity, - - he was strongly opposed to competitive athletics, to political partisanship, and above all to the use of tobacco and alcohol. He was an excellent lecturer, admirably clear and absolutely fearless, and my training with him was most valuable. Our relation ripened into a lifelong friendship. Dr. Charles A. Schaeffer, professor of Chemistry, schaeff was an excellent teacher and well liked by his students in spite of a strong personal resemblance (no doubt cultivated) to Napoleon III, whom we cordially detested! For with most other Americans of that day, we glorified Bismarck and regarded Napoleon as a tyrannical usurper. Larger knowledge, in- cluding the former's revelation of his shameless Ems telegram, has since shifted our point of view. And the initiation of the Great War seems now but a natural aftermath of Bismarck's policy of 'blood and iron." Schaeffer afterward became university dean, a position in which he was generally popular but which he resigned to accept the presidency of Iowa University. Another scholarly teacher whose classes I enjoyed Crane was T. Frederick Crane, instructor in Romanic Languages, from whom I acquired a reading knowl- C 93 3 The Days of a Man edge of both Spanish and Italian, and whose friendly interest was quite helpful to me. Albert N. Prentiss, professor of Botany, my im- mediate superior, was also a very kind friend. In my junior year (1871), at his request I was made instructor in the department, a piece of good fortune which enabled me thenceforward to pay all my college expenses without recourse to less congenial work. The fact that I was still an undergraduate and only twenty years old caused the appointment to be criticized by the college journal at Yale. But I was no novice in dealing with the plants of the region; indeed, to speak frankly, I knew the Eastern flora better than most professors of Botany. In my classes were a number of men since distinguished in natural science, Dudley, Branner, Comstock, Kellerman, Lazenby, Fairchild, and Henderson, besides others, Anderson among them, whose closest interests lay along different lines. Botany I had made my major subject, with Geology and Zoology as what would now be called General "minors." But I also elected all the History courses as well as all those in French, German, Spanish, and Italian, besides a brief course in Chinese. Knowledge of modern languages has always seemed to me necessary to any just view of the modern world; to my original acquisition, I ten years later added Norwegian, which I think one of the most interesting of all, as the close-shackled German is the least so. Mathematics I followed through the required courses only, having no taste for abstract speculation, of which the higher derivatives of Algebra are the quintessence. In Inorganic Chemistry I took and enjoyed all that was offered, so that Schaeffer courses 1870] Instruction in English urged me to become a chemist; of Physics but little, however, as the instruction in the latter branch was discouragingly bad, one teacher being trivial and noisy, his successor as dry as a bone. In the English Literature courses I enjoyed the fine and sympathetic readings of Hiram Corson, but systematic instruction had failed to " strike its gait." As to that, I well remember the very first lecture I heard at Cornell. This was by Corson's predecessor, Colonel Homer B. Sprague, then an ambitious young man with a fine war record and the special glory of having escaped from Libby Prison. Sprague began, 'James Thomson was born at Ednam, near Kelso on the river Tweed in Rox- burgh County, Scotland," continuing with further details which we faithfully noted down. We soon learned, however, that all such matters were to be found in the handy compendium from which they were probably gleaned. Another of Sprague's courses, it is only fair to say, was more illuminating. It dealt with word roots which we had to dig out for ourselves. Our first task dealt with the sentence, 'We do not expect savage sarcasm from the apostles." As to drill in writing English, I got no help from classwork, the instructors being men who had little worth saying, and said that little mechan- ically. The three and a half years I passed at Cornell exerted a controlling influence over my whole subsequent career. My friendship with President White afterward opened the door to the experiences C95 3 The Days of a Man 1872 of halt a lifetime in California. Several of my under- graduate intimates became my associates and co- workers for more than a quarter of a century. In retrospect, our doings at "the Grove," in the forests and the gorges about Ithaca, crowd on my mind so that I might go on indefinitely with incidents dear to memory. Somewhere, however, a stop has to be made, and I must pick my way out into the cold world. But while closing this recital of student days, I shall here venture to anticipate some of my other relations to Alma Mater. Entering the university in March, 1869, as a belated freshman, I was able in June to pass all the prescribed first-year work except that in Physiology, - which I had never studied, so that upon my return the next fall I was admitted as a regular member of the sophomore class. During the three years which followed I completed all requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science, besides about two years of advanced work in Botany. Taking this last into consideration, the faculty conferred on me at graduation in June, 1872, the advanced Master degree of Master of Science instead of the con- / ventional Bachelor's Degree received by the rest of Science tne ^^ ^5 seemed to me at the time a perfectly natural thing, as I had done all the required work for the higher honor; but it was afterward voted not to grant any second degree within a year after that of Bachelor 'had been received. I was thus placed, quite innocently, in the position of being the only graduate of Cornell to merge two degrees into one. My Master's thesis, "The Wild Flowers of Wyo- ming County," to which I have previously referred, C 96 3 DAVID STARR JORDAN AT GRADUATION, 1872 1872] Degrees from Cornell was accompanied by botanical and soil maps and an explanation of the four or five floral districts comprising that upland region of glaciated valleys and moraines. At the formal Commencement exer- Graduation cises I read an essay entitled "The Colors of Flowers." The front of the old Library Hall (of Ithaca) being crowded to the limit, it was difficult for me - - as first speaker - - to get through to the steps at the side of the stage. Passing, therefore, from my place in the audience, I put a hand on the platform and leaped to position ! This direct method was, of course, a bit unconventional, and when I had finished, the president signaled to me to leave by means of the steps and thus return to my seat as best I could. In this connection I may refer to the final degree Doctor conferred on me by Cornell, that of Doctor of Laws / Laws in 1886, when I was again unexpectedly the recipient of an unusual honor. In the original organization of the university White had decreed that no honorary degrees should be granted. His successor, Dr. Charles Kendall Adams, did not sympathize with this restriction, and securing the assent of faculty and trustees, arranged to confer the degree of LL.D. on Mr. White and on me. Meanwhile a considerable number of alumni, myself included, had filed a protest against the proposed change in policy. Both degrees were, however, publicly awarded, not- withstanding my own absence. I then wrote im- mediately to Adams, declining the honor; but he urged me to accept it as a personal favor to him, circumstances being what they were; and thus the matter stands. Afterward, in deference to a strong feeling among the graduates, the practice was dis- C97 3 The Days of a Man 1887 continued before any other honorary degrees had been granted. 1 Alumnus In 1887 it became my privilege to serve Cornell trustee University in the capacity of alumnus trustee. Mr. White was the first and natural choice of the voting graduates, but it was later arranged that the board should itself elect him to their body, leaving the alumni to fix on some one else for the second vacancy. That honor thereupon fell to me, and I was unani- mously chosen for the term of five years. The following June, according to custom, I pre- sented a report on the condition and outlook of the institution. This statement I had prepared with much care; it was received with general favor, especially for its educational philosophy which White strongly approved, as will subsequently appear. As a member of the board when the Law School was founded in 1887, I tried to prevent what I felt to be a serious academic error, the adoption of the low standards which unfortunately prevailed for some years. Judge Douglas Boardman, himself a trustee, had been selected as dean, and his ideal seemed to be to reproduce the old Albany Law School, of which he had formerly been head. Conse- quently, the committee engaged in organizing the new department proposed to set up practically no conditions for admission beyond good moral charac- 1 I still believe that every academic degree should represent work actually done in or under the direction of the institution granting it. At the outset, therefore, I adopted at Stanford University the Cornell rule that no honorary degrees or degrees for studies carried on in absentia should be awarded. This regulation has saved us much pressure from various quarters. It seems to me to give the university a certain dignity as existing for purposes of instruction, not for conferring honors on outside persons. C 98 3 Cornell Law School ter and ability to read and write, - - that is, the old Handicap traditional criteria for the study of law. Against J ' the T C / / this proposition I stoutly protested, urging that requirements be at least as high as those for ad- mission to the freshman class. But my ideas tailed of acceptance, and grammar school standards were adopted. After a few years, however, the original policy was discarded, entrance conditions being then raised to the high level obtaining at Harvard, and instruction entrusted to professional teachers in place of active practitioners in intermittent service. Nevertheless, it was a matter of years before the Cornell Law School recovered from its first handi- cap. This harked back to the days when - - as was said - "one could walk from the street into the legal profession," or to quote another contemporary epigram, "it required the same preparation for the Bar as for the sawbuck." During that period, a young Indiana acquaintance of mine entered on the practice of law with no training beyond his experience in avoiding the payment of a note by pleading minority at the time he signed it. IT 99 3 CHAPTER FIVE Choice ENTERING Cornell, I had in mind one or the other / a of two alluring callings: I would be a botanist or a ing breeder of fine sheep. For I was fascinated by the classification and distribution of plants, and at the same time much interested in the little I knew of breeding and heredity, acquired partly from limited reading, partly from experience. My early interest in sheep never died out, al- though my time came to be fully occupied with other matters. But, traveling through England, I have always been interested in the development of the different breeds through segregation and isolation, each county having even yet its special kind. In Australia, also, I have given some attention to the results of modern selective breeding, which provided New South Wales with the best merino or fine- wooled stock in the world. interest In connection with my studies I had read of distinguished men who had made Botany their life my work, and I had exchanged a few letters with Asa Gray of Harvard, the most eminent botanist in America. Yet such a career seemed almost un- attainable to an impecunious boy with no visible prospect of extensive travel, which alone gives access to new floras. On the other hand, there were then no available means for intensive study of plant behavior, as our microscopes were inadequate, micro- tomes had not been invented, and plant physiology was in its infancy. Moreover, my own botanical C ioo 3 18723 Leaving Cornell interests were primarily geographical and descriptive. I wished to know plants as plants, and in their relations to environment. And while, as time went on, I acquired more confidence in my own capacity, and came to feel that I wanted to be a teacher of science, I was by no means sure that my chosen field for research would continue to lie in Botany. My Commencement essay (printed in the Cornell Era as "The Colors of Vegetation") had little importance as an original contribution. My Master's thesis dealing with the Flora of Wyoming County contained considerable new matter of local value, though it was never published. Toward Geology and Ornithology I had meanwhile felt a growing attraction; but Vertebrate Zoology was to claim my final allegiance. Upon graduation in 1872 I decided not to remain Prof as instructor in Botany at $750 a year, accepting instead the $1300 professorship of Natural Science at Lombard University - - now Lombard College an institution under the direction of the Universalist Church, located at Galesburg, Illinois. The months of July and August I spent with Herbert Copeland at his father's home in Monroe, Wisconsin. Going West by way of the Great Lakes, I reached Chicago just after the great fire which left scarcely anything of that once enterprising frontier town. For the whole city had been made up of wooden structures, and the conflagration, starting in the overturn of a lantern by a reckless cow, obliterated everything from what is now the southern edge of the business district to Lincoln Park in the north. While in Chicago I went out to see for the first C ioi 3 essor- The Days of a Man [1872 The n- time an unbroken prairie, and was rilled with delight broken an d enthusiasm over the variety and novelty of the plants which grew there. Once before, and only once, had I had a chance at a new flora; that was in 1871, at Niagara Falls, when I visited it with a number of other students. Around about were many plants which had come from farther west, their seeds having been brought down by the water. In the autumn Copeland went as teacher of Natural Science to the Normal School at White- water, Wisconsin, while I proceeded to Galesburg. On the way, however, I attended at Dubuque the meeting of the American Association for the Ad- vancement of Science. This society, holding its national sessions once (and sometimes twice) each year, has been an institution of great value in bring- ing the young workers in science into the company of its established leaders. The At Dubuque I first met a number of men of whom A.A.A.S. I had often heard but with whom I had not previ- zLi ue ous ^y come into direct contact. Most prominent among them was Gray. Some one, I remember, looked out of the window and said: 'There goes Asa Gray. If he should say that black was white, I should see it already turning whitish." Another leading figure was James Hall, state geologist of New York, who had been in our laboratory at Cornell and seen my modest work on the brachiopods of northern Brazil, so strangely like similar shells from the Helderberg rocks about Albany. Dr. J. P. Lesley, the geologist, was also conspicuous. His saying that "the college graduate may flourish his diploma, but the world cares little for that baby badge," has always lingered in my memory, as more C 102 3 18723 Meetings of American Scientists than one generation of my students can well attest. Still another, not less eminent, was Dr. Charles E. Bessey, botanist of the University of Nebraska, an original teacher and a helpful friend. The boundless hospitality of the people of Iowa Guests I remember with much pleasure. Everywhere we f the were received without charge, and on Sunday a ticket was given each of us by the transportation companies to be rilled out for any place in Iowa that might attract. I myself selected a trip by steamer down the Mississippi River to Burlington. Since then I have attended several other meetings of the Association, one each at New Haven, Ottawa, Boston, and Minneapolis. With time, also, I saw myself changing from an eager young disciple to a place among the "old masters" whom the young fellows hope to meet, but who scarcely find time and strength to foregather each year. At the meeting in 1909 I was elected president of the Association for the following year, an honor never twice accorded to any one. My presidential address, delivered at Minneapolis in 1910, was entitled "The Making of a Darwin." Professor Making Henry Fairfield Osborn of Columbia had once f a asserted that no American university could produce "a Darwin"; I therefore set forth what seemed to me the essential elements in the making of a great naturalist and claimed that they were to be found as freely in America as anywhere in Europe. They were, first, the original human material; second, contact with nature; third, an inspiring teacher. As to the first, I argued that only life can yield the "stuff" from which great men are made a matter of heredity, not of geographical location. Contact C 103 3 The Days of a Man 1872 with nature, the second essential, is possible every- where, and much more so on this broad and un- exhausted continent than in the fens of Cambridge- shire. As to the third, Darwin explains his own indebtedness: he "walked with Henslow," deriving from that vigorous and enthusiastic botanist the determination to make Natural History his life work. Plainly it was not Cambridge and Edin- burgh which made him. Indeed, he bluntly affirms that in his scientific career he owed nothing to Cambridge beyond his association with Henslow, which was personal rather than official; and at Edin- burgh he listened to lectures on geology "so incred- ibly dull" that he made up his mind never to attend any more or even read a book on the subject! Need of I am sure that a Darwin could be produced in "Darwin America just as readily as anywhere else. Once secure the fortunate combination of inherited germ plasm, the necessary '' Darwin stuff," and the rest is easy, for America affords an exuberance of nature and always a choice number of Henslows as com- panions and interpreters. in Gales- But to return to Galesburg, where, in the month bur z of September, 1872, I arrived to begin my work. Then only twenty-one years old and without worldly experience, I was ignorant and more or less scornful of some of the social duties supposed to be incumbent on professors. But I worked very hard at Lombard, did some excellent teaching, and developed a certain degree of enthusiasm in the small body of students, of whom there were not over one hundred in the entire collegiate department, with only eight in the graduating class. A number of these young people, C 104 U 18733 A Year at Lombard however, had real ability among them my sister, whom I had asked to join me for the year. Natural Science, I found, was an expansible Range of subject. My "chair" demanded classes in Zoology, Natural Botany, Geology, Mineralogy, Chemistry, Physics, Science Political Economy, Paley's 'Evidences of Chris- tianity," and, incidentally, German and Spanish! I also had charge of the weekly "literary exercises," consisting of orations and the reading of essays, a dreary and perfunctory performance, - - with a class in Sunday School for good measure. In off hours, also, I served as pitcher of the student ball team, taking part in regular contests with our neigh- bor, Knox College, another Galesburg institution - much better endowed and only a mile away. In Chemistry and Physics I had almost no appa- ratus, and nothing that could be called a laboratory except as I created it electrical instruments being the only articles of real value we possessed. For the rest, we studied Botany in the field, and the rich fossil deposits and geode beds along the banks of the Mississippi River I utilized to the utmost in Geology. Once when the board of trustees sent a committee to inspect the work of the faculty, they criticized my teaching solely on the ground that "I allowed the students to go into the cabinet to handle the apparatus and waste the chemicals." And one A "fossil of their number felt a little hurt because I regarded bam " with undisguised scorn his present of a "fossil ham' 3 which was merely a water-worn boulder of unusual shape. On the whole, however, I valued the growing enthusiasm of my pupils more than I did the opinion of the board of trustees. One matter, nevertheless, C 105 3 The Days of a Man [1873 caused me a certain embarrassment. My prede- cessor, Dr. Livingston, a man of high character and a certain degree of executive ability but no scientific training, had been removed from the professorship of Natural Science at the age of sixty because he was thought inadequate for the labor of teaching. The presidency then becoming vacant, after con- siderable discussion on the part of the board he was made acting head for the time being. This left his relation to me rather delicate, and occasionally The difficult. On one occasion, for instance, he criticized Giadai m y account of the Glacial Period because I made it appear "as though ice had actually covered the land." His misinformation on these matters dated from the period in which glacial phenomena were attributed to icebergs and the wash of waves over submerged regions. Leaving At the end of the year the trustees, being short of Lombard mone y an( j none too appreciative, left me no ac- ceptable alternative save to resign - - which I did not unwillingly. They were, however, taken aback by the fact that nearly all the advanced students then expressed their intention of going to Cornell. Among those who actually did go were Edward Junius Edwards, entomologist, whom Mary after- ward married, and Belle Sherman, who graduated at Cornell and remained in Ithaca for forty years as science teacher in the high school. From Galesburg I went directly to the island of Penikese as one of those chosen by Professor Agassiz to constitute the first class in his proposed Summer C 106 D 18733 The Anderson School at Penikese School of Science. During the previous winter he The first had cast about for some means of coming; in contact ^j i . with American teachers of Zoology, and so exerting " an influence toward better methods; for in those science days science teaching in the secondary schools, even in the colleges, was of a very inferior order, without laboratories and for the most part lacking contact with nature itself. The scheme he evolved was a pioneer movement in education. Up to that time, it will be remembered, nothing of the sort had any- where existed. But he conceived the idea of meeting teachers at the seaside, away from all other influ- ences, believing that he could thus make clear to us the necessity of going directly to nature, the fountain head thus teaching us to recognize the truth as truth, to know that there are facts in the universe which, as Huxley says, are "fundamentally beyond denial, and to which the tradition of a thousand years is no more than the hearsay of yesterday." The first plan, as suggested by Professor Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, Agassiz's Harvard colleague, was to call a group together for a "scientific camp meet- ing" on the island of Nantucket. Before a site was chosen, however, Mr. John Anderson, a wealthy tobacco merchant of New York City, offered the use of Penikese supplemented by an endowment of $50,000 in money for the permanent location of the school there; and Mr. C. W. Galloupe of Boston promised to lend his large yacht, the Sprite, for dredging purposes. Agassiz, I may add, seldom found difficulty in raising money, his personal enthu- siasm being compelling. To this fact a member of the Massachusetts legislature once bore testimony: : 107 : The Days of a Man 1873 "I don't know much about Agassiz's Museum, but I am not willing to stand by and see so brave a man struggle without aid." Penikese, a little forgotten speck on the ocean, about eighteen miles from New Bedford, is the outermost and least of the Elizabeth Islands, which lie to the south of Buzzards Bay, off the heel of Cape Cod. It comprises some sixty acres of very rocky ground, being indeed only a huge pile of stones with intervals of soil. For the whole cluster was once a great terminal moraine of rocks and clay brought down from the mainland and dropped into the ocean by some ancient glacier, after which the mass was broken by the wash into eight little islands separated by tide channels: Naushon, Nonamesset, Uncatena, and Wepecket, Nashawena, Pesquinese, Cuttyhunk, and Penikese. The last of these consists of two hills joined to- gether by a narrow isthmus with a little harbor of anchorage; in June, 1873, it bore a farmhouse, a flagstaff, a barn, a willow tree by a spring, and a flock of sheep. And there was founded "the Anderson School of Natural History," for which two new buildings, a laboratory and a dormitory, were duly provided. Choice From the many hundred applicants Agassiz had f chosen fifty teachers, students, and naturalists of various grades and from all parts of the country - thirty-five men and fifteen women. The practical recognition of coeducation thus involved was criti- cized by a number of his friends brought up in the monastic schools of New England; but the results justified the innovation. His thought was that those fifty teachers, women as well as men, should C 108 3 Penikese be trained in right methods, and so carry back into their own schools sound ideas on the teaching of science. Moreover, each institution reached would become in time a center of help to others. None of us will ever forget his first sight of Agassiz First as we arrived on a little steamer from New Bedford si z ht i in the early morning, and he met us at the land- gai ing, his face beaming with pleasure. For this experi- ment might prove to be his crowning work as a teacher. His tall, robust figure, his 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, his rolling gait - - all these entered into our abiding impression of the great naturalist. The dormitory not being yet finished, the whole group was first assigned to temporary quarters in the laboratory, across the middle of which a partition of robes and blankets had been thrown to separate the sexes. Agassiz then set every one to work without delay, saying that we should examine the rocks round about and be ready to tell him what we had seen. Thereupon two of us, Dr. W. O. Crosby (of the Institute of Technology) and myself, were suddenly beset with questions, for we alone knew something of Mineralogy. "Is this hornblende?' "Is this epidote?" "How do you tell them apart?' "How do you know granite from gneiss, feldspar from quartz?" But when Agassiz himself tested ideas, us, he neither asked nor answered questions of this not kind; and as for names, it slowly dawned on all that a name was of little consequence until backed by real knowledge. C 109 3 names room The Days of a Man 1873 The The old barn had been hastily converted into lecture dining hall and lecture room by turning out the sheep, making over the horse stalls into a kitchen, and putting in a new floor, though doors and walls were left unchanged and the swallows' nests re- mained under the eaves. In the middle of the big room stood three long tables; at the head of one sat Agassiz, always with a blackboard at his right, for he seldom spoke without a piece of chalk in hand, and frequently gave an entertaining lecture at table, often about some fish or other creature the remains of which lay on our plates. From one of these talks I made my first acquaintance with the bones of the Scup. Mrs. Agassiz, whose genial personality did much to bind the company together, was present at every lecture, notebook in hand. Among the teachers were Dr. Burt G. Wilder, one of my former Cornell professors, Edward S. Morse, Alpheus S. Packard, Alfred Mayer, Frederick W. Putnam all young men of growing fame; Arnold Guyot, also, and Count Louis de Pourtales, early associates and lifelong friends of Agassiz. Our second day upon the island was memorable purpose a bove all others for the striking incident recorded by Whittier in "The Prayer of Agassiz." Breakfast over, Agassiz arose and spoke, as only he could speak, of his purpose in calling us together. The swallows flew in and out of the building in the soft June air. Some of them grazed his shoulder as he dwelt with intense earnestness on the needs of the people for truer education - - needs that could be met by the training and consecration of devoted teachers. This was to him no ordinary school, he said, still less a C 1103 The Prayer of Agassi% mere summer's outing, but a missionary work of the highest importance. A deep religious feeling permeated his whole The discourse, for in each natural object he saw "a thou & ht * f r* j thought of God" which the student may search out and think over again. But no reporter took down his words, and no one could call back the charm of his manner or the impressiveness of his zeal. At the end he said, with a somewhat foreign phras- ing, "I would not have any one to pray for me now": adding, when he realized our failure to grasp his meaning, that each would frame his own prayer in silence. Even the careless heart was moved, And the doubting gave assent With a gesture reverent To the Master well beloved. As thin mists are glorified By the light they cannot hide, All who gazed upon him saw, Through its veil of tender awe, How his face was still uplit By the old sweet look of it, Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer And the love that casts out fear. Nevertheless, there were among us some young fellows from Harvard and Amherst who failed to appreciate the significance of Agassiz's high purpose, a lesson and promptly determined to show their disapproval of coeducation by "giving the Professor a lesson!" Accordingly, after a night or two, they threw over into the women's quarters a huge doll baby fashioned from a pillow and blanket. This produced some C in 3 The Days of a Man 1873 commotion, and in the morning Agassiz was dis- tinctly stem. At breakfast he rose and said that six young men (whose names he gave) would leave by the steamer at ten o'clock. Various appeals were now made: : 'the women didn't mind it" "it was only a student prank and had no signifi- cance." But he remained firm. We were there for serious purpose, he said; it was not the place or time for "pranks." First The third day I was one of those chosen for the dredging f^sf- dredging trip, on which we secured many creatures from sea bottom, quite new to us. At the same time we learned something of the discomfort possible in an unballasted schooner anchored to a dredge in the open ocean; but with longer experience I managed to master the situation. Among inter- esting later trips on the Sprite, we visited the island of No Man's Land, far out at sea and inhabited by a few fishermen whose outlook was wholly different from ours. So the summer went on through a succession of tbe joyous mornings, beautiful days, and calm nights, with the Master always present, always ready to help and encourage, and the contagious enthusiasm which surrounded him like an atmosphere never lacking. A born optimist, his strength lay largely in a realization of the value of the present moment. He was a living illustration of Thoreau's aphorism that "there is no hope for you unless the bit of sod under your feet is the sweetest in this world in any world." C 112 : 18/33 Agassis? s Lectures Of all his varied lectures the most instructive were those on glaciers. Here he spoke as an expert, and every rock around was witness to his words. Equally delightful, however, were the reminiscences of his early life and of his fellow workers in science, Schimper and Braun in Munich, Valenciennes and the rest in Paris, and the three he acknowledged as masters Cuvier, Humboldt, and Dollinger. "I lived at Munich for three years under Dr. Dollinger's roof," he said, "and my scientific training goes back to him, and to him alone." To the Darwinian theory as it looked to him he Not a was most earnestly opposed. Essentially an idealist, he regarded all his own investigations not as studies of animals and plants as such, but as glimpses into the divine plans of which their structures are the expression. 'That earthly form is the cover of the spirit was to him a truth at once fundamental and self-evident." To his mind, also, divine ideas were especially embodied in animal life, the species being the "thought unit." The marvel of structural affinity - - unity of plan - - in creatures of widely diverse habits and outward appearance he took to be simply a result of the association of ideas in the divine mind. To Darwin, on the other hand, those relations illustrated the tie of a common heredity acting under diverse conditions of environment. Yet Agassiz had no sympathy with the prejudices exploited by weak and foolish men in opposition to Darwin's views. He believed in the absolute freedom of science, and that no authority whatever can answer beforehand the questions we endeavor to solve an attitude strikingly evidenced by the fact that every one especially trained by him after- The Days of a Man [1873 ward joined the ranks of the evolutionists. For he taught us to think for ourselves, not merely to follow him. Thus, though i accepted his philosophy regarding the origin and permanence of species when I began serious studies in Zoology, as my work went on their impermanence impressed me more and more strongly. Gradually I found it impossible to believe that the different kinds of animals and plants had been separately created in their present My forms. Nevertheless, while I paid tribute to Darwin's "* t ~ marvelous insight, I was finally converted to the z>TJL- tneor y of divergence through Natural Selection and ism other factors not by his arguments, but rather by the special facts unrolling themselves before my own eyes, the rational meaning of which he had plainly indicated. I sometimes said that I went over to the evolutionists with the grace of a cat the boy "leads" by its tail across the carpet! All of Agassiz's students passed through a similar experience, and most of them came to recognize that in the production of every species at least four elements were involved - - these being the resident or internal factors of heredity and variation, and the external or environmental ones of selection and segregation. In the original Penikese group, the man who most interested me was William Keith Brooks, then occupying a precarious professorship in a little college at Niagara Falls. Very wise and self-con- tained, he was especially sparing of words and keen in all his conclusions. Later, as professor in Johns Hopkins University, he came to be the most dis- tinguished American biologist of his time, a true C H4 3 in science 18733 Students at Penikese "Sage in Science," as I termed him in a review of one of his books. Once 1 called at his office and found him tracing the anatomy of a worm. 'Hello, Jordan," he said cordially, and then returned to his drawing as coolly as though we had last met within half an hour instead of years before. That was his way. Yet, notwithstanding his reticence, he was really a good friend, a very interesting lecturer, and a most successful teacher. Charles O. Whitman was older than most of the Future rest at Penikese. There his main interest was lfadfrs Ornithology, of which he seemed to have an ex- tensive knowledge. Afterward he rose to the front in General Biology, becoming professor of Zoology in the University of Chicago. The latter part of his life he devoted to the breeding of birds, with a view to defining more explicitly lines of heredity, determination of sex, and the meaning of : 'unit characters." Another delightful member of the group was Dr. Frank H. Snow, then professor of Zoology at the University of Kansas, afterward head of the same institution. Snow was an excellent naturalist, simple, hearty, and jocund, much beloved by his students, and (even when chancellor) by his associates. Charles Sedgwick Minot, bent on perfect- ing himself through training in Germany, was the youngest and one of the ablest of us all. As pro- fessor of Physiology at Harvard he came to stand unquestionably in the front rank of American men of science. I remember a keen saying of his, "The difference between a scientific physician and a practical one is that more of the scientific patients get well and more of the others die." Walter Faxon of Harvard, an assiduous student of crabs and C H5 U The Days of a Man 1873 lobsters, J. W. Fewkes, ethnologist, and W. O. Crosby, mineralogist, were also students of promise. Samuel Garman, assistant in the Museum of Comparative Zoology and general helper to Agassiz, was a conspicuous figure, being then a breezy young fellow with wide sombrero and flowing red necktie, who had recently returned from an expedition to the Upper Missouri, where he was associated with Marsh and Cope. He became a leading authority on sharks and remained for more than fifty years in the Museum, settling down there into a quiet and gray old age. Success- All the persons mentioned above were hoping to f ul become leaders in science. Others were equally ambitious to be useful as teachers. Among the latter, Lydia W. Shattuck, professor of Botany at Mount Holyoke, was a great favorite, as was also her assistant, Susan Bowen, who in 1875 became my wife. Other successful teachers were Susan Hallowell, first professor of Biology at Wellesley College, Austin C. Apgar, bird enthusiast at the Trenton Normal School, J. G. Scott of the Westfield Normal, Franklin W. Hooper, afterward director of the Brooklyn Art Institute, H. H. Straight of the Oswego Normal, Mary Beaman of Binghamton, now Mrs. Joralemon, and Zella Reid, now Mrs. Cronyn, a pupil of Horace Mann at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio. Years afterward (for old times' sake, I suppose) Mrs. Cronyn sent her two sons from Massachusetts to study under me at Stanford University. Agassiz was destined not to meet with us a second time, for he died in December, 1873. In the n "6 n The Second Summer at Penikese words of Colonel Theodore Lyman, one of his Death of earliest and ablest students, they buried him from the chapel that stands among the College elms. The students laid a wreath of laurel on his bier, and their manly voices sang a requiem. For he had been a student all his life long, and when he died he was younger than any of them. His headstone at Mount Auburn is a boulder brought from the glacier of the Lauter Aar, on which, when professor at Neufchatel, he had built a rude hut in order to study the movement of ice. In that tiny "Hotel des Neufchatelois," famed among ge- ologists, he once told me, he "'slept on the ice for six weeks and had ever since suffered from rheuma- tism in the right shoulder." The following summer we gathered again at Penikese under the general direction of Alexander Agassiz and Wilder. Eager new faces now appeared, among them my Cornell intimates, Copeland and Dudley, Cornelia M. Clapp, for many years a professor at Mount Holyoke, my sister Mary, and Helen Bingham (sister of Mrs. Copeland), who had succeeded me at Lombard. Wise teachers were present as before, the work was stimulating but a sense of loss was felt above everything else. One Memorial evening, therefore, we met in the lecture hall, and each spoke as best he could of the absent Master. The words which longest remained with us were those of Samuel Garman: He was the best friend that ever student had. On the walls we put several mottoes taken from Agassiz's talks to us: C H7 3 The Days of a Man 1874 STUDY NATURE, NOT BOOKS BE NOT AFRAID TO SAY, ''l DO NOT KNOW" STRIVE TO INTERPRET WHAT REALLY EXISTS A LABORATORY IS A SANCTUARY WHICH NOTHING PROFANE SHOULD ENTER These striking phrases, written on cloth, were left for fifteen years in the empty building, whence they were then carried by my student Eigenmann (of whom more later) to the Marine Station at Woods Hole, in some degree the natural successor of Penikese. Anderson With the end of the second summer that of School jgyA the Anderson School closed forever. There / fJ was nothing to do except pay the debts and shut the doors. Agassiz being gone, even the small sum necessary to carry on the work could nowhere be obtained. In the eyes of the business man for whom it was named, the venture was a failure. For nearly twenty years, therefore, the buildings stood just as we left them, in the charge of Captain Flanders, who was drowned in a storm in the winter of 1891. A year or two later they were struck by lightning and burned to the ground, leaving the island once more to the old farmhouse, the barn, the willow by the spring, and a flock of sheep. But while Penikese is deserted, 1 the impulse which came from Agassiz's work there still lives, and is deeplv felt in everv field of American science. For with all due appreciation of the rich streams 1 This word I retain advisedly, even though the state of Massachusetts for a time made the island a refuge for lepers. 18743 Studies in Seaweeds and Fishes which in later years have flowed from many quarters, influence it is still true that the school with most extended f influence on scientific teaching in America was held in an old barn on a little offshore island. It lasted only a few months, and it had virtually but one teacher. When he died, it vanished ! At Penikese I devoted myself chiefly to the study Alga of Algae, making in all a large collection of seaweeds. and This interest led Agassiz to appoint me instructor fisbes in marine botany for the second summer. Toward the end of the first session, however, he asked me to undertake a study of the fishes of the region, and I was accordingly put in charge of the schooner Nina Aiken, Captain Flanders. Every morning early we started out to see the raising of the pound nets (stationary traps for fishes) at Mememsha Bight on Marthas Vineyard, near the gaudily colored orange and white promontory of Gay Head. Here I made my first acquaintance with fishes of the sea, which were brought up in bewildering variety. It then became my duty to select those .which I thought would be useful in the Museum of Com- parative Zoology, and to study the habits of the different kinds. Meanwhile I prepared and soon after published (1874) "A Key to the Marine Algae of the Atlantic Coast from Newfoundland to Florida," including a list of all the known species; like most papers of that type, it was useful mainly to the author, and as a point of departure for future study. But my removal to the Middle West checked for the time being any further work along that line, and C U93 The Days of a Man 1874 I never again returned to it. Having sold all my seaweed books to a second-hand dealer, I found to my pleasure in 1892 that Dudley had bought them and brought them with him to Stanford University. A call to At the end of the first summer I went over to Wisconsin Cambridge, where Agassiz had promised me an appointment as curator of fossil vertebrates in the Museum, a position which had recently become vacant. Meanwhile he received a letter from Dr. Russell Z. Mason of Appleton, Wisconsin, asking him to send one of his students as principal of the Appleton Collegiate Institute, a preparatory school developed on the theories of Pestalozzi and Froebel, in which science teaching was to be made a specialty. From Agassiz's answer nominating me for the po- sition I was allowed to copy a few sentences which, after all these intervening years, I may be pardoned for printing: The highest recommendation I can give Mr. Jordan is that he is qualified for a curatorship in the Museum of Com- parative Zoology. I know no other young man of whom I can say that. This statement was sufficient, and I at once set forth for Appleton to undertake my new duties. Students I do not think that my management of the Insti- at tute was of a high order, for I was then only twenty- two years old and lacked adequate executive experi- ence. But my teaching was excellent, and I have never known a more enthusiastic body of young people. One of the boys, Charles Leslie McKay, who followed "me to Indiana, developed real scientific ability, being afterward sent by Professor Baird of C 120 U 1874] Apphton Collegiate Institute the Smithsonian Institution to Alaska to make collections in Natural History and Ethnology, and to study the Aleuts. From headquarters at Nushagak on Bristol Bay, he sent back valuable material, including a new species of Snow Bunting. One stormy night, however, he started to cross the turbulent Nushagak River in a skin bidarka, and was never seen again. In his death, science suffered a distinct loss. In Appleton I soon met an unusual woman whose A new friendship in that year of my apprenticeship formed f" end later, in California, a curious link with the most vital part of my career as a teacher. This was Mary Frazer Macdonald from Inverness, Scotland, a slender, energetic, fiery little Highlander, a devoted feminist and suffragist, with, moreover, a wide knowledge of literature. Elaborately educated in Germany as a kindergarten teacher, she had been called directly to Appleton at the opening of the Collegiate Institute. Arriving there, she learned with dismay that her salary of $1000 (which looked large when expanded into German marks) was less than that paid to the principal then in charge, a man distinctly her inferior. Because of this dis- crimination, which she thought unfair, she resigned at the end of the first year, remaining, however, in town for a few more months, during which period she became much interested in my scientific work and occasionally dropped into my classes. About Appleton, algae were few and insignificant, Turning and I had no microscope adequate for their study, to while fishes were abundant and varied in Fox River ** ' and the neighboring lakes of Winnebago and Buttes des Morts. With Miss Macdonald's assistance I The Days of a Man 1874 dissected all the available fish forms and made anatomical drawings of them. During the winter she secured a position as teacher in a San Francisco kindergarten founded by Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper a prominent local figure in the social and educational circles of that period and later endowed by Mrs. "Story of Leland Stanford. There it happened that one day a stone" ]yjj ss Macdonald related to her young charges 'The Story of a Stone," which she heard me give in Appleton before my class in Geology. On that occasion Charles McKay had brought in and questioned me about a bit of Favosites, a fossil Silurian coral having almost exactly the appearance of honeycomb, which he had picked up in glacial drift. With this as a text, I set forth the growth of the coral, covering at the same time in simple language the geological history of Wisconsin from the Silurian down. I may here add that afterward, under the title already mentioned, my little story appeared in St. Nicholas, from which it was widely copied in both America and England. It was the first in date of all the "nature stories" for children, of which so many have been written in recent years by naturalists and others. The Among Miss Macdonald's pupils was young Leland Stanford Junior, who took sufficient interest in Favosites to repeat its history at home. The matter made a strong impression on his father as an illus- tration of how science can be effectively taught to children. Many years afterward, when I was pres- ident of Stanford University founded in memory of the little lad who had liked "The Story of a Stone," the "Governor," as he was still affection- ately called, spoke to me of the incident. We were C 122 U Applet on Collegiate Institute then both surprised and pleased - - 1 to learn that even indirectly the boy's life had touched mine, he to know that the story was of my making. I also recall with pleasure the admiration, almost vener- ation, of both Mr. and Mrs. Stanford for the edu- cational ideals and personality of Agassiz, who was once their guest in San Francisco. As a matter of Agassi* fact, when the large Zoology Building (now Jordan bono)ed Hall) was erected, a marble statue of Agassiz of Stanford heroic size was one of the two placed over the portal, the other being that of his patron and associate, Humboldt. But to return for a moment to Miss Macdonald, or rather to Mrs. David McRoberts, for such she became a year or two after her arrival in San Fran- cisco, where her husband, a Scot, was for a time on the staff of the Call. Shortly after their marriage, however, Mr. McRoberts was appointed reporter for the House of Commons, and they settled down in Chelsea. After some years they returned for a time to San Francisco, Mrs. McRoberts taking a leading part in the local suffrage campaign. Later still they went to the mining district of North Australia in search of a fortune, and from there, about 1900, McRoberts wrote me of the sudden death of his brilliant wife. With the end of my one year at Appleton the Collegiate Institute ceased to exist, although founded but three years before by Mr. Anson Ballard, an enthusiast in education, who at his death endowed it with considerable real estate. The financial panic of that period, however, punctured land booms, and the property proved quite unsalable. C 123 3 The Days of a Man [1874 In June, 1874, therefore, the trustees perforce (though reluctantly) closed the school, paid off all the teachers, and turned the building over to the neighboring Lawrence University, an institution under the control of the Methodist Episcopal Church. This necessity was a matter of real regret to Mrs. Ballard and her daughter Leda, now Mrs. Clark, as well as to others who had faith in advanced theories of education. The last day, after the closing exercises, we all went together in a great four-horse coach on a picnic to Lake Winnebago. Having planned to take the evening train to Chicago, I was obliged to leave before the rest. The students then suddenly decided to give me a farewell greeting at the station of Menasha, five or six miles away. They started off joyously, but coming to Fox River between Neenah and Menasha, they were held up and forced to pay a fine of five dollars for fast driving over a bridge. Forty-two years later I revisited Appleton. Of ^g s j x gj r j s wno na( j ^ een members of the graduat- ing class, one Annie, the gifted daughter of Dr. Mason had passed away, one had removed to Oregon, and four (including Mrs. Clark) were still living in town, happily married and apparently prosperous. The afternoon before my lecture they gave me a charming tea and reception in memory of old times. 5 Of the summer months of 1874 passed by me at Penikese I need not again speak. At their close, however, I took advantage of another opportunity to extend my scientific acquaintance and experience. C 124 H DAVID STARR JORDAN, 1874 Laboratory of the Fish Commission The year before, Baird had provisionally es- tablished a research station at Woods Hole on the southern angle of Cape Cod. The location proved to be an excellent one, much superior to Penikese as a collecting ground, because of a variety of con- ditions favorable to animal life shallow water, deep water, and brackish estuaries being accessible. Its nearness to Boston is also a desirable factor, as seclusion, which was a great advantage for Agassiz's purposes, necessarily handicaps a research station. Thus admirably situated, the Woods Hole Labora- tory has since developed into one of the two best- known and best-equipped marine laboratories in the world, the other being Anton Dohrn's establishment at Naples. But during the summer of 1874, before making a final decision as to site, Baird tried out Noank, Connecticut, to which port he transferred his little dredging steamer, the Blue Light, and a few volun- teer assistants. The work at Penikese being over, I went on to Noank for a short stay. Baird himself was absent, but several of his associates were hard at work. There I met for the first time George George Brown Goode, professor in Wesleyan University and a volunteer field assistant to Baird on the newly established United States Fish Commission. A man of my own age (born in New Albany, Indiana, in 1851), of medium height, rather slender figure, scholarly appearance, and artistic temperament, he had a winning manner enlivened by great, but never uncritical, enthusiasm. Throughout his subsequent career as assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Fish Commissioner, and organizer of the National Museum, our relations remained inti- c 125 : The Days of a Man 1874 mate, bound as we were by ties of friendship and common scientific pursuits; and I was personally under large obligations to him. Although one of the chief builders of the science Naturalist ^ Oceanic Ichthyology, Goode was equally interested in the history of Zoology. He also delighted in setting things in order; the striking characteristic of his scientific papers was scholarly accuracy and good taste. Among American naturalists he was perhaps the most methodical and conscientious, and, in his way, the most artistic. He never did any- thing carelessly, never engaged in any controversy, yet no one was more ready to acknowledge an error or showed greater willingness to recognize the good work of others. The most extended of my own monographs, "The Fishes of North and Middle America," l would never have been written except for his repeated insistence and generous encourage- ment. 2 He early became Baird's closest associate, and the period embraced by the 'yo's, '8o's, and '90'$, in the course of which the influence of those two men made itself generally felt in Washington, was in a real sense the golden age of American governmental science. And his death in 1896 virtually resulted from overwork, mostly in connection with the 1 See Chapter xxi, page 524. 2 In 1879 Goode did me the honor of giving the name Jordanella to a genus of handsome, chubby little killifishof the Florida rivers, now valued for aquarium purposes. Such courtesies serve to recall to students the names of their prede- cessors. In this regard, I have been honored beyond my deserts. Jordania is a rare, handsome, and primitive sculpin of Puget Sound; Jordanicus, a pearl fish of the South Seas, living in the body cavity of a sea cucumber; Jordanidia, a predatory mackerel of the Black Current of Japan; Davidia, a filefish of Brazil. L 126 I] I874 -, At Noank - - organization of the National Museum as a means of popular education as well as of scientific research. No unkind word was ever said of Goode either in life or after death. In 1897, at the request of the Smithsonian authorities, I prepared a brief sketch of his work, quoting the following from our mutual colleague, Gill, of whom more hereafter: His disposition was a bright and sunny one, and he in- gratiated himself in the affections of his friends in a marked degree. He had a hearty way of meeting intimates, and a caressing cast of the arm over the shoulder of such a one often followed sympathetic intercourse. But in spite of his gentle- ness, firmness and vigor became manifest where occasion call for them. Goode's most important scientific treatise, "Oce- anic Ichthyology," in part the work of Dr. Tarleton H Bean, his associate (who, by the way, was at Noank), appeared shortly before his death. At Noank -or near by, at Yale -I also me Addison E. Verrill, another distinguished student HyM of Agassiz, with whom I had frequent relations in later years. There, too, I found my old Cornel friend, Rathbun, then a volunteer assistant on Fish Commission, of which in time he became the guiding spirit; and Alpheus Hyatt, one of Agassiz s best students, busily engaged in the study of sponges, a fact which recalls a bit of pleasantry at his expense. A young woman visitor being about to marry, somebody read one evening a poem of congratulation purporting to be by Professor Hyatt. In this, as a climax, he was quoted as saying: Now thirteen of my best sponges Will I give her as a dower! L 127 3 The Days of a Man 1874 Mystic Leaving Noank after dark to take the train at River OU Mystic, the next station, five miles to the east, I had to walk the track and cross a bridge over the broad and shallow estuary of the Mystic River. This stream runs through a marshy woodland frequented by sad and insistent night herons. Nothing particular happened, and I reached my destination in safety; but the weird dusk of unseen water in an unknown but not uninhabited wood rises before my eye whenever I meet the word "mystic." C 128 3 CHAPTER SIX FROM Penikese I went to the Museum of Com- parative Zoology, wishing to take up the study of fossil osteology in connection with the promised curatorship of the year before. But I felt almost certain that the museum would be unable to maintain even its actual staff, now that Agassiz was gone, its income being only about #10,000 and its accumulated debt amounting to upward of #40,000, a sum ulti- mately paid off by Agassiz's noted son, Alexander, 'whose skillful administration of the Calumet and Hecla mines made him later a multimillionaire. My own resources were meanwhile running low. Conse- quently, when shortly afterward I received a tele- gram from Superintendent George P. Brown of Indianapolis, asking me to take up the science work in the High School there, I gladly accepted the position. The capital of Indiana at first sight seemed smgu- larly monotonous, being perfectly level and laid out a ** in regular squares around a central circle. The streets, moreover, were lined with the Silver Maple, a second-rate shade tree which did not appeal to me. But the people said I would learn to love the town. As a matter of fact, I did - - among other reasons because it contained an unusual number of clear-headed and broad-minded citizens, to some of whom I shall presently revert. When I reached Indianapolis, I did not know a single person in the state; at the end of seventeen years, when I left C 129 I The Days of a Man 1874 for California, I had made acquaintances in every one of the ninety-two counties. Indian- My first (and only) year as a high school teacher yfl* proved a pleasant one. The institution started out School that fall with a new principal and a fresh body of young teachers. Among these was William W. Parsons, afterward for more than forty years presi- dent of the Indiana State Normal School at Terre Haute. Another was Lewis H. Jones, long at the head of the Michigan State Normal at Ypsilanti. A favorite with all was Will Thompson, who came bringing his bride, May Wright, a woman of re- markable keenness of mind, a graduate of the Uni- versity of Michigan. After her husband's death Mrs. Thompson left the High School (where she had been teacher of German) to organize in the city a classical school for girls. Later she married another of my good friends, Theodore L. Sewall, a Harvard man, and at that time master of the local classical school for boys. In the early 'go's Mr. Sewall also died. His wife had meanwhile become a leader in movements for equal suffrage and international peace, acquiring in time a wide reputation both in America and in Europe. Of the teachers whom we found already in the institution the most beloved was Mary E. Nichol- son, a capable and scholarly woman, a member of the Society of Friends, who devoted her whole active life to the service of the youth of her city. Enter In the High School I had a fine body of pupils. Gilbert Q ne O f tnem? intimately associated with me in after years, was Charles H. Gilbert, now the well-known zoologist. Another was Charles C. Nutting, for thirty years or more professor of Zoology at the C 130 3 The Study of Birds University of Iowa. Still another was Nellie Van de Grift later Mrs. Sanchez sister of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, who as Fannie Van de Grift spent her youth in Indianapolis. In connection with my work I interested several of my students in the field study of birds. The tall trees of Maywood down the White River were the favorite resort of the migrating warblers, and nearly all the species which cross Indiana could be found there. I know of no finer out-of-door study than Ornithology. It has, however, the almost fatal drawback that to secure any degree of thoroughness, one must kill. Dealing with such highly developed organisms is and ought to be painful. Somebody has said that in shooting a wood thrush one feels he has destroyed a "superior being." I never killed anything for the pleasure of it, and The since 1880 I have not even owned a gun, nor fired Manual a shot at any living creature; my last attempt was Vertebrates directed at a California burrowing owl, which got away with its life. But from 1874 to 1876, in Wis- consin and Indiana, I made large collections of birds, and prepared a series of descriptions for my first real contribution to science "A Manual of Vertebrates of the Eastern United States/' published in 1876. This has gone through ten editions and is still considerably used in schools of the region it covers. It had been preceded, however, by a booklet printed at Appleton, the joint work of Balfour Van Vleck (an enthusiastic young naturalist in Lawrence University) and myself - - an effort of which (as Dr. Coues once observed) "the less said the better, except that it paved the way to the excellent Manual of Vertebrates." c 131 : The Days of a Man to Susan Marriage On March io, 1875, I was married at Peru, Berk- shire County, Massachusetts, to Susan Bowen, daughter of Sylvester S. Bowen of that town. Miss Bowen had been at Penikese both the first and second summers. A favorite pupil of Miss Shattuck, she then held the position of associate in Botany at Mount Holyoke Seminary, of which she was a graduate. She was a woman at once gentle and enthusiastic, always hopeful, and of the type for which the word ''' beloved ' : is naturally employed. After ten years of married life she died at Blooming- ton, Indiana, November 15, 1885, leaving three children -- Edith Monica, born in 1877; Harold Bowen, born in 1882; and Thora, born in 1884, who survived her mother less than two years. McCuiiocb Among my new friends in Indianapolis was Dr. Oscar Carlton McCulloch, pastor of Plymouth Church and a most humanly genial and broad- minded man. Appreciating his fine work, religious, social, political, and charitable, I became a member of the Plymouth Congregation, the only religious organization I ever formally joined, and in after years I used occasionally to speak from that pulpit. My homily on "The Disappearance of Great Men from Public Life" 1 was first given there, as was also my account of the Oberammereau Passion Play. McCulloch was making a special studv of the problems of hereditary poverty, and conducted a 1 See Chapter xm, page 313. c 132 : . 1 8763 The Tribe of Ishmael detailed investigation of the 'Tribe of Ishmael," a local group of ; 'poor whites" mostly bearing Ishmael as a surname. A large majority of them were descendants of prisoners for debt sent over from England to Jamestown, Virginia, to become ancestors of a forlorn group of ne'er-do-wells scattered through the Middle West. With the assistance of the Associated Charities of Indianapolis, which he himself organized, McCulloch gathered the records of some five thousand of those benighted people about whose doors clustered most of the petty crimes and nearly all of the poverty of the town. This piece of research was one of the first and most illuminating of the many studies of inherited incapacity. Its general conclusion I may sum up briefly. Among the poor there are three kinds - the Lord's poor, the Devil's poor, and paupers; that is, those that have fallen into poverty through misfortune, those that have earned and deserved it through vice, and those that have in- herited feeble minds and feeble wills so that in an open competitive world they of necessity fall to the bottom, being destitute of initiative and self- respect. Closely associated with McCulloch was Myron Reed W. Reed, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, a commanding figure in the pulpit but uncon- ventional on week days, when he sometimes walked down town in carpet slippers. Reed was a man of charming personality, tall and handsome, with a fine voice and a striking use of epigram. A noted angler, he made frequent fishing trips to the region about Lake Superior. One phase of his attitude n 133 3 The Days of a Man 1876 toward life is well expressed in a saying of his, "The man who has a sore heel on a tramp always remembers it with a grin." Removing to Denver, he there be- came prominent as a labor advocate. McCulloch and Reed were warm friends. At the former's funeral, Reed paid him a noble tribute: In whatever part of God's universe he may find himself, he will be a hopeful man, looking forward and not backward, looking upward and not downward, always ready to lend a helping hand and not afraid to die. The presence of these two, as well as of othejs with whom I was less intimate, gave zest to the Indianapolis Men's Club and to all meetings of bright minds in the city. There is, moreover, a peculiar flavor to the native wit of Indiana not exactly found in any of the other states, and it used to be freely displayed in our varied gatherings. Harrison Another man of prominence, of a very different type, was Benjamin Harrison, an excellent lawyer, quiet, undemonstrative, conscientious, cold in manner and lacking the ordinary elements of popularity, but making himself a power in the state through his persistent choice of men of character as his political lieutenants. As President of the United States he was remarkable for the conscientious care he took in regard to government appointments, especially those of judges and attorneys. Good men in power, he insisted, made the party strong, while officials whom the people did not trust were always an element of weakness. No other President, in re- cent years at least, has been equally careful. In n 1343 1890] The Mugwump. this matter the subsequent administration of McKinley stood in marked contrast to that of Harrison. I happened to be in the latter's office in the White House when McKinley entered from the House of McKinle y Representatives with the text of his famous tariff bill. To Elijah W. Halford, a well-known member of the Indianapolis group, then the President's secretary, I said that McKinley would live to regret that bill. But I was mistaken; it was Harrison himself who had to bear the burden, being defeated for reelection by Cleveland, after which a rebound - largely the result of the panic during the latter's administration - - made McKinley the next Presi- dent. Moreover, the "free silver" issue, Bryan's whole platform in two campaigns, had further alarmed financiers, and thus played directly into the hands of McKinley's backers. Indeed, on this issue most of the 'Mugwumps" (to which group I be- longed) voted also for McKinley in 1896, fearing that the financial disorders which must follow the shifting of monetary standards would outweigh the evils of high tariff and of the spoils system in poli- tics. And in spite of those factors to which we were continuously opposed, four years later most of us again supported McKinley against Bryan. As William P. Fishback, an able Indianapolis lawyer, one of my good friends, remarked, "We were rowing one way and looking the other." Some have re- pented their choice in that dilemma; some have not. It is, indeed, not impossible that Bryan would have been the safer, as the rise of senatorial domination was more of a menace than any financial heresy originating with the people. C 135 3 'The Days of a Man [1878 Dr. Prominent among Indianapolis physicians was the Fletcher brilliant and original Dr. William B. Fletcher, an expert in mental disorders. Long at the head of the State Hospital for the Insane, located near the city, he there early abolished medieval methods of violent restraint, being thus one of the pioneers in the modern humane treatment of the mentally dis- ordered. In the early summer of 1891, Dr. Fletcher's excellent daughter Lucy, with her capable friend, Eleanor B. Pearson, both from the Harvard Annex, established the first preparatory school for girls x in the neighborhood of Stanford University. Both these young w r omen afterward married professors in the institution. Among all my Indianapolis friends, none had greater personal charm than James Whitcomb Riley, the poet whose name has since become a household word. Riley was a gentle, lovable man, with a fine sense of humor and a warm heart which for a time threatened to be his undoing. When his gracious and homely poems brought him into general public notice, they opened the door to a profitable career as a reader, for he rendered his own verse in de- lightful fashion. Nothing apparently could ruffle the sweetness of his temper. In 1892 he gave a reading at Stanford Universitv, after which he was fiercely assailed by Ambrose Bierce for "corrupting" the English language by writing in the "Hoosier dialect." Some one asked Riley why he did not strike back. "I did," said Riley; "I hit him with a great chunk of silence." During his brief stay at Stanford he was my guest, and at my request wrote in our visitors' book his 1 Called Castilleja Hall upon completion of its original building at Palo Alto C 136 H 1878] Indiana Poets poem "Bereaved," 1 with the remark that he thought it "perhaps the best of his brood." In 1915 I visited him "in Lockerbie Street," already the Mecca of Indiana poets. He was then about sixty-two years old, unable to rise from bed and near his end; but his friendly personal interest and kindly relation to the world he was leaving had in no degree abated. Another Indiana poet, not of Indianapolis, how- ever, was Maurice Thompson, a man of force and scholarship but less personal charm than the inimi- table Riley. Once at my request he also wrote out for us two stanzas from the best of bis brood "To the Grand Army of the Republic." 2 Poets of various grades seem to spring up spon- taneously in Indiana. Alvin Heiney, a student of mine, in a bit of verse asked for no wings or harp 1 Let me come in where you sit weeping, ay, Let me, who have not any child to die, Weep with you for the little one whose love I have known nothing of. The little arms that slowly, slowly loosed Their pressure round your neck; the hands you used To kiss. Such arms such hands I never knew, May I not weep with you? Fain would I be of service say something, Between the tears, that would be comforting, But ah! so sadder than yourselves am I, Who have no child to die. * I am a Southerner, I loved the South and dared for her To fight from Lookout to the sea With her proud banner over me. But from my lips thanksgiving broke When God in battle thunder spoke, With that black demon breeding drouth And dearth of human sympathy, Blown hellward from the cannon's mouth, While Freedom cheered before its stroke. son C 1373 The Days of a Man 1875 or crown of gold, only for a chance at a place "on the bleachers where ten thousand Hoosier poets sit." * TWO Among my most valued friends in the state at friends \^g^ j countec | > r j onn Sloan of New Albany, a large native of Maine, a man of friendly and attractive personality, a fine type of the well-rounded country doctor. Sloan devoted the leisure of a busy practice of medicine to the study of the Natural History of the Ohio Valley. He thus acquired a thorough knowledge of birds and crayfishes, beetles and snails, and in later years of bacteria, of which group of organisms he prepared many slides; these, ac- companied by slides of plant tissues, he presented to the University of Indiana. William Dudley Foulke, whose delightful home at Richmond I have at times visited, will appear in later pages. At At the end of a fairly successful year in Indian- a Phs> I went at the request of Professor Shaler as instructor in his :< Harvard Summer School of Geology" at Cumberland Gap, Tennessee. On my way to the Gap, for adventure's sake and accompa- nied by a young engineer named Harper from Purdue University, I took a cross-country tramp of some days' duration. Coming upon a number of backwoods baseball teams, we occasionally joined in for a game, Harper as catcher, I as pitcher. The possibility of throwing curved balls was just then 1 A "bleacher" is an uncovered seat outside the grand stand at a baseball game. "Hoosier" is a nickname of unknown origin applied to Indiana folk. C 138 3 Harvard School of Geology under discussion. I could not do much in that line, but I was more skillful than my rustic rivals at pitching a ball which would readily turn out a "pop fly" that is, a short hit into the air. As I remember, our teams lost none of the four or five games we played. My part in the School of Geology was to give instruction in the local flora to thirty young ge- ologists, many of them of marked ability. And to mention this pleasant experience is inevitably to Shaier recall our leader's extraordinarily charming person- ality, his overflowing humor, brilliant simplicity, and absolute naturalness in dealing with everything and everybody. At Harvard any great noise used to be ascribed to student applause at "one of Shaler's jokes," even a clap of thunder being thus accounted for occasionally. Our encampment on the mountain shelf awakened The mountain great interest and some alarm among the native & , . ... , . & . camp population, one man recalling that just previous to the outbreak of the Civil War fifteen years before, he had seen men in tents there with the flag flying above them at the summit. He was therefore con- vinced that our presence was a warning and that the people should be prepared. Another incident which contributed to the general gayety occurred when a Harvard student attempted to mount his pony from the right side. The animal, a true son of the South, resented the outrage and left its perpe- trator where Brer Rabbit of Georgia was "born and bred" -that is, in the brier patch. During my stay at Cumberland Gap I was elected without warning to the professorship of Biology in the Northwestern Christian University, already being C 139 3 The Days of a Man 1875 Butler removed from Indianapolis to Irvington, a suburb University fi ve m ii es distant and since included within the city. This being the case, my first professional duty was to steer a dray wagon loaded with collections and apparatus on its several trips from College Avenue to the new site. Coincident with removal, the burdensome original name was changed to 'Butler University ' in honor of its principal founder, Mr. Ovid Butler of Indianapolis, a broad-minded and fine-spirited member of the Christian 1 Church. The institution making no provision for graduate study, it later became "Butler College," and has done continuously good work in collegiate education. My position was that of Dean of Science, and I spent four years in the service, Herbert Copeland having meanwhile taken my former position in the Indianapolis High School. As housing conditions were inadequate in Irving- ton, I continued to reside in Indianapolis for another year, sharing with Copeland a modest establishment joint at 320 Ash Street. Here we resumed our joint studies studies of flowers and birds begun at Cornell and continued in Wisconsin. Soon, however, we decided that fishes offered the most fruitful field for original work. Systematic Botany involved travel and ex- pense beyond our reach, and we were not especially drawn to the problems (then inchoate) of cytology, morphology, and physiology. But fishes were every- where about us. Moreover, the literature of Ich- 1 "Christian" is used specifically to designate the denomination in question, because its founder, Alexander Campbell of Virginia, hoped that by dropping creeds and going back to the Bible as the basis of faith and practice, all Chris- tian denominations could be merged into one. C 140 3 r o oo oo H Pi W M J H" O ^ Pi z w ffi w W The Study of Fishes thyology was inexact and incomplete, with few comparative studies, so that the held seemed wide open, as indeed it was. We planned, therefore, to cover the river faunas, to set accumulated knowledge in order, and to extend it as far as possible. Along this line I myself had previously made a sisco of beginning with a paper on the "Sisco of Lake Tippe- Lake canoe," printed in the report of the Geological Survey of Indiana. That species - - called by me Argyrosomus sisco is an offshoot of the Cisco (as the name is now usually spelled) or Lake Herring of Lake Michigan, but separated from the parent stock since the last glacial period. Similar land- locked ciscos occur in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and in other deep, clear lakes belonging to the Illinois River system, as the Tippecanoe belongs to the Wabash. During the course of a year and a half Copeland The and I worked together on three sets of investigations, 7 hnn y the results of which were later published jointly. These papers were (a) a study of the life history of the Johnny Darters the Etheostomidce; (b) the identification of the fishes described from the Falls of the Ohio by Constantine Rafinesque; and (c) a catalogue of the fresh-water fishes of the United States. In connection with the first we maintained a well-appointed aquarium in which we reared for observation the ten or twelve species of darters living in the adjacent White River. These we found to be the most fascinating, vivacious, and individual of all river fish. They are not the most hardy, however, and being bred in pure running water, will stand no neglect. Any one who has ever been a boy and can re- C Hi 3 The Days of a Man 1875 member back to the days of tag alders, yellow cow- slips, and angleworms on a pin hook, will recall his first acquaintance with a Johnny Darter. There lay a little fish, apparently asleep, on the bottom of the stream, half hidden under a stone or leaf, his tail bent round it as if for support against the current. But when you put a finger down, the bent tail straightened, and you next spied him resting a few feet away, head upstream. Nothing had seemed easier than to catch him, but somehow you failed. Not to know the Johnny Darters is to miss a real joy of boy life. All of them are very little - - some less than two inches long and the largest only six or eight at most. They are, nevertheless, the most graceful in form, and many of them the most brilliant in color, of all fresh-water fishes. In our second paper we undertook to identify the f orms named in 1820 by Constantine Rafinesque, the first student of Western fishes, in his "Ichthyologia Ohiensis," where he described hastily, carelessly, and enthusiastically the various species he had found in the brooks about Louisville. While we were thus engaged, the unique personality of the man himself intrigued us mightily. And some short account of him may be not unwelcome here. Rafinesque was born in Constantinople of a French father and a German mother. At Marseilles, in early youth, his future career was blocked out along two lines: It was among the flowers and fruits of that delightful region that I first began to enjoy life, and I became a botanist. After- wards, the first prize I received in school was a book of animals, and I became a zoologist and a naturalist. . . . Linne, grand genie, fai choisi pour guide. C H 2 3 18753 A Neglected Naturalist As a boy also he read many books of travel, those of Captain Cook, Levaillant, and Pallas especially, so that his soul was fired with the desire :< to be a great traveler like them." "And I became such," he adds tersely, having framed his life motto in two lines of doggerel: Un voyageur des le berceau, Je le serai jusquau tombeau. No more remarkable figure has ever appeared in the annals of American science. Clad in "a long, ^ t k loose coat of yellow nankeen, stained yellower by the clay of the roads, and variegated by the juices of plants," he arrived in Kentucky - - on foot a century ago, a notebook in one hand, a hickory stick in the other, his capacious pockets full of wild flowers, shells, and toads. In his sketch entitled "A Neglected Naturalist," Copeland said: To many of our untiring naturalists, who sixty years ago accepted the perils and privations of the Far West to collect and describe its animals and plants, we have given the only reward they sought the grateful remembrance of their work. Audubon died full of riches and honor, with the knowledge that his memory would be cherished as long as birds should sing. Wilson is the "father of American ornithology," and his mistakes and faults are forgotten in our admiration of his great achievements. Le Sueur is remembered as the "first to explore the ichthyology of the great American Lakes." Labor- ing with these, and greatest of them all in respect to the extent and range of his accomplishments, is one whose name has been nearly forgotten, and who is oftenest mentioned in the field of his best labors with pity or contempt. It is, nevertheless, true that while, as Agassiz said, Rafinesque "was a better man than he ap- c 143 3 The Days of a Man 1875 peared," and while he undoubtedly had great insight 1 and greater energy, his work does not deserve a high place in the records of science. His failure seems due to two things: first, his lack of attention to details, a defect which vitiated all his writings; and, second, his versatility, which led him to invade every available field of learning. Dying almost deserted, in Philadelphia, he was buried stealthily by two or three students to fore- stall the sale of the body to a medical school for unpaid rent. A whole nation wept for Agassiz. Both men were learned naturalists, both had ac- quired high reputations in Europe before casting their lot with America. But while Agassiz's big heart went out toward every one with whom he came in contact, Rafinesque loved no man or woman, and died, as he had lived, alone. Yet his last re- corded words, 'Time renders justice to all alike," reveal a noble stoicism. Catalogue Our third considerable piece of work, the cata- wate" b " lS ue f fishes, was necessarily incomplete, repre- senting only the accumulated knowledge of the time. In succeeding years it was my privilege to add probably half as many more species and yet reduce a large number of names to the rank of synonyms, so often had different authors described the same thing under other names. Take for example Ictalurus punctatus, the Channel Cat of the Ohio, which had appeared as a new species twenty-eight times, or the small-mouth Black Bass Micropterus dolomieu which was not far behind. 1 It is worth noting that Rafinesque was one of the very first to gain a clear conception of organic evolution, the principles of which constitute the foundation of modern Biology. c 144 n 1877] In Irving ton 4 In the fall of 1876, renting a fine large house left stranded by the collapse of a recent boom, I moved to Irvington, where my daughter Edith was born. The aquaria I left with Copeland, but we still carried on joint work in other lines. With the year 1876, however, our collaboration ended, for on the first of January, 1877, Copeland fell into the White Cope- River and died shortly afterward from resultant l * exposure. Thus out of my life passed my most intimate early friend, and one of the brightest minds with which I was ever associated. His rare intellectual quality I have already described in pages which deal with my college experiences. The position left vacant by Copeland's death was filled by our college mate, Brayton, who afterward took up the practice of medicine and has now for many years held the professorship of Dermatology in the Indiana Medical College. This institution Indiana was originally a branch of the State University; but in the '6o's the connection became purely nominal, as the state legislature voted to discontinue both its medical and law schools, asserting it to be "no duty of the people to help men into these easy professions." And in 1875 the relation, so far as medicine was concerned, was entirely broken - - to be resumed, however, on a large scale in 1912, when the Medical College was reestablished on the modern basis of a teaching faculty. While engaged with my work in the Indianapolis High School I was also able to spend some time in the Medical College, from which, in the spring of C H5 3 The Days of a Man [^1875 Doctor 1875, I received the (scarcely earned) degree of l, ,. . Doctor of Medicine, though it had not at all been Medicine . . . my intention to enter that profession. A certain amount of medical knowledge, I thought, would enable me to teach Physiology better. As a matter of fact, the next year I gave a course of lectures on Comparative Anatomy in the college itself. At about the same time, one of my special friends, Wiley Harvey W. Wiley, since noted as the apostle of pure foods and rational sanitation, won his medical degree from the same institution for purposes similar to mine. Wiley, by the way, had preceded me, though not immediately, both in the High School and in the Northwestern Christian University, and he recently recalled to my mind the fact that he was instrumental in my going to Indianapolis. It seems that one of his former professors at Harvard (probably Shaler) had written to him about "a young man named Jordan, said by Agassiz to be his most promising student in Natural History." Consequently when a member of the local school board asked him (Wiley) to suggest a suitable science teacher for the High School, he mentioned me; and Superintendent Brown at once got off the telegram which arrived so opportunely at Cambridge. 1 Wiley is a man of independent character and rare wit, so that to meet him is to encounter a rush of fresh air, though by some freak of heredity he looks like a conventional, well-nourished bishop. Once presenting himself in silk hat and frock coat at the 1 The rest of the story (which has already appeared in print) I relate with diffidence and only because Wiley himself appears to set much store by it. Being once asked to mention his greatest discovery in science, referring to Sir Humphry Davy's "discovery of Michael Faraday" my over-enthusiastic sponsor replied, "David Starr Jordan." Harvey W. Wiley door of Girard College, Philadelphia, where, through a whim of its founder, Stephen Girard, no clerical is ever to enter, he was at first repulsed. 'We don't allow any clergyman here," said the warden. "The hell you don't," replied Wiley, and was there- Not a upon promptly admitted. From Indianapolis he went as professor of Chemis- try to the newly established Purdue University - the State Agricultural College of Indiana - - at Lafayette, where he was an active spirit both inside and outside the institution. Once the president, a prim and fussy personage, haled him before the board of trustees on three charges: (a) he failed to attend morning prayer; (b) he rode a "cartwheel'' (bicycle) in a "grotesque costume" (knickerbockers); and (c) he played baseball! The further complaint that he belonged to a political (Republican) club was, however, not pressed. But the same official having made a futile attack on college fraternities, Sigma Chi, then politically powerful in Indiana, vir- tually compelled his resignation from the presidency. When Wiley and I were made physicians in name, Concern- medical science was still in the medieval period, l ^ g dicire almost nothing being known of what constitutes modern medicine. The existence of microscopic organisms in connection with disease was but dimly recognized, and the natural history of these creatures not understood. The word 'bacteriology' still slumbered in the Greek lexicon, its component parts widely separated. Moreover, the science of pharma- cology had yet to be developed, the effect of medicine on the human organism being then mainly a matter of experience and guesswork. Antiseptic surgery was an unknown art; when a surgeon cut into the C H7 3 The Days of a Man 1875 human body, he took his chances on gangrene, blood poisoning, and other ills he could neither foresee nor avert. Anatomy was studied in savage fashion in crowded, unventilated rooms by a class of stu- dents who, in general, seemed to care little for personal hygiene. Nursing was largely experimental, though it often reflected the fine spirit shown by many physicians, especially by the beloved "family doctor." Gnat At about this time, however, certain investigators discoveries nac j initiated researches destined to base the art of medicine on solid science. In London, Tyridall was making his studies of microbes at rest in dust or floating in the air; Lister of Edinburgh had shown the amazing results to be derived from clean hands, pure air, and antiseptics; at Paris, Pasteur, greatest of them all, was beginning his work on the mildew of silkworms, finding it a problem of biology and not of chemistry, as the blight proved to be a parasitic plant. The net result of all this effort was the discovery of myriads of animal and plant organ- isms, too minute for the naked eye, but readily studied under the microscope and easily reared in artificial cultures. All phenomena of fermentation, putrefaction, and infectious disease were then seen to be due to the presence and growth of such infini- tesimal creatures. Pasteur, for instance, discovered that fermentation was not spontaneous souring, but : 'life without air," the organisms breathing and di- gesting in sugar solution. Tyndall pictured a battle- field as a gigantic breeding place of the germs of putrefaction which, if visible, would appear as a vulture horde infinitely more destructive than any aggregation of birds of prey. Linnaeus once sug- C 148 3 Hope of Advancement gested that three flies (with their progeny) would devour a dead horse more quickly than a lion; but three bacilli would do the work even more rapidly and more completely than any number of flies. In 1877 I wrote for The Dial a review of Tyndall's Floating "Floating Matter in the Air," remarking that now matter . & , r , , . the air we were beginning to find out what our enemies were, we should be able to fight them. That state- ment proved prophetically true; medicine at present stands on the firing line of science, and in no depart- ment of human knowledge has the forward movement been more sound or more impressive. In Indianapolis, for the first time since leaving Cornell, I felt that my work was being appreciated, not only by my students who were always en- thusiastic - - but also by the powers in control. Ambition, however, impelled me toward university Efforts work, and I had no desire to remain in a high school. ^^ ersit I therefore used to envy my friend Snow, already position established, and for a lifetime, in a college good enough to call forth his best work. My removal to Butler I regarded as temporary only, though useful as restoring my college foothold, lost for the time on leaving Cornell and Lombard. I accordingly made numerous though unsuccessful efforts to secure a position in larger institutions among them Purdue, where Wiley vainly tried to organize a Natural History department of which I had been promised the headship. This disappointment was only one of several at about the same period. Before leaving Appleton n 149 : The Days of a Man ^1875 Wisconsin I had been assured of an appointment as professor of Zoology in the University of Wisconsin, Augustus L. Smith of Appleton, 'a personal friend, being the president of the board of trustees of the university and possessed of large personal influence. But the governor of the state failed to reappoint him for the coming term. I thus lost my "friend at court," and Dr. Edward A. Birge of Harvard, a man no older than I and admirably fitted for the work, was elected to the coveted place. This was the greatest of my disappointments, for the University of Wisconsin seemed to me the most typical representative of the state university system of the whole country. As I write, Dr. Birge (after forty-five years of devoted service) has become president of the institution, succeeding the gifted geologist, Dr. Charles R. Van Rise, whose sudden death left a great gap in the ranks of educational leaders. Princeton Meanwhile another prospect opened, to be suddenly closed for a peculiar reason. From Dr. James McCosh, president of Princeton, I received a letter stating that he had my name under consideration for the professorship of Zoology, and asking for some evidence of fitness besides my youthful booklet on the Vertebrates of the Eastern United States. This request I fulfilled to the best of my ability, and the correspondence proceeded until Dr. McCosh wished me to "unbosom" myself on religious matters. Still under the influence of Agassiz's philosophic views, I made what I regarded as a conservative and reasonable response which I thought would be satisfactory. It proved inadequate, however; at least I did not again hear from McCosh, and a much older man, George Macloskie, unquestionably ortho- C 150 D 1878] University Ambitions dox and innocent of any disturbing knowledge of Biology, was brought over from Scotland to fill the vacant place. Afterward McCosh himself became an evolutionist, but of an a priori, logical, ultra- Ulster type, not much influenced by facts of nature. Having failed to secure the Princeton professorship, in 1876 I became a candidate for a similar position at Vassar, and afterwards for one at Williams, but with- out avail. The president of Vassar kindly wrote that he "suffered from the embarrassment of riches," which afforded me only moderate consolation! My name was next presented to the University Michigan of Michigan, but President Angell said that although my recommendations in Zoology were of the highest, and in Botany good, those concerning Geology and Physiology were less complete. Moreover, they were "getting along pretty well' : as they were, without an expert in any of those subjects. This case illustrated the lack of specialization even in the state universities of that period, and the satisfaction of their executives in being able to "get along" without trained teachers of science. At about the same time I was selected for the Cincinnati professorship of Natural History in the University of Cincinnati by the acting president, Dr. Henry Turner Eddy, my excellent teacher in applied mathematics at Cornell. But the then board of trustees failed to ratify, giving as the more or less legitimate reason that they already had among their dozen or so professors three from Cornell - Eddy, Frank W. Clarke, and my classmate, Edward W. Hyde. One member, it is reported, went even farther, remarking that they had a professor of "History," and he ought to carry the "Natural L 151 : The Days of a Man 1878 History' 1 as well. When the chair again became vacant a few years later and was offered to me, I recommended my student and colleague, Gilbert, who was promptly chosen. Meanwhile efforts were made each year by Dr. Wilder and others to get me back to Cornell, but the positions suggested were for one reason or another never quite definitely offered. imperial In 1 878 I was attracted by the prospect of a career University wn ich appealed delightfully to my spirit of ad- venture, as my Cornell friend, Yatabe, who had become professor of Botany in the new Imperial University of Tokyo, tried to secure me for the chair of Zoology in the same institution. While waiting for a possible appointment I read all the available books on the educational system of Japan. These were not very encouraging, because instruction there seemed to be bound by tradition, with very little hope for freedom of teaching except through the influence of the foreign scholars called to different chairs in the university. But the charms of Japan outweighed any dread of bureaucracy I may have felt. Before the matter was settled, however, Yatabe became head of the new Imperial Normal School, and the university selected for the position to which I aspired Dr. Edward S. Morse, a teacher whom I had known and greatly admired at Penikese. Morse was thirteen years older than I, a favorite student of Agassiz, and singularly well fitted for the position in question, not only on account of his extensive training in Zoology, but also because of his extraor- dinary cleverness in drawing and his fine appreci- ation of Japanese art, especially ceramics. His C 152 H Every Candidacy Unsuccessful blackboard drawings made with both hands were a constant delight to his students everywhere. Looking back over these various experiences, I am reminded that I never got anything I tried for. And it further occurs to me that for this there were three reasons which I did not realize at the time: I was bent on being a specialist in Zoology, I had been trained at Cornell, a fountain head of edu- cational and other heresies, and I was a 'Western man," though not yet aware of the fact myself. Afterward these same features seemed to appeal to university authorities and they, in turn, sought me out. c 153 CHAPTER SEVEN IN the summer of 1876 I set out to explore the fish fauna of the streams of Georgia, a large region from which practically no records had ever been made. For this trip I took with me my wife and young Gilbert, who had just graduated from the Indian- apolis High School, and who, under Copeland's influence, had turned toward Natural History. He proved to be the keenest and most exact student 1 have ever had, excelling as a scientific critic. The first copy of my "Manual of Vertebrates" arrived just as we were leaving home. Stopping at Livingston, Kentucky, for a little study of Rock Castle River, we caught a large eel Anguilla rostrata - - which we identified by the Manual - the first species, therefore, to be so honored. After- ward we built a fire in the woods and roasted the fish, which was fat and toothsome. A little farther on we came into London, county seat of Laurel, where a large political gathering was being held jointly by the two opposing parties. At this meeting the competing candidates for the gov- ernorship, John Marshall Harian and James Bennett McCreary, debated in friendly fashion. If I re- member rightly, they even shared a room together in the little rustic inn. Both were able men, but Harian, the Republican, knew that he had not the slightest chance of election, and McCreary indeed carried the day. The latter afterward had an honorable career in the United States Senate. Har- C 154 H 18763 Headquarters at Rome, Georgia Ian was later appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States, where it was his function to prepare and read, in 1896, the final decision which saved Stanford University, for which reason all Stanford men and women should think of him with gratitude. On the way south through Tennessee we visited Lookout Lookout Mountain, a noble plateau with almost Mountain vertical sides, as the hard limestone on top saves it from rain erosion, and the Tennessee River, mak- ing a wide sweep around, has cut away the softer rock and removed the talus which otherwise would naturally gather at its foot. Crossing the neighboring Missionary Ridge, a noted battle ground of the Civil War, we came across several little darkies in the persimmon trees and were led by them to a school where the colored teacher was struggling with the exports of Maine as laid down in the geography. After a little while he suddenly turned to me and said: "And now, Boss, won't you say something to 'scourage us?' Our working headquarters we established at Rome, Georgia, at the junction of the red waters of the Etowah (locally "High Tower") from the east, and the clear Oostenaula from Missionary Ridge on the north. Here I encountered a custom common in the South, each product of the union of two nearly equal streams receiving a new name. Thus the two rivers at Rome form the Coosa; this, running south- ward, joins the Tallapoosa to form the Alabama, which, in turn, uniting with the Tombigbee, helps to form the Mobile. Only eleven years had passed since the Civil War, and many of the inhabitants of the region : '55 3 The Days of a Man 1876 were still very bitter. 'We have been puked on blue," coarsely explained our host, to justify a cer- tain coolness of welcome. They hanged a negro during our stay, and people from the whole county turned out to see the execution, although steady- headed citizens freely admitted that a white man would not have received the extreme penalty for White the offense in question. Several of the wagons were " nd crowded full, often with white men and women sitting on the laps of the blacks for to this there was no objection "so long as the nigger knew his place." Indeed, one might be as friendly with a negro as with an intelligent dog, where no pre- sumption of equality was involved. But to eat at the same table never! The day of the hanging we left town for a trip up the river, and on the way noticed many men coming in armed with rifles. It later appeared that some one had started a senseless rumor that a negro up- rising would take place. The nerves of the people were consequently on edge, and the accidental dis- charge of a musket by a guard produced a panic in which several persons were trampled, two or three of them to death. From Rome we traveled eastward to the Chat- tahoochee, a fine large river; yet its muddy banks thick with canes and sometimes with grapevines and briers made the use of the net impossible except in the upper reaches about Gainesville. Through Atlanta we crossed to the Ocmulgee Basin, where at pj at sh oa i s we f oim( i t he South River very convenient for our purposes. But it took some effort to make the proprietor of the large factory there understand that we were really messengers of c 156 : 1876] Fishes of Ohio peace, wanting nothing but the small fishes which infest the shallows below his little cascade. On our way to Flat Shoals we saw on the left stone side of the train what seemed to be a gigantic boulder, Mountain a thousand feet in diameter. This was Stone Moun- tain, of which we had never before heard. Greatly impressed, we left the train at the first station and went back to climb the stupendous rock. For not- withstanding its size it looks like a boulder, al- though, as a matter of fact, it must owe its stark isolation to erosion of the softer deposits of which it was once the core. It appears that Borglum, the sculptor, began the work of carving on its majestic side a panoramic frieze symbolic of incidents of the Civil ar, an effort checked by the war in Europe. Our expedition as a whole was extremely success- ful, and its results were embodied in a paper en- titled "The Fishes of Upper Georgia," the first of my numerous monographic reviews of local faunas. In December I was called to Columbus, Ohio, by John H. Klippart, State Fish Commissioner, who wished me to write an account of the food fishes of Ohio. This I did fairly well during the course of the winter. Klippart spoke frankly to me of the difficulties Hayes which then beset his friend and neighbor, Ruther- f lden ford B. Hayes, the former governor. Mr. Hayes was about to start for Washington to take his seat as President of the United States, his title clouded by an election of doubtful validity, forced through by a hard-minded group of politicians whom he could never honorably serve or please. A man of high L 1573 'The Days of a Man 1876 ability and unblemished character, he made no compromises with corruption or injustice. He was therefore not at ease in the presidential chair, and suffered the contumely cast upon him by dissatisfied partisans. I myself had voted for Tilden, having - since 1872 lost all confidence in the dominant or Conkling faction of the Republican party. And it seemed to me, everything considered, that Tilden was fairly elected, but that his own high sense of duty prevented him from contesting the final de- cision. To have done so in those critical times might have led to bloodshed and perhaps to civil war. Four years earlier, when Grant was nominated for the second time, I should have cast my ballot for Greeley had I not been too recent an arrival in Illinois to have the privilege of voting. I thought then - - as I do now that moderation and con- ciliation toward the South would have been a wise and successful policy. But "waving the bloody Greeley' s shirt'' was preferred by the Republican leaders. And the argument that the Republican party had saved the Union was used as a cover by which the financial interests of the Northern cities got a strangle-hold on American public affairs, which they have never entirely relinquished. In connection with my studies for the Ohio re- port, I visited the venerable physician and accom- plished naturalist, Jared P. Kirtland, at his home in Cleveland. Dr. Kirtland was the author of an ex- cellent memoir on the Fishes of Ohio. He was much interested in the task I had been set, and gladly turned over to me the remainder of his col- lections. Later in the year 1 was fortunate in C 158 n 18763 A Great Invention finding myself the guest of another of the older naturalists. Dr. Philo R. Hoy of Racine, a fine- spirited worker who also gave me his fish collection. In the early summer of 1877 I made my first visit to Washington, where I became acquainted with Professor Baird, Dr. Theodore Gill, Dr. Elliott Coues, Dr. William H. Dall, Robert Ridgway, and the rest of the scientific coterie at the Smithsonian Institution, of all of whom I shall say more by and by. In the course of my stay the new invention of invention Professor Alexander Graham Bell, the telephone or f. the , (i r i i i i o i telephone tar speaker, was brought over to the bmith- sonian to be tested. Connecting the basement with the fourth story, we were greatly amazed and de- lighted to find that we could hear over the wires. In case of doubt, one would put his head out of the window and call: "I'm talking through the telephone; can you hear me now?" In Sacramento thirty-five years later I told this story by the Poulsen Wireless through the air to an operator at Stockton, forty-eight miles away, and he reported it accurately back to me. After- ward, by the same system (which operates on the principle of the tuning fork) messages were carried enormous distances through the air, from Wash- ington to Honolulu and Panama, and recently farther, I believe. In 1916, in connection with an effort to illustrate Speaking telephonic communication across the continent, I * OJ was asked to give a short lecture on world peace continent from my home at Stanford to the members of the C 1593 The Days of a Man 1877 Quill Club in session in New York City. The ap- plause, properly timed, came back with singular and uncanny effect, but the words of the chairman who introduced me I heard distinctly. To add a bit of local California color, connection had also been made with the Cliff House in San Francisco, so that my audience could hear at the same time both me and the surf of the Pacific. Printing Another remarkable invention, the first type- writer, was sent to the Smithsonian to be tested at about the same time as the telephone. On it I wrote to my father, imagining with enjoyment his surprise at receiving a letter in print. And for a num- ber of years afterward the typewriter was a curiosity rather than the business necessity it has now become. Explore- In August of this year I set out on a second sum- mer exploration in the South, this time with a larger party. At Morristown, Tennessee, Dudley and I (coming by rail. from the East) were joined by Brayton, Gilbert, and three other students - my cousin, Edward Ely of Sycamore, Illinois, John H. Oliver, since a well-known surgeon of Indianapolis, and Wade Ritter, afterward an attorney in Colo- rado, whose son later followed me to Stanford University. These five had tramped across from Rock Castle River, past Cumberland Gap, to meet Dudley and me. On the way through Virginia I sat opposite a young woman who was wearing two or three medals earned for "good deportment" at a woman's college in Christiansburg. Soon she began to talk, asked me to share her lunch, and displayed a number of brass buttons cut from the uniforms of boys in the C 1603 rivers 187/3 The Land of the Sky neighboring military school of Emory and Henry College. When I left the train she inquired as to my profession. "Teacher," said I. With a dis- concerted look she replied: "Oh, I thought you were a drummer!' 3 From the end of the branch road above Morris- town our party walked up the French Broad, the most picturesque of Southern rivers, through the Great Smoky Mountains to Asheville, North Caro- lina. About Asheville they lovingly call the French About Broad country "The Land of the Sky," a name AsMle borrowed from the title of a novel by "Christian Reid," which deals with that region. The people there seemed a bit jealous of the Colorado Moun- tains higher, they admitted, but certainly not as beautiful. The early stories of Mary Noailles Murfree ("Charles Egbert Craddock") dealt with the moun- tain folk of the upper French Broad, the peculiar minor key of their lives being sympathetically re- produced. Among these I particularly recall the pathetic "Harnt that Walks Chilhowee," "The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains," and 'The Despot of Broomsedge Cove." Now a noted tourists' resort, though merely a mountain village at the time of my first visit, Ashe- ville is also the county seat of Buncombe, a name which has enriched our language. Back in the 'SG'S, Buncombe Buncombe sent a flamboyant orator to the state Count y assembly at Raleigh. After a flight of fatuous eloquence he explained to his colleagues that they need pay no special attention; he was "only talk- ing for Buncombe." The word therefore came to be used for pretentious and empty discourses aimed C 161 ] The Days of a Man 1877 at a home audience. In 1859 Thoreau said that John Brown was "not talking to Buncombe or his constituents anywhere." But to get back to my party. Leaving Asheville, we next followed to its source the Swannanoa, a charming tributary of the French Broad, and climbed Mount Mitchell in the Great Smokies, the highest mountain east of the Rockies. Mitchell's This wild, rough mass locally known as Black Peak Mountain, beset with dark balsam firs, soft moss, and many subalpine plants, rises 6711 feet above tidewater that is, about 500 feet higher than Mount Washington. It does not, however, give the same impression of altitude because of the richness of its vegetation under a warmer sky. On its tower- ing summit, under an overhanging rock, we passed a night. [As a matter of fact it has two summits of about equal height, Mitchell's Peak and Clingman's Dome, named respectively for Professor Elisha Mitchell of the University of North Carolina, and General T. L. Clingman. The controversy between these two gentlemen as to which top is the higher Mitchell closed dramatically by a fatal fall from one of his cliffs, and on the very summit of the Peak, after a picturesque funeral, he was buried in a rock-hewn sepulcher over which the wind in the balsams sighs a perpetual requiem.] The Returning then to Asheville, we started on a long Santee an( j picturesque stage trip through the hopefully named hamlet of Travellers Rest down to Green- ville in South Carolina. Here and at Spartanburg we explored the headwaters of the Saluda and Ennoree, the latter a tributary of the Broad which C 162 3 1877] Rivers of Georgia unites lower down with the former to make the Santee. Afterward, passing westward, we collected from the headwaters of the Savannah, Chatta- hoochee, and Oconee to Atlanta. In Atlanta we called on Alexander H. Stephens, late Stephens Vice-President of the Confederate States, who enter- tained us with interesting reminiscences. Stephens was a man of dwarfish stature but powerful mind; he had been strongly opposed to secession and all its ways, yet when his own state (Georgia) went out of the Union, he felt, as did Robert E. Lee and others placed in a similar position, that he had no alterna- tive but to espouse the Confederate cause. We next brought up at Rome, my former station Rome on the Etowah. Here our gruff host of 1876, re- a *> ain ferring to Gilbert, remarked, "I see you keep the same cub." In Rome we secured a number of young mocking birds, of which two, Mimus and Charmian, developed into superb singers. Once 1 put a tame brown thrasher, an excellent songster not much inferior to the mocking bird, into the cage with Mimus. The thrasher was the larger, but Mimus behaved like a veritable tyrant, never al- lowing him to sing at all. Returning northward, we climbed Kenesaw Moun- tain, fought over in the Civil War, and then moved on to examine the fishes of Chickamauga River, similarly famous. The large collections made on this trip were duly described by Jordan and Brayton in Bulletin 12 of the United States National Museum. At Christmas, Baird placed in my hands for critical study all the specimens of salmon and trout c 163 : The Days of a Man 1878 Trout which had been gathered by the Pacific Railway l tbe . Survey of the '5o's and by subsequent collectors, Northwest J . J . J . n the most important series being from the new hatchery on the Clackamas River in Oregon. Pre- vious investigators with inadequate material had greatly exaggerated the number of actual species, and the whole matter was in utter confusion. My tentative conclusions, published in 1878, were after- ward supplemented by the intensive operations (soon to be discussed) of Jordan and Gilbert in 1880. Of the salmon there are five very distinct species on the Pacific Coast; among the trout, species are numerous and very closely related, shading off one into another. Baird asked to have common names attached to the different forms. For the trout of the coastwise streams, the Salmo irideus of Dr. W. P. Gibbons, I naturally suggested * Rainbow Trout," and I may note that the big fish of the river mouths and chan- nels, the 'Steelhead," is merely the sea-run adult of the " Rainbow." I should further explain that the so-called ' Rainbow Trout," since distributed the world over from the hatchery at Baird on the McCloud River, is a distinct species - - Salmo sbasta which for convenience I call " Shasta Rainbow." Another fine form with bright crimson spots Salvelinus malma--had been sent to Washington from the upper Sacramento, with the comment that the landlady at Upper Soda Springs declared it looked "like a regular Dolly Varden." This likeness to the "'plump, coquettish little minx " of Dickens' ' Barnaby Rudge" pleased Baird, and he remarked: 'That's a good name; call it Dolly Varden." And Dolly Varden it remains to this day! : 164 3 18783 Explorations Continued The following summer (1878) I went on another Second trip to the South and with a still larger group of *" p companions. These included Brayton, Gilbert, Bar- ton W. Evermann and his wife - - both workers in my laboratory at Butler and later at Bloomington, while with Evermann himself my scientific relations have been continuous Miss Clapp, whose acquain- tance I had made at Penikese, and several excellent young students. Among the last were Charles Mer- rill, afterward partner in the well-known publishing firm, the Bobbs-Merrill Company of Indianapolis, Charles Moores, a cousin of the former, also a sincere and delightful mountain lover, and Horace G. Smith, a genial young fellow. This year our line of march lay from Somerset, Ken- tucky, past High Bridge and the quaint "Shaker" settlement at Pleasant Hill, to Cumberland Gap, thence by way of Jacksboro and Wolf Creek to the French Broad, then across the "Great Smokies" and Blue Ridge to Rabun Gap and the Gorge of the Tallulah in northern Georgia - - 550 miles on foot, besides occasional stretches of railway, the whole consuming just one month's time. For a little while one day an elderly lady shared A tragic my seat in the train. Entering into conversation, she recounted an experience which had shadowed her life ever since the Civil War. Her plantation in northern Mississippi lay near the battlefield of Shiloh, between the two opposing armies. A young Union sergeant from Ohio, leader of a little picket guard, used to come sometimes to see her to talk C 165 : situation "The Days of a Man [1878 about his mother and sister and show their pictures, while she listened with womanly sympathy. But one day when her brother, a Confederate officer, was in the house, she heard him and his companions laying a plan to entrap the little company. By and by the young Northerner appeared for his usual visit; her mind was now torn as to her duty. Could or should she warn the boy? Would not that be disloyalty to the Confederate Cause? Finally she let him go without a word. Afterward her brother's men brought him back to the house to die; and the question as to whether or not she should have spoken had ever since tortured her days. Change At Crab Orchard Springs, Kentucky, I met a mangle y OU n2 fellow who told me of a "freak" in his town, of vision J a chap who never touched whisky. 'Whisky was good if you didn't take too much of it; everybody knew that." And yet thirty years later Lincoln County went 'dry' 1 by its own vote. The rest of Kentucky and the rest of the country have now gone with it. They say that " human nature does not change." True, but the angle of vision may change relatively quickly and mightily. After various other experiences in the Kentucky upland we reached the French Broad. Duplicat- ing now the trip of the previous summer, including a stay at Alexander's charming farm on the river, and another night on Mount Mitchell, we again followed the Swannanoa back to Asheville. Thence we continued our walk southward and westward, past Brevard and Hendersonville, along the upper French Broad nearly to its sources in the Blue Ridge and Nantahala. The mountain wall of the Blue Ridge is par- C 1 66 3 18783 In the Blue Ridge ticularly delightful because of its masses of out- cropping white quartzite set against the :< piney woods" and for its heavy growth of Rhododendron, Azalea, and Kalmia the :< laurels" of the moun- tain side. Of special interest to us, also, was the Spanish Oak Quercus falcata - - the most attrac- tive of all the many forms of that genus, with its The long, dagger-shaped leaves. On the road we straggled along in groups, the party in advance marking Trail every fork with a branch of Rhododendron flowers, and so laying out "the Rhododendron Trail." This precaution was constantly necessary in a region where all paths diverge and very few lead anywhere in particular. Most of them, in fact, were like Thoreau's "Old Marlborough Road," merely ... a direction out there, A bare possibility of going somewhere, finally "dwindling to a squirrel track and running up a tree." Passing along the crest of the Blue Ridge, we came upon many beautiful waterfalls which drop from the plateau behind. Long Fall, High Fall, Green Fall, Dry Fall, Saluda and Conness sang Smith, our topographical poet, omitting, how- ever, the still more romantic Toxaway, which lies beyond. One day we climbed the lofty bald summit of "Cesar's Head," overlooking the picturesque valley of "Walhalla"; one night we spent around a campfire on Whitesides, a flat-topped quartzite c 167 : The Days of a Man Smash mountain. Farther on we splashed across War Woman Creek by way of the " Smash Wagon Ford," noted all through that region; and rightly named it is, for in the middle of the stream one comes to a jutting shelf of rock with a sudden drop of four feet or more. But as there were then no bridges anywhere about, and no other way around, it was a case of "Hobson's choice." Another day still took us through Rabun Gap to the headwaters of the Savannah in Georgia, and so into the finest mountain gorge of the whole Ap- palachian chain, that of the Tallulah, the "terrible river" of the Cherokees. This untamable stream, in a course of three miles of continuous foam and with a total vertical drop of 1400 feet, storms down what I may call a gigantic, irregular staircase (or broken, stratified, inclined plane) of white quartzite in a series of innumerable cascades and five distinct cataracts, cutting meanwhile progressively deeper and deeper into a densely wooded chasm. Fails of The several falls, moreover, are quite unlike each o ther in their wild beauty. The three lower ones we found almost inaccessible from their tangle of grapevines and brambles. Lodore, the uppermost and least interesting, is a swift, flumelike rush of forty feet. Tempestia plunges thirty feet straight down its cramped channel on to a bench of harder rock, whence it takes a clear leap of fifty more. The wild and twisted Hurricane, eighty feet high, hurls itself against the chasm wall with a violent current of air. Oceana is made wonderfully beauti- ful by a peculiarity of the geological formation. The local dip of the quartzite being one of almost forty-five degrees to the southeast, in its fourth fall n 168 : 18783 Tallulah Gorge the river slides placidly over the steeply inclined surface until, about halfway down, it strikes another hard stratum four feet higher and with edge set at right angles to the preceding, so that it is forced to rise to pass the obstruction. Bridal Veil, similar to Oceana though lower and less fine, presents its own special feature, a series of potholes a foot or two in diameter and about four feet deep, worn in the solid quartzite. Just below it, also, the vertical walls of the chasm rise to the height of some 800 feet, higher than in any other east of the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas in Colorado. Thus the Tal- lulah glen, though not easily reached from any- where, is one of the beauty spots of the South. Not far away Toccoa Fall, a perpendicular leap of 1 86 feet down which a bright little stream dashes itself into lacelike spray, adds its lesser charm to Rabun County, the northeast corner and most at- tractive part of the whole state of Georgia. In the evening, sitting in front of a little mountain Natural cabin, Brayton, Gilbert, or I would give a talk on some phase of the Natural History of the region we had that day passed over. The Botany was always interesting, and the Geology usually so. These discussions were much appreciated; and Evermann insists that he then learned more science from me on the road than in my laboratory from which he finally took his doctor's degree. 1 As we went our way, I picked up the following indigenous song: 1 In a letter dated August 7, 1919, he also says: "The one great thing in my life that did more than any other to make me a naturalist was that summer with you. That settled the matter with Mrs. Evermann and myself. We decided then and there to be your students a little longer, and we have never ceased to be such even to this day." L 169 3 The Days of a Man Native A soldier sat by the road one day son s s And he was looking very gay, For on his back was a bag of meal Which he had stole' from an old tar-heel. 1 \ He built him a fire to bake his bread And when he had done he gayly said: "Nothing in this world surpasses Good old corn bread and sorghum molasses. "In Alabama they eat peas, In Tennessee just what they please, In North Carolina, tar and rosin, But Georgia girls eat goobers 2 and sorghum. 3 "By and by, by and by, Marry a girl with a bright blue eye. Georgia girls there's none surpasses, For they are fond of sorghum molasses!" Patting At the r< Pine-laden Inn for Collard," farther on, we heard two "patting songs"; that is, songs accom- panied by rhythmical slaps on the thigh to mark time in dancing: Round the ring, Miss Ju'ly. Round the ring, Miss Ju'ly, O long summah day! The moon shines bright, The stahs look light, O look away ovah yondah, See some pretty little yallah gal And tell 'eh how you love heh! Geo'gia rabbit, whoa, whoa, Geo'gia rabbit, whoa; Stole my lovah. whoa, whoa, Stole my lovah, whoa. 1 A native of North Carolina. 2 Peanuts. 3 The broom corn, from which is made a syrup inferior to the molasses of the sugar cane Saccbarum of farther south. C 170 H 1878^ Songs of Tennessee Gwine t' git 'nodah one, whoa, whoa, Gwine t' git 'nodah one, whoa, Just like t' odah one, whoa, whoa, Just like t' odah one, whoa! The religious songs of the black folk are varied Typical and interesting, though frequently incoherent and neg .. . i r melodies irrelevant, even the words often meaningless, but the melody sometimes exquisite. The best are sung in a strange minor key; some of them, like "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot " and " Steal Away' have been made familiar by troupes of Jubilee Singers. The following, though not generally known, is a typical song of Tennessee: The Gospel train am comin', She's comin' round the cu've. I hea' her whistles tootin', She's strainin' every ne've. Git on boa'd, li'l chillun, Dey's room for many a moah. She's landed many a thousan' She'll land as many moah, She'll stop at Inskip station, etc. And a touching fragment from East Tennessee I shall never forget: I hea* my chillun callin', I see their wa'm teahs fallin', And I-must-go. Foh I was bawn in Geo'gia, My chillun live in Geo'gia, And I-must-go. Other refrains were, as usual, concerned with matters of faith : The Days of a Man 1878 Religious 'Tis the old-time religion, rejrams And it's good enough fo' me, It was good fo' Paul an* Silas, And it's good enough fo' me. It was good fo' Stiles and Kendall, And it's good enough fo' me. I tell ye' what I love the best, It am the shouting Methodest; I'se Methodest bred an' Methodest bo'n, And when I die they's a Methodest gone! Some say that John the Baptist Was nothin' but a Jew, But the Holy Bible tells us He was a preachah, too. I'se listenin' all the night long, I'se listenin' all the day, I'se listenin' all the night long, To hea' some sinnah pray. Beaufort At Toccoa City the others left us, while Gilbert, Brayton, the Evermanns, and Miss Clapp went on with me to Beaufort, North Carolina, where we spent a month or so in the study of fishes. Beaufort is a picturesque watering place close to the open ocean, but protected like Venice by a long sand spit. During our stay we lived in the Atlantic Hotel, a mildly fashionable summer resort. Among the boarders was a stylish young woman (not so young, however, on closer inspection), who confided to us that she was given free entertainment on condition of making herself attractive to the guests. By Dr. Brayton she was christened " Spurius purpu- reus" for reasons easily discerned at short range. C 172 D 1878:1 The Dismal Swamp The offshore spit, which follows with only oc- casional breaks the whole coastline of North Caro- lina, is made up of material first washed down by streams and rains from the adjacent, low-lying, sandy pine woods, to be then hurled back by the strong currents outside. It culminates in Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras, the latter forming the stormy divide between north and south and throwing the Gulf Stream far out into the ocean. Leaving Beaufort, we took a little steamer from Newbern through Pamlico and Albemarle sounds, then into the Dismal Swamp Canal and so on to and Norfolk - - a trip of much interest botanically and L " ke otherwise. The banks of the canal were lined with the showy white-flowered Stuartia, an American cousin of the Chinese Camellia. Deeper in, one sees multitudes of picturesque cypress trees, which form abrupt angles or : ' knees" at the water level. On these projections frogs sit, and sometimes long, slim, striped water-snakes rest there, dropping into the water when disturbed, and making on the sur- face as they recede the letter :< S' ! in endless suc- cession. Here also lives the little rice-field fish - Cbohgaster - - of antiquated type, a supposed an- cestor of similar fishes, blind and colorless, which frequent the cave streams of Kentucky, Indiana, and Missouri. Midst of it all lies Drummond, "the Lake of the Dismal Swamp," a round sheet of water about five miles across. To me its basin has an appearance of having been formed by fire at some time when the swamp was dry, so that a big hole was burned out; but I may be wrong. The water, although the color of black coffee like that in evergreen bogs C 173 3 The Days of a Man 1878 generally, is nevertheless excellent for drinking purposes, the dark stain having apparently anti- septic values. I was told that ships from Norfolk Navy Yard often fill their tanks with Drummond water, as thoroughly wholesome and the best avail- able. Brooks At Old Point Comfort we found Dr. Brooks in charge of the first marine research station under academic auspices, he being already permanently located in the new Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore. 4 Proceeding next up the Potomac to Washington, Gilbert^ and I spent there a part of the month of September before our return to Irvington. I was now brought into close and permanent relations with Baird, Gill, Goode, and Coues. Of Goode I have already written. Baird, then assistant secre- tary of the Smithsonian, was one of the most help- ful and broad-minded men in the whole history of American science. We used to call him " Grand- father of us all," for in his day there was no strug- gling naturalist to whom in one way or another he had not given assistance. His influence on American Systematic Zoology exerted in the direction of frank exactness was predominant and lasting, so that writers both in America and Europe often spoke -Baird f thC ' Baird Sch o1 of Naturalists -" For ex- Scholr am P Ie > ne taught us to say, not merely that "the birds from such and such a region show such and such peculiarities," but that "I have examined several specimens of the Horned Lark, which in- dicate the presence of such and such peculiarities. C '74 : 18793 Theodore Gill The first was taken by John Doe at Medicine Bow, April 12, 1890, and is numbered 25001 on the Na- tional Museum records." Thus he would always have it possible for others to distinguish (by refer- ence to the actual material on which one based an opinion) between what one really knew and what one only surmised. He was a man of large stature, heavily built, always serene and especially interested in cooperation as distinguished from rivalry in scientific work. Dr. Theodore Gill was for most of his life a vol- Theodore unteer assistant in the Smithsonian, where he was GM assigned special rooms. Giving the greater part of his time to the study of fishes, or rather to what others had written of fishes, he was also a high authority on mollusks and mammals. Specimens he did not care to handle except in the form of dry and clean skeletons; it was therefore a familiar joke to bring him a fish and say that he "might be interested in it because he had probably never seen one before." But he had an unprecedented mastery over the literature of science and a keener appre- ciation of the meaning of structure in classification and in evolution than that shown by any other naturalist. Nearly all of the few misconceptions in his work come from trusting to other writers in regard to statements inadequately verified by them and not at all by him. In my own work Dr. Gill was helpful and eager to give all possible assistance and information. Many other young naturalists had a similar ex- perience. But with Dr. Giinther of London, whose genius ran in a totally different channel, he was in chronic collision about matters in which either one c 175 : The Days of a Man 1879 may have been technically right from his own point of view. In his early twenties Gill went on an expedition to the island of Trinidad, his only field work of any kind. In later years he seldom left Washington, living at the Cosmos Club but spending the better part of every day about the Smithsonian. Of peculiar temperament, he failed to finish any single large piece of work, but published between 1858 and his death in 1914 some three hundred minor papers which in the aggregate have given his name an imperishable place in the history of Ich- Af aster in thyology. In 1905 I dedicated my chief general Taxonomy work> A Q uide tQ the Stu( J y Q f Fishes," tO "TheO- dore Gill, Ichthyologist, Philosopher, Critic, Master in Taxonomy." Taxonomy, I may explain, is technical classification of organisms an attempt to express as well as possible by dif- ferent categories (order, family, genus, species) the lines of descent and ramification through which animals and plants have acquired their present forms. A classification truly natural that is, based on structure, embryological develop- ment, geological history, and genetic descent is a transcript of our actual knowledge of the evolution of the forms in ques- tion. From this point of view, Taxonomy is the perfected product of all Natural History research. Dr. Elliott Coues, an accurate investigator as well as a brilliant and versatile writer with a special gift for bringing his work into popular compre- hension, was naturalist of the Geological Survey and the leading American ornithologist after Baird turned away from birds to administrative work. Coues' bird biographies rank with the best, though perhaps Irving's sketch of the Bobolink and Muir's n 176 : 18793 Elliott Cones of the Water Ouzel * remain in their way unap- proached. He had, however, various eccentricities which he cultivated as a means to secure attention. On the walls of his den in the Survey he posted large placards, two of which read as follows: I DREAD INTERRUPTION MORE THAN THE DEVIL. THE VERY FACT OF A DOOR HAS IN IT A SUGGESTION TO THE INQUIRING MIND. In our mutual relations Coues was always a valued friend and adviser, and his 'Key to North American Birds" was framed on admirable lines, later adopted by Jordan and Gilbert in a similar work on fishes. 2 Toward the end of his life he sud- denly developed an incongruous interest in theps- ophy, afterward abandoned as abruptly as it had been adopted. Having read my satirical paper on " The Spontaneous Activity of Shadows," 3 a bur- lesque of the theosophical writings of D'Assier and others, he one day referred to it with unqualified approval. When I expressed a little surprise, he de- fined his own position laconically: ;< Not a damned theos!" In my early work in Ichthyology, Gill (who was, His good as I have said, endlessly kind) often suggested that we publish together as "Gill and Jordan," he doing the critical part and I largely the routine of investigation and preparation of specimens. Coues strongly advised against that arrangement, citing 1 "The Humming-bird of the California Waterfalls." 2 "A Synopsis of the Fishes of North America," 1882. 8 See Chapter xxin, page 600. D The Days of a Man [1879 some of his experiences in anatomical work on birds in joint authorship with Gill, whose part was never ready. Said he: "I wouldn't do another stroke of work with Gill to save his immortal soul!" He furthermore suggested that I take my best student Jordan as associate. On this excellent advice I acted, and Hubert ^ or a gd many years "Jordan and Gilbert" worked together on about two hundred different papers. Of our collaboration I shall frequently speak in later pages. Ddi Besides Goode, Gill, and Coues, I met almost daily two other naturalists of the Smithsonian staff, Dr. William H. Dall and Robert Ridgway. Dall, then and now the chief authority at Washington on mollusks, and a man of agreeable personality, had lately returned from explorations in Alaska. As his field is widely separated from mine, our points of contact are not frequent. But our friendly ac- quaintance was pleasantly renewed when Eric de- veloped a great interest in Conchology. In this matter both Dr. Dall and his associate, Dr. Paul Bartsch, have been exceedingly kind and helpful to the boy. Ridgway, a young bird enthusiast, had been lately brought by Baird from Illinois. Of retiring nature, endless patience, and deep insight, he has devoted a whole life to his chosen study, becoming now perhaps the first ornithologist of his time. To the group I found on my arrival in 1877 was soon added Rathbun, the details of whose career I have already given. Another able and industrious investigator with whom I was early brought into close association if not exactly at the same time C 178 3 1879] At the Smithsonian Institution was Dr. Tarleton H. Bean, who had come from Pennsylvania as Goode's colleague in research. Papers by Goode and Bean ran in lines parallel with those of Jordan and Gilbert. A leading scientist whose acquaintance also I Edward made in Washington at this period was Professor Edward D. Cope of Philadelphia, a man of keen insight and great versatility, noted alike as a student of fishes and an untiring collector of fossils. But along with his incisive and flashlight mind he was frequently hasty as to details, and his general conduct was governed by caprice rather than by sustained purpose. Toward me he was always considerate and helpful. When Gilbert and I began our joint work in the Christmas holidays of 1877-78, he invited us to his home and offered every facility in the way of books and advice, except that he naturally did not show the great collection of fish skeletons he had lately purchased from Josef Hyrtl, the noted anatomist of Vienna, of which he subsequently made excellent use. For on it he founded his classification of the orders of fishes, an arrangement which for the most part stands, es- pecially as supplemented and interpreted by Gill. Resuming work at the Smithsonian the following Christmas, I was assigned a bedroom high up in the main tower, occupied off and on by me during two or three succeeding years. I had then been Fishes employed by Dr. John S. Newberry, professor in Columbia and state geologist of Ohio, to prepare an elaborate volume on the fishes of Ohio, expand- ing and supplementing the Klippart report of 1877. As artist I took with me one of my students, Ernest C '79 H The Days of a Man 1879 R. Copeland, Herbert's younger brother, since a surgeon in Milwaukee. But his neat and accurate pencil drawings (those of two species of Black Bass excepted) were never published, probably because of the invention of halftones from illustrations in ink. Joseph An interesting feature of our life in the Institution Henry at ^jg p er j O( i was an occasional meeting with the venerable secretary, Joseph Henry, the physicist, one of the noblest figures in American science. NOTE Portraits of Baird, Goode, Gill, Cope, and others of my early scientific associates (among them Giinther, Poey, Vaillant, Evermann, and Eigenmann) will be found in ''Guide to the Study of Fishes," Volume I. n 1803 BOOK TWO 1879-1891 CHAPTER EIGHT THE academic year of 1878-79 proved to be my last at Butler. My experiences there were pleasant on the whole, my relations with my colleagues were always agreeable, and small though the institution was, I had an unusual number of excellent students, several of whom had followed me from the Indian- apolis High School. But soon the institution was torn into two factions. One wished to make the college purely a feeder to the Christian Church, the other to forward its growing relations with modern scholarship and also to meet the local de- mands of the city of Indianapolis. The first group took up the complaint of many of the rural clergy, who felt hurt by the selection of professors not of their faith, whose salaries, moreover, were generally greater than their own, although both the founder, Ovid Butler, who con- trolled the majority of the corporation stock, and Dr. A. C. Jameson, the broad-minded president of the board of trustees, were strongly opposed to the sectarian movement. Butler and Jameson refused to interfere, however, and the majority of the trustees voted to vacate the three chairs held by individuals not belonging to the Christian Church. Unfortu- nately the president, Dr. Otis A. Burgess, a man of considerable ability, finally joined their forces to the great injury of his standing in the city. The trustees' decision created a storm, for the teachers concerned were much beloved, especially in C 183 3 The Days of a Man 1879 Indianapolis, where Catherine Merrill, professor of English, had been for years an inspiration to all, young or old, who were interested in literature. 1 Scarcely less appreciated was my friend, Melville B. Anderson, who had held the chair of Modern Languages and who now went to Knox College. The third of these beloved heretics was Charles E. A Hollenbeck, the librarian. And as Butler was danger- l ar g e ly dependent upon the city patronage, the at- tempt to revive denominational intolerance greatly harmed the institution. During the weeks of dissension before my de- parture, I took strong ground against the proposed changes, severely criticizing the president for yield- ing to pressure of which, in my judgment, he really disapproved. Meanwhile, at Dr. Jameson's request, I recommended Rathbun as my successor. My allies on the board voted for him, but the outside majority elected Dr. Oliver P. Hay, a young man who had written articles on science for church papers, and who, it was thought, would be less pro- nouncedly an evolutionist than either Rathbun or myself. Hay, finding material for the study of fishes already at hand in the collections I left at the college, proceeded to extend my operations in the Alabama Basin by a survey of the fauna of the state of Mississippi. He has since become a high authority on fossil vertebrates, and his views on Darwinism were quite as radical as mine! The other vacancies were duly filled with members of the Back Church, theologically quite safe. Later, under the p res id enC y o f ) r s cot Butler, son of the founder, 1 Miss Merrill was soon afterward reappointed, holding the chair of Eng- lish until her voluntary retirement in 1883. Indiana University the name of the institution was changed to Butler College, and with wise management resumed its former progressive attitude. A healthy school of higher learning will exist for its own sake, not to promote some particular religious organization. On leaving Irvington in June, 1879- -I went European almost immediately to Europe with a group of tnps students. 1 This was the first of four similar trips, characterized largely by modest living and much tramping through picturesque regions, especially in the high Alps. Of them I shall deal in a separate chapter. With added years and new reasons for travel, I went about in different fashion, as will also later appear. 2 My position at Butler I resigned on short notice, A sudd having been unexpectedly offered the professorship of trans f~ Natural History (which then meant Zoology, Geol- ogy, Botany, and Physiology) in Indiana University. I had gone down to Bloomington to serve as judge in an oratorical contest, a kind of exercise on which great stress was laid in those days, especially in the Middle West, where successful college orators passed into the state legislature and ultimately to Con- gress. 2 With me went Brayton, then a candidate for the already announced vacancy in Natural 1 Among other members of these student parties in Europe, I should men- tion Cornelia M. Clapp, Henrietta E. Hooker, Abby L. Sweetser, teachers in Mount Holyoke Seminary; Ida M. Bunker, Fannie B. Maxwell; James L. Mitchell and Samuel E. Smith, students; and Julia Hughes, afterward Mrs. Gilbert. 2 Among those competing on the occasion to which I refer were several typical Western orators, two of whom have since represented Indiana at Wash- ington. But the pri7e went to Miss Jennie Campbell, a thoughtful youne woman, afterward wife of the well-known astronomer, Dr. Francis P. Leaven- woith of the University of Minnesota. C l8 5 3 'en 'er The Days of a Man 1879 History. Presumably, however, we made a modest impression upon our arrival in town, for the official committee who came to meet me returned to the college reporting that "the Professor was not on the train. No one got off but two drummers who went straight to the hotel." The board of trustees being then in session, I went before them by request, to set forth in all good faith my friend's qualifications for the vacant chair. To my surprise I was later informed that I myself had been unanimously elected to the position. In Judge Rhodes of Indianapolis, one of the trustees, who became a good friend and remained so until his Successor death, I had from the first a strong backer. I thus Richard became the successor of the veteran geologist, Owen Dr. Richard Owen; and Brayton, I may add, gen- erously approved my decision to accept the ap- pointment. Indiana Indiana University had been founded in 1821 as Unwer- j nc ji ana Seminary. In 1838, however, it became Indiana University, definitely recognized by the authorities of the state as the head of its public school system. As endowment they set aside the township of Perry, Monroe County, and then sold it practically all at a pitifully low price (about a dollar an acre) to settlers, reserving only about ten acres, adjoining the village of Bloomington, as a campus. During its half-century of existence between 1838 and 1879 the university had passed through many vicissitudes. In the first place, Bloomington, healthy though it is, being in an elevated district free from malaria, the old curse of Indiana river bottoms, lies C 1 86 n 1 8793 History of Indiana University on relatively poor land just south of the line ot glacial drift which enriches the soil of the northern three fifths of the state. And while the college had from the beginning some eminent teachers, its presi- dents, chosen from the clergy of different religious denominations, were as a rule neither scholarly nor progressive. One of them (Dr. Dailey) is said to have openly proclaimed that "the people want to be humbugged; it's our duty to give them what they want." Moreover, notwithstanding its clerical Humbug heads, the institution was wholly secular, a fact exploited to give color to the old damning charge of "godlessness." Several sectarian colleges in the state had thus more than once combined to try to shut off public appropriations. In spite of many embarrassments, however, In- diana University had maintained an honorable record, educating many teachers, many politicians, and a few statesmen. It was able to point with pride to John W. Foster, Secretary of State, and to Dr. William A. Martin, president of the University of Peking, as well as to numerous governors, con- gressmen, clergymen, and honored men of business. And in Indiana, as all over the Middle West, the state institution ultimately triumphed, acquiring more students, more resources, and more influence than all the denominational colleges put together. Yet its hold on the people was for a long time precarious, so that students of collegiate rank rarely exceeded 150 in number; and to secure even so many it was deemed necessary to maintain a special preparatory department. Indeed, in those days, the mixing of youth of high school age with their university elders a process by which the C i87 3 The Days of a Man 1879 two sets were subjected to the same discipline, in general adapted to the necessities of neither was one of the burdens carried by higher education al- most everywhere. Another and still heavier load was the fixed course of study, based originally upon the requirements of the English college, diluted but never adapted to the needs of pioneers. Grand Nevertheless, notwithstanding the handicaps of ^ en , poverty, antiquated methods, and lack of popular Indiana appreciation, Indiana University, as I have implied, did some really excellent work, and among its pro- fessors in the 'yo's were four, grown old in service, who were justly held in high respect by all capable of recognizing a good man. These were Daniel Kirk- wood, Theophilus A. Wylie, Elisha Ballantine, and Richard Owen. Kirkwood was a mathematical astronomer of learning and penetration, a man of noble personal character also, as simple-hearted as a child, and possessed of the most perfect courtesy. Dr. Richard A. Proctor, a distinguished English astronomer, in a public address at Bloomington spoke of Kirkwood as "the Kepler of America." It seemed to me a pity that one of the most erudite of mathematical astronomers in our country should spend his life teaching elementary geometry and algebra. Sub- sequently, when I became head of the institution, I arranged that Dr. Kirkwood should have a compe- tent assistant and henceforth teach only astronomy. Wylie, son of Dr. Andrew Wylie, the first president, and for nearly fifty years professor of Physics, was a scholarly gentleman of the old school, though scarcely in line with the progress of an elusive science. Ballantine, the learned professor of Greek C 188 3 18253 The Experiment at New Harmony for about half a century, was a sweet-spirited and devoted gentleman. Owen, oldest of the four, was a son of the noted Robert Owen from Lanark, Scotland, who founded with William Maclure of Philadelphia, a geologist of note, the communistic experiment at New Har- mony on the Wabash River below Vincennes - - an attempt remarkable for its success in bringing to- gether forceful and original minds, as well as for its total failure to solve the economic problems of so- ciety. Richard Owen, like his distinguished brother, David Dale, was a geologist with broad scholarship and large sympathies, and a man of courtly man- ners. Once I gave a lecture in the old hall at New Harmony, with Dr. Owen in the chair. He was then very old and heard not a word I said, but by watching the faces of the audience he showed every appropriate shade of feeling as I proceeded with my talk. The importance of the New Harmony enterprise in the intellectual development of Indiana seems to me sufficient to warrant a digression at this point. A century and more ago, the feeling was general Abolition that the age of competition was past and the / it - pe ' world about to enter on a new social and industrial period. Franklin asserted that if everybody would work three hours a day on something useful, poverty would be banished and all might spend the after- noon of each day and the whole afternoon of life amid the consolations of philosophy, the charms of literature, or the delights of social intercourse. In : 189: The Days of a Man 1825 the words of Robert Dale Owen, Richard's elder brother, men looked forward to the time when riches, because of their super- fluity, would cease to be the end and aim of man's thoughts, plottings, and lifelong strivings; when the mere possession of wealth would no longer confer distinction, - any more than does the possession of water, than which there is no property of greater worth. Maclure refused to invest money in Philadelphia because, as he said, land in cities can no longer rise in value. The community system must prevail, and in the course of a few years Phila- delphia must be deserted, and those who live long enough may come back here and see the foxes looking out of the windows. Robert It was therefore natural that Robert Owen, 1 Owen fresh from a varied career of reforms in Scotland, and full of projects for the development of the New World, found in Maclure an active co-worker. Indeed, most of the learned men of New Harmony were drawn there by Maclure. His special plan was to conduct a School of Industry in which all should be taught the arts of "the Conquest of Nature." Farmers, for instance, should not be mere tillers of the soil, but should be trained to make the earth do its best. And at New Harmony he published a magazine called The Disseminator of Useful Knowledge, Containing Hints to the Youth of the United States from the School of Industry. The motto of this comprehensive sheet rightly pro- claimed that " Ignorance is the Frightful Cause of Human Misery." 1 "Robert Owen, the shrewd, gullible, high-minded, wrong-headed, illustri- ous, preposterous father of Socialism and Cooperation." LYTTON STRACHEY n 190 u The Boatload of Knowledge In the pages of The Disseminator appeared the Say name of Thomas Say, another member of the Com- munity, who wrote concerning the shells, insects, and birds of the Wabash. Say had already won fame as an explorer on Long's expedition to the Rocky Mountains, and was among those who came down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh in the famous 'Boatload of Knowledge." He was a close and conscientious observer, and when he died it was asserted that : 'he had done more to make known the Zoology of this country than any other man." One of his friends, with a touch of Say's own modesty, said: "He will ever be remembered as one who did honor to his country and enlarged the boundaries of human knowledge." Another of our most attractive pioneer natural- L ists, the French artist, Charles A. Le Sueur, also arrived at New Harmony with the 'Boatload of Knowledge." A friend of Cuvier, with an established reputation as naturalist and artist, he had been around the world on Peron's celebrated voyage. In the drawing and painting of animals he showed rare skill, and his woodcuts of the fishes of the Great Lakes are among the most lifelike ever published. It was he who painted the drop curtain of the Com- munity Hall; this represented Niagara Falls with "the other marvel of the New World," the rattle- snake, coiled beside it! Richard Owen was a favorite with LeSueur, and once told me how he used to wade barefooted in the bayous of Posey County to gather mussel shells for the gifted naturalist. Robert Dale Owen was long and favorably known The as a charming writer, one of the circle of essayists en , i i Ir-i * i x* 11- 1-1 Brothers who early gave to The Atlantic Monthly its high C 191 3 The Days of a Man [1825 literary character. As a member of the Indiana legislature he led in shaping the public school sys- tem of the state. David Dale, the second son, and Richard, the youngest of this remarkable family, were intimately associated throughout their lives. David, afterward United States Geologist, was especially interested in fossils and minerals. He classified the great collection left by Maclure, which, with his own extensive accumulations, afterward formed the Owen Museum (of 85,000 specimens) of the University of Indiana, one of the largest fossil displays in America up to its partial destruc- tion by fire in 1883. Neef The New Harmony schoolmaster, Dr. Joseph Neef, was a blunt, plain-spoken, honest man, a great favorite with his pupils. An Alsatian by birth, he had formerly been priest, soldier, and at the same time a mathematician of high ability for a while, also, associate of Pestalozzi in his famous school at Yverdon, Switzerland. The latter once commended him as an earnest, manly worker who "did not disdain to occupy himself with the elements of science." Maclure met Neef in Paris and brought him over to America. 'It is my highest ambition," said Neef, ;< to be a country school teacher amidst a hardy, vigorous community." His two daughters both married Owens, the one David Dale, the other, Richard. Many distinguished scientific visitors came to New Harmony, among them the Dutch scientist, Dr. Gerard Troost, who remained for some time, becoming later state geologist of Tennessee; and Sir Charles Lyell, greatest of all geologists, was once a guest of the Owens. The eccentric Rafinesque C i9 2 3 18253 The Economists also passed that way "on foot, with a bundle of plants under which a peddler might groan." The New Harmony movement, based on demo- cratic principles, soon failed some said because Owen refused to deed over all the property; but the common opinion is that there were too many man- agers and too few workers. Community of own- TOO ership goes only with community of spirit. No any permanent association is possible where drones and workers have equal access to the honey cells. Several other parallel experiments have taught the same lesson Brook Farm at West Roxbury, Bellamy in British Columbia, and the still more re- cent Kaweah Community on the flanks of the Sierra in California. The New Harmony property had been bought by Rapp Robert Owen from Johann Rapp, head of a celibate d the German sect called "the Economists," a group which $10 later formed a large settlement in central Pennsyl- vania named '' Economy." Each of Rapp's ex- periments was a financial success because a single will dominated. They were, indeed, theocracies, with a head ruling autocratically by supposedly divine right. According to Rapp, an angel appeared at his bedside every morning to direct what each member should do that day. The University of Indiana still preserves the New Harmony "Angel Stone" on which the celestial emissary is said to have stood. This is a block of sandstone marked with the very plain print of two bare feet, woman's size, the great toe being made to stand out to prove that it had never been cramped by a shoe! In addition to this evidence of Rapp's pious ingenuity, Owen found under the fields various tunnels from which C 193 3 The Days of a Man 1879 the prophet used suddenly to appear and "super- naturally" incite his peasant followers to renewed activity. The few living members of the sect at Economy have now, according to the press, inherited all the accumulations in Pennsylvania. New The town of Bloomington had been originally neighbors se ttled mainly from the South: the leading citizens were largely of Scotch descent, often Presbyterian in faith, Republican in politics, and fairly rigid in all their beliefs. As Presbyterians they were again divided into three groups: Cumberland Presby- terians (of which, however, there were very few), who would not vote or accept citizenship in a country where God was not recognized in the Con- stitution; United Presbyterians, who excluded musi- cal instruments from the church; and Presbyterians proper, who conformed more fully to current custom. The Among the more interesting citizens was one */". unique in his way, Henry S. Bates, the shoemaker. of Phi- Soon after my arrival I gave a lecture on Thoreau, losopby at the dose of which Bates and James Karsell, the grocer, remained to talk with me. Both, I found, were well informed as to Thoreau's life and writings. Bates, seated at his bench, used to discuss with students and professors the problems of literature and life. The fact that though without much formal education he did a good deal of thinking and was withal a man of generous sympathies and friendly interest, brought like-minded men to sit at his feet. So the shoe shop came to be known as C 194 3 18793 In Bloomington the "Bates School of Philosophy," a well-deserved name which persisted for years. Most of the younger professors of those days - - as well as many of the earnest students became informal members of the cobbler's class. In 1893 Mr. Bates was made university registrar, in which capacity he was especially useful as adviser to young people. Of other good and kindly residents I may instance notably Dr. James D. Maxwell and the Reverend S. R. Lyons, both members of the board of trustees; William P. Rogers, attorney, afterward professor of Law and, still later, dean of the Cincinnati Law School; and Walter E. Woodburn, banker. When we arrived in Bloomington, only one street The was covered with gravel, the others, almost im- town passable after rain, being composed of bright red clay and crossed by pedestrians on stepping stones made of rough cubes of limestone, flat slabs of which also served as sidewalks. Our house was a modest frame affair on Morton Street, at the north end of town. Within a few rods of it now stands a monu- ment marking the actual center of population of the United States as determined in 1917. With each succeeding census new pillars will, of course, be required to indicate the gradual westward trend. During my seventeen years' residence in the state the point moved from near Cincinnati to Greens- burg, Indiana. It is now (1920) at Whitehall in Owen County. The central square of town was marked by the courthouse, then a shabby building surrounded on Saturdays by the saddle horses and teams of the neighboring farmers - - all Monroe County, after C The Days of a Man 1879 the fashion of the rural South, aiming to spend Saturday afternoon at the county seat. Thus in summer the entire space about the courthouse fence would be bordered with rinds of the watermelon, a luscious fruit much enjoyed by the whites and still more by the colored population. Athwart the main street runs a brook now en- tirely covered, but spanned in very early days by a single log necessarily crossed by every one bound Only for the college. That primitive bridge was ac- one cordingly once the scene of an incident long re- fime membered in local history, harking back to very early days. President Wylie, it seems, was much disliked by his faculty of two, Baynard R. Hall of the chair of Classics, and Harney, professor of Mathematics; for a while, at least, the president and Harney were not on speaking terms. One Sunday morning the two met on the log. According to local etiquette Harney had the right of way, but Wylie elbowed him into the stream. A racy account of this occurrence may be found in a book by Hall, who after about seven years of service returned to the East and there published (1843) a volume entitled "Life in the New Purchase " - New Purchase being the name by which Monroe County, then lately bought from the Indians, was Anun- commonly known. In it the author gives a vivid popular acc ount of his Bloomington experiences, not on the whole thought flattering by the townspeople, for they destroyed every copy in the university library and everywhere else within reach. Yet the writer speaks appreciatively of the energy and in- dependence of certain individuals, particularly of one most honest and capable "Dr. Sylvan," a mem- C 196 : 1843] Life in the New Purchase her of the board of trustees, identified as Dr. David H. Maxwell, father of Dr. James D. Maxwell. Commenting on the Doctor's rough and careless dress, Hall calls it a leaden casket with a rare jewel within. With a little fixing this gentleman would easily have adorned and delighted the best company in the best places. He was a brave soldier, an able statesman, and a skillful physician; and if not learned, he was extensively and profoundly read in his favorite studies, medicine and politics. His person, even disfigured by his dress, was uncommonly fine, his countenance prepossessing, and his conversation easy, pleasant, and instructive. . . . He would have graced the halls at Washington. The professor also writes fairly of the students of those days: day , students The speeches were equal to the best in our schools. Gener- ally the young men are superior to the young gentlemen of old settlements in both scholarship and elocution. For this he gives several reasons, which I here condense : 1. They come to learning as a novelty. Nothing exceeds their interest and curiosity. It is long before the novelty ceases, and then the habit of hard studying takes its place. 2. They regard learning as the lever to elevate them, to help the New World to cope with the Old. 3. They have more energy than the young gentlemen. 4. They have few temptations to idleness and dissipation. 5. The tuition fee of ten dollars the value of ten acres of land is too hard to obtain to be squandered lightly. 6. They are inquisitive like Yankees, and gain knowledge by torturing professors. 7. They come into more immediate contact with professors than do Eastern students. " Seven more reasons," no doubt good, he refrains from giving in detail, but the chief one is that they C 1973 The Days of a Man [1879 will work at anything to pay their way. He also cites admiringly the case of a lad who rewrote an essay thirty-six times before presenting it. 1 Somewhat later appeared a well-known book of s i m il ar character, 'The Hoosier Schoolmaster," by master" Edward Eggleston. This described life in Switzer- land County on the Ohio River below Cincinnati, near the Swiss colony of Vevay. Eggleston frankly gave (as Hall did not in any case) the real names of the people he described. James H. Means, son of Bud Means, one of his leading characters, is a well-known mining engineer in London, a graduate both of Indiana and of Stanford. But I must not leave my readers with the impres- sion that Bloomington is still a pioneer village. It has now become a well-kept city with asphalt streets, a new stone courthouse, and a general air of pros- perity. About Bloomington are many places and objects of interest connected with the geological forma- tion. There the surface rocks are mainly of the Burlington Subcarboniferous, represented by thick- bedded, white oolitic limestone, which through its value for building purposes has enriched the town. Geodts Underlying that formation are the Keokuk shales, remarkable for their wealth of geodes, concretions of quartz usually about six inches through but vary- ing in size from that of a cherry to that of a big pumpkin; these are found in all the local streams which have cut down through the limestone. A 1 I am informed that Professor Hall's book is about to be reprinted by an Eastern house, as a contribution to our knowledge of American pioneer life. C 198 3 18793 Monroe County Geology geode occupies the space left vacant by the dis- solution of some organic object - - a sponge perhaps, or a shell, or the head of a crinoid. If a shell or crinoid, the original shape is maintained; but most geodes, probably having replaced sponges, are with- out definite form. Broken open, they are found to be hollow. Those that have a minute hole through the rough crust are lined inside with chalcedony, - that is, clouded quartz arranged in layers, - - a peculiar structure caused by relatively rapid evapo- ration. But when the crust is solid, the siliceous liquid has evaporated very slowly, leaving the in- side filled with more or less perfect crystals, usually of white quartz, sometimes of amethyst - - which is violet quartz - - sometimes mixed with crystals of zinc blende, often of calcspar, and occasionally of other minerals. Very rarely, a geode still retains some of the siliceous water from the evaporation of which it has been formed. The center of geode deposit is along the Mississippi River about Keokuk, Iowa. At Niota, Illinois, across from Keokuk, I once found specimens filled with bitumen, but otherwise perfect. Monroe County is rich in fossils, also, and has occasional caves worn by water in the limestone. It possesses one special botanical charm, Arbutus Trailing Hill, a barren, wooded slope covered in spring with Arbutus flowers of the fragrant Trailing Arbutus - - Epigesa repens - - and, as far as I know, the westernmost point of its distribution. This was the choicest dis- covery of our colleague, Herman B. Boisen, pro- fessor of German, my own closest associate in the old university faculty. Boisen was a warm-hearted, generous, enthusiastic Germanized Dane from Hol- C 199 3 The Days of a Man 1879 stein. Although occasionally erratic, and always resistant to red tape, he was one of the real men of the faculty, remarkably successful as a teacher and sincerely loved by his students. After some ob- scure difficulty with the president, he resigned in the early '8o's, going to the Lawrenceville School, New Jersey, where he soon after died. Brown County, our neighbor on the east, merits County a worc i > The mos t hilly and backward part of the state, without a railroad in my time, its highest elevation, Weedy Patch, approaches the dignity of a mountain. To this and to the sister summit, Bear Wallow, my students and I made frequent pil- grimages. Near the barren top of Weedy Patch stood a poverty-stricken cabin, the owner of which explained that somebody had to live there and so he did ! C 200 CHAPTER NINE RETURNING in September from a trip to Europe, I took up my new work in the University with much enthusiasm. Naturally I found there more and better equipment and a more generous atmosphere than at Butler, although the larger institution was quite as heavily burdened by educational tradition. In addition to several excellent students who had followed me from Irvington, a number of others showed marked promise. I had hardly made a beginning, however, when a most unforeseen call to government service gave me a rare opportunity for field work in Zoology. The United States Census Bureau, under the ef- ficient administration of General Francis A. Walker, ment service had planned for 1880 a report which in fullness and on Pacific accuracy should far surpass any work of the kind Coast before attempted. Through cooperation with Baird and Goode, the investigation of marine industries was turned over to the Fish Commission, and I was asked to take charge of the work on the Pacific Coast, while Dr. Bean went to Alaska on a simi- lar mission, and Silas Stearns, a delightful young student of nature, canvassed the Gulf of Mexico. Making an adjustment whereby my collegiate work was placed temporarily in Dudley's hands, I was enabled to accept the alluring assignment, upon which I entered in December, 1879. Gilbert, then one of my graduate students, accompanied me as C 201 3 The Days of a Man Ci88o secretary and assistant, in both of which capacities he proved most efficient. Details Our special duty was to visit or communicate of in- with every post office within five miles of the coast in California, Oregon, and Washington, to list the various species of fishes and other marine animals inhabiting adjacent waters, and to report fully on their habits, food, and value; also to describe in detail the past, present, and probable future of all industries related to the sea. This investigation, in- volving nearly a year of travel and research, was one of the most important events in my scientific career. Toward the end of December we left Chicago for California, settling down in the train for the seven days it then took to reach San Francisco. Through Wyoming we saw great herds of antelope; at Ogden we had a chance to climb a snowy peak of the Wasatch range, which overtops the town and gives a fine view of the valley and the Great Salt Lake, then covered with ice. LOS Arrived at San Francisco, we decided to begin Angeles with the southern end of the state, and accordingly went at once by rail to Los Angeles, whence we planned to travel by steamer to San Diego. In Los Angeles I was much impressed by seeing the boys playing ball with oranges at Christmas. But it was still a mere village, mostly Mexican, its only hotel being the Pico House, a tienda on the old Plaza, - - and the country round about was practi- cally a desert of cactus and sagebrush. The steamer for San Diego started, then as at present, from the port of San Pedro. Having reached the little town a few hours ahead of time, we climbed the inviting C 202 3 i88oH Southern California Palos Verdes, the hill of "green trees," above the The Verdes two villages of San Pedro and Wilmington, both Palos now incorporated in the city of Los Angeles. But as frequently happens in the clear air of the West, Palos Verdes proved to be higher than it looked, commanding a most beautiful prospect. So we missed the boat and had to go by night and day stage from Santa Ana to San Diego, a distance of eighty miles. Toward midnight we changed horses at pic- turesque San Juan Capistrano, the first Mission I ever saw and the one which six years later furnished the architectural motive of Stanford University. Directly in front stands an old pepper tree, dating, at least according to our veracious stage driver, from the year One. For breakfast we stopped by the side of the Mission San Luis Rey, perhaps the most beautiful of the whole series, then neglected but since partly restored, though not wholly to its advantage. San Diego was reached the following s an afternoon. There in the local "Chinatown/' to which we at once made our way, I picked up a small specimen of a true Sole Symphurus atricauda the first of its type to be recorded from the American side of the Pacific. That discovery we regarded as a good omen, as it showed the field to be by no means exhausted. San Diego was then a small, remote city which on the strength of its climate (the most equable in the United States) had been overtaken by an unfortu- nate boom. This had dotted the neighboring hills with city lots and left the town financially stranded. Our office stood at the foot of the wharf, in an empty saloon with the significant legends "Last C 203 3 The Days of a Man The Chance'' on the side toward town, and "First "chance Chance" n ^xt the wharf. One day we had a call from a man who remarked that he starved out in that place, and had dropped in to see how business was going with us! Next arrived a fat squaw call- ing herself Ramona and insisting "Me want whisky." It took some minutes to persuade her that the "Last Chance " had gone dry. Finally, however, we succeeded in leading her out of the shop, her little son pushing vigorously from behind. At that time, throughout California, there was a good deal of complaint about " Chinese cheap labor." In San Diego, at least, this was mainly talk, the people meanwhile allowing the Chinese fishermen to depopulate the bay by the use of fine, small nets trapping everything, little and big - all of which they dried, salted, and sent to China. That disastrous practice I attempted to stop "in the name of the law." The men accordingly came "Mr. to know me as 'Law' or "Mr. Law," and they Law" seemed to think that the fishery statutes, not ex- ecuted until after my arrival, were of my own making. On our return later in the year they stopped work entirely, evidently fearing to take any chances with 'Law." To secure specimens, therefore, I had to hire men to fish for me. In the town we found a thriving Natural History Society, of which Daniel Cleveland was the lead- ing spirit. One of its most active members was Rosa Smith, who later married Eigenmann, my assistant and successor in Zoology at Indiana Uni- versity. Miss Smith accompanied us on various scientific excursions, going, in fact, as far as Port- land. She discovered and described a few species c 204 : o CO HH PH < O fc CO CO CO Q - i88cd Fishes of Southern California from San Diego; afterward she associated herself with her husband's work on the fishes of that region and, later, on those of Brazil. From San Diego we moved up to Wilmington, which adjoins San Pedro, and there daily overhauled the boats of the Portuguese fishermen who work between the latter town and Santa Catalina Island. Wilmington proved an excellent place for our pur- poses, though it was then a bit crude socially. Santa Catalina itself, with its settlement of Avalon, soon Big game afterward became the most noted center of big-game fishing fishing in the world. About it swarm the great Leaping Tuna or a ' ou Tunny - - Tbunnus thynnus which reaches a weight of six Catalina hundred pounds or more, and takes the hook mightily; the Albacore -- Germo alalonga--oi about twenty pounds and with long, ribbon-like pectoral fins; the Swordfish -- Xipbias gladius identical with the giant Swordfish of the Atlantic; the Marlinspike-fish Tetrapturus mitsukurii a smaller edi- tion of the Swordfish, but still mighty; the Yellow-fin Tuna Germo macropterus a common fish of Japan; the huge Bass or "Jewfish" Stereolepis gigas; and the swift Yellow- tail or Amber-fish Seriola dorsalis. The famous Tuna is coarse and oily, but the Swordfish is highly valued as food. The Yellowtail is also excellent, and the Albacore has delicate white flesh of a rich flavor, so that lately it has been extensively canned (tinned) under the name of Tuna, unfortunate be- cause incorrect. The Barracuda Spbyrcena argentea a game fish of smaller size but toothsome flavor, should also be counted among the treasures of Avalon. On the whitewashed walls of our little laboratory in Wilmington, Gilbert and I by turns contributed to a string of incongruous verses, written in moments of desperation, during the prevalence of the rainy season, and here reproduced for old times' sake. C 205 3 The Days of a Man Ci88o THE RHYME OF THE PALOS VERDES When the U. S. Fish Commission Feels too lazy to go fishing, And the star-eyed Senoritas in siesta slumber soft, Let us leave Saint Peter's valley, With its "benzine" and alkali, And its dirty "customhouses," for the mountain side aloft. Let us to the Palos Verdes Where the vaquero doth herd his By the cactus-sorely-prickled on the sagebrush-feeding flocks, To the greenest of green mountains, Which without nor brooks nor fountains Keeps its slopes as sleek, as glossy as a mermaid's curling locks. Past the burrows which the rabbit Digs as if by force of habit 'Neath the tangled roots of cactus, where a plow can never reach; And the little owls (the "Greasers" Call these solemn birds "Professors") On the rabbit burrows dreaming, vanish with a sudden screech. Though the air appears so quiet The mirage doth wildly riot On the highlands and the islands, building pinnacles like mad. Far beyond, across the islands, Lie the snowy heights where Silence, All unmoved by human uproars, holds his court on Soledad. Down the slope we climb, where cactus With its vicious thorns hath scratched us, And the rolling gourd doth flourish till against a stone it knocks. C 206 3 Diversions of Naturalists From the last bluff, steep and stony, To the beach where Abalone, With his slimy fingers delving, crawls beneath the shelving rocks. There the mad Pacific plunges On the gentle-tempered sponges, And the Octopus doth lunge his venom at each passing shark. There the very long-nosed Garfish, And the very short-nosed "Star" fish, And full many another " quar" fish getting in his little work. In the kelp the junks, strange vessels, In whose sails and rigging nestles, Drying for the China market, Eel, and Rockfish red as blood, While the whistle of the steamer Wakens every startled dreamer, As it plows through muddy water, stops at last in watery mud. Riding on his vicious "bronco," Coming in from the Barranca, With his red scrape glowing through the Eucalyptus trees, Comes the swarthy Mexicano, Frowning like a Castillano, With his long mustachio waving like a pennon in the breeze. Soon the morning call to business Breaks our fine poetic dizziness, And the sun once more is creeping o'er the Sepulveda hills. And, dear friends, we promise never, Never, that is, hardly ever, To repeat this gross addition to your necessary ills. C 207 The Days of a Man [1880 Santa In February we proceeded northward to Santa Barbata Barbara, charmingly situated and with a sugges- tion of the French Riviera. As a collecting ground it proved one of the best, the channel and the off- shore islands being rich in fish life. One day we climbed the Sierra Santa Ynez, which rises behind the town and gives a superb view. This was one of the roughest ascents I ever made, because of the ragged shrubbery which envelops its slopes. That evening on our return, hot and dusty, we were de- lighted to find that the men employed by us, John Weinmiller from Maine and Andrea Larco, a Geno- vese, had brought in a new species, the most bril- liant fish on the coast, light pink in color, crossed by broad bands of deep crimson, and known as the ''Spanish Flag." This, our choicest discovery, we named Sebastichthys rubrivinctus. An albacore yielded another interesting find, for it had swallowed a full-grown hake Merluccius in the stomach of which lay a little deep-sea fish - Sudis Sudis ringens never seen before or since, though afterward we opened many an albacore and many a hake. One more rarity, and one only, rewarded us in the process a tiny lantern fish with luminous spots, which had risen from the deeps in a storm (nothing else ever brings it from below) and which we named Myctopbum crenulare. In the channel the California Flying Fish Cyp- selurus calif ornicus - - runs in multitudes in early spring, so that we had an opportunity, unique up to that time, to learn exactly how it flies. From a C 208 3 1 8803 At Santa Barbara boat one could see every movement. Since then I Flying have watched the flight of numerous species of fisbes Cypselurus, large and small, in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and my later observations con- firm our first conclusions, although none of the others have the force or spread of ''wing" of californicus, the largest known. This flies for distances varying from a few rods to upward of an eighth of a mile, rarely rising more than from four to six feet. All Method movements below the surface are extremely rapid, J. , t but the sole source of motive power in water or out is the impulse given by the powerful tail, which vibrates rapidly and strongly until the whole body has emerged. While this motion continues, however, the pectorals or wings seem to be also in a state of rapid vibration, - - a fallacious appearance, as they are simply shaken by the general agitation, the ani- mal having ability only to spread and fold them. The ventrals remain folded until the tail leaves the water and becomes quiet, at which time both pec- torals and ventrals are spread, then held at rest. They thus serve, not as actual wings, but rather as parachutes to hold up the body. When the fish drops and touches the surface, tail vibration again begins - - with it, also, the apparent movement of the pectorals. Flight is now resumed, to be finished finally for the moment in a big splash. In the air Flying Fishes look like large dragon flies. Their progress is very swift, at first in a straight line but later deflected into a curve, and always without relation to the direction of the wind. When a vessel passes through a school, they spring up before it, moving away in all directions like grasshoppers in a meadow. Off Walpole Island in C 209 : The Days of a Man Ci88o the South Pacific, I once caught "on the fly" a large individual which proved to be new to science. In the Tropics live some species not exceeding three or four inches in length, with very short pectorals and little ventrals; these fly a few yards only. opening At Santa Barbara we received word from Pro- Indian f essor Baird that a certain Mr. Barnard who had an Indian mound on his farm at San Buenaventura (now shortened to Ventura) had requested the Smithsonian to send some one to open it. Being practically on the spot, we were asked by Baird to attend to the matter, and accordingly took it in hand. At the very outset, however, while trying to hire a few Chinese for the necessary work, we hit a snag. For one and all made the same answer, "No workee today; me Happy New Year!" (The Chinese year formerly began in March.) Several Mexicans were finally secured, and one of the im- plements they dug out was said to be unique among aboriginal relics. At the time of our visit a little daughter, Miss Maryline, had just arrived in the Barnard home. Twenty-one years later she received from my hands the Bachelor's Degree at Stanford University. San Luis From Santa Barbara we went to San Luis 1 Obispo. At Port Harford (its seaport) we found Northerly species, as Point Conception, midway between there and Santa Barbara, forms the dividing line between two faunas. Here the chilled Japanese Current is deflected into the sea, where it loses itself in a broad and vaguely defined "whirlpool." That great ocean 1 Pronounced "Loo-eece," and accented on the last syllable; final "s" is always pronounced in Spanish. C 210 3 1 8803 Moving Northward river or Asiatic Gulf Stream, the Kuro-shiwo or The Black "Black Current," flows northward from the Philip- Currfnt pines, warmly drenching the east coast of Japan. It then runs northeastward to the Aleutian Islands, thence across to Sitka, losing its heat on the way and bathing the shores in mist and rain. Next, thoroughly cooled, it bends southward along the Pacific Coast to Point Concepcion, reducing sum- mer temperatures to a much lower point than that of corresponding latitudes in the Atlantic or the western Pacific, and thus bearing Northern forms southward to Monterey and beyond. At San Luis Obispo we made the personal ac- Miiiie- quaintance of Millie-Christine, the "Siamese Twins" Chnstine of that epoch, two good-looking mulatto girls, tragically bound together for life and death. Rela- tively well educated, I may fairly say cultivated, they were as distinct mentally as any pair of "identi- cal twins," conversing together and with others in the usual fashion. In San Luis Obispo, also, we at- tended the performance of a clever magician whom I mainly remember from his discomfiture next day when he carelessly let slip his magic cane through a break in the wharf. Attempting to hire some one to dive for it, he was as helpless as any ordinary mortal. Later in March we came to Monterey. There, Monterey in that former Spanish capital where some of the old-timers were still living, we found much of in- terest. It also furnished our best collecting ground. In the search for material, we had the energetic help of a Portuguese lad named Manuel Duarte, now a flourishing local fish dealer. Among our many experiences was a day with very low tide, spent far out on the rocks beyond the Point of Pines, C 211 3 The Days of a Man 1880 spearing little blennies and sculpins with a sharpened, three-tined fork. Needless to say, the water seemed warmer than it now does to either of us! The At Monterey we found a species of Hagfish - Hagfisb Polistotrema stouti- -in considerable abundance. This eel-shaped, slimy creature, plum color and about a foot long, is persona non grata with its neighbors. Its habits are bad. Fastening its sucker-like mouth with rasping teeth within the gill opening of a large fish, it gnaws into the body, devouring all the mus- cular system of its "host" and reducing it to a mere hulk. Many large fishes, flounders and rockfish es- pecially, are taken in this sad plight. When the victim finally dies, the parasite makes its escape; and sometimes when a poor wreck is hauled up in a net, the pirate may be observed thrusting its eyeless head from out the hole, and then plumping incontinently into the water in search of a new boarding house. Mission In the Monterey region we investigated (among San other places) the little Bay of Carmel, not far from which stands the old Mission of "San Carlos Bor- romeo in Carmelo," overlooking the mouth of the fertile and beautiful valley of the Carmel River. The roof of the picturesque church then falling into ruins its beams having been made of the perish- able Monterey pine - - was being restored by the devoted Father Casanova, at the expense of Mrs. Leland Stanford. At that same time also Mrs. Stanford set up on the hill above the spot where, in 1603, Vizcaino landed and celebrated mass under a live oak, a monument to Padre Junipero Serra, founder of most of the California Missions. C 212 3 ? P3 Cfl OJ Ui rs O hJ W < c 5 -s fc ^ M "o O u W T3 51 .Sd A i- s PH - 01 n: o = ' u >, * S < o. co 2 o 4 o _e a (j_ o D. O O 18803 um'ero Serra Serra stands out as the conspicuous figure in the Carrying pious background of California history. Lured by heavenly visions, he left La Paz on foot early in 1769 in one of Portola's two official land parties designed to carry the true faith to beautiful New Spain. In front of each division were driven a hundred head of cattle. Having put behind them nearly a thousand miles of barren cactus-laden rock and sand, on July i they reached the gentle bay where Serra founded the Mission of San Diego de Alcala, the first of a long series to "girdle the heathen land." Afterward the Padre made his permanent headquarters at Monterey, the capital of Alta (Upper) California, and he lies buried by the old Mission Church of San Carlos. To the north of Carmel Bay projects the pictur- Ancient esque and famous Cypress Point, one of the several c ^""" headlands of the pine-clad peninsula which cul- Monterey minates in the Point of Pines. Cypress Point bears P ines a grove of ancient but noble Monterey Cypresses Cupressus macrocarpa - - many of them so bent and twisted by the northwest trades that they seem to belong to some Inferno of Dore. This particular species, quite unlike any other conifer north of Mexico, is found native only here and on the neigh- boring Point Lobos x which bounds the bay on the south. The Monterey P'me--Pinus radiata- -much like common Japanese forms but wholly different from any other American species, is also rigidly confined in nature to a small district around Monterey. Both pine and cypress grow readily from seed and are planted widely in California and in southern Australia. 1 Lobos, "wolves," a name applied to the barking brown sea lion Zalophus calif ornianus. c 213 n The Days of a Man [1880 The Cypress Point and the Point of Pines are now both Seventeen- j nc i u( j ec j m the glorious " Seventeen-mile Drive'' Wlllg Drive from the Hotel Del Monte, situated in a superb park of live oak and pine and everywhere known to world travelers. The road winds through a somber pine forest out to the ocean's edge, then along the shore for many miles the rock-frayed, white- fringed break of blue water against beach or rudely jutting headland on the one hand, and on the other silvery dunes backed by primeval cypresses. Within recent years, also, about forty miles of similarly perfect road have been cut across and up the wooded peninsula, disclosing noble views of both Monterey Bay and the Pacific. Around Pebble Beach just north of Carmel many charming villas are now arising. Along the whole coast from Carmel to Cayucos in San Luis Obispo County, the wild and pine- covered Santa Lucia range thrusts itself abruptly into the sea. The result is a series of rincones* of singular beauty, and so rugged that from Point Sur (about midway) to Cayucos, there is no room La Punta for a road. Of all these headlands the most beauti- ^ anc ^ i m P ress i ve is Point Lobos, a granite prom- ontory cut by wave action into deep ravines up which the great surf of the rising tide rushes with merciless force, breaking into wondrous mighty cascades of white foam. South of the storm-swept inlets of Alaska nothing finer of its kind appears on any coast. At Lobos, also, the lone, primeval group of gnarled, wind-twisted cypresses, clinging wherever soil remains on top or side, lend their peculiar charm to a spot beautiful indeed without them. 1 Plural of rincon big nose the Spanish word for headland. C 214 D 18803 La ILnsenadita de Cdrmelo The drive from Lobos to Sur challenges compari- son with the famous cornice routes of the French Riviera, although it lacks, of course, the finished beauty of those ancient highways. Thirteen years ago my wife Jessie built a modest A seaside cottage at Carmel, almost on the Camino retreat Real or trail originally connecting the Mission ot San Carlos with the old Presidio or barracks at Monterey. This served as a special retreat for herself and Eric during my various absences on government affairs. Since then we have spent many delightful days in that exquisite spot, and there the boy at the age of nine really began to col- lect shells. For these reasons I take pleasure in adding a few lines written by me at the time of my first visit to la Ensenadita de Cdrmelo "the little bay of Carmel." Of all the indentations on the coast of California, the most Carmel picturesque and most charming is the little bay of Carmelo, which lies just south of the point of Los Pinos, between this and the rocky cape of Los Lobos, its blue waters sheltered from the northwest trades by the pine-clad peninsula which ends in the reefs of the Point of Pines. No one lives on this bay at present except a farmer or two, a little colony of Chinese fishermen who have a Pescadero or fishing camp in the edge of the pines, and a little group of Portuguese (Captain Verisimo) who watch for whales on a rocky ledge near Point Lobos. 1 When the above was written, I little thought that one day Carmel would shelter its present colony of beauty lovers, and among them my own family! 1 From a manuscript report to United States Census Bureau, March, 1880. C 215 3 The Days of a Man Ocd- Our work on the Coast centered naturally in San