IKBIB*

tRARY

ENCES

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,

Class

OF THE

UNIVERSITY

OF

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF

NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE
SHALER

WITH A SUPPLEMENTARY MEMOIR
BY HIS WIFE

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
C&e Etbcwtte JJteaa

1909

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY SOPHIA P. SHALER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published June iqoq

NOTE

The autobiographical part of this volume is given almost exactly
as Mr. Shaler left it on his tablet: one might almost say warm
from his hands; the pencil with which he wrote it having been used
to make the few corrections, — that is, here and there to rewrite a
word that was illegible.

In the preparation of the memoir I gratefully acknowledge the
aid of those kind friends who have furnished a fact, a letter, or a
suggestion, but especially am I indebted to Mr. Ferris Greensletfor
his generous interest and for his literary judgment exercised so
greatly to the profit of the reader ; also to Mr. William R. Thayer,
ever faithful to the memory of his old teacher.

S. P. S.

CONTENTS

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I. MY ANCESTORS AND PARENTS 3

IE. RECOLLECTIONS or CHILDHOOD ...... 26

III. MY DESULTORY EDUCATION 49

IV. FIRST VISITS FROM HOME 66

V. SOME KENTUCKY MAGNATES 71

VI. POLITICAL CLOUDS GATHER 82

VII. I BECOME AGASSIZ'S PUPIL AT HARVARD . . . .90

VIII. SOME COLLEGE COMPANIONS 118

IX. CRUISING AND CAMPING 130

X. AN EXPEDITION TO THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE . . 139

XI. ANTICOSTI AND LABRADOR 150

XII. THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR 170

XIII. MY LAST YEAR AT HARVARD 179

XIV. CAMBRIDGE AND BOSTON CELEBRITIES . . . . 193
XV. OFF TO THE WAR 207

THE MEMOIR

FOREWORD. 1859-1862 ...... .215

XVI. THE WAR. 1862-1867 . ' .219

XVII. WALKS AND TALKS ABROAD. 1866-1868 . . . .228

XVIII. TEACHING AND EXPLORING. 1869-1873 . . . .247

XIX. ENGLAND. 1872-1873 265

XX. FIELD WORK. 1873-1879 . 270

viii CONTENTS

XXL ITALY. 1881-1882 . ...... . 299

XXII. SOME FAMILIAR LETTERS. 1882-1888 ... . .325

XXIII. MINE PROSPECTING AND OTHER EXPERIENCES. 1881-1891 334

XXIV. COUNTRY LIVING 348

XXV. THE TEACHER. 1864^1905 361

XXVI. ADMINISTRATIVE WORK. 1891-1903 386

XXVII. LAST YEARS. 1904-1905 . . . . . . .402

XXVIII. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 412

XXIX. LITERARY WORK 424

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS 447

INDEX 459

ILLUSTRATIONS

NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER. Photogravure Frontispiece

From a photograph by Prof. Charles R. Sanger, 1901

WILLIAM SHALER, Consul of the United States at Algiers, 1815 . 6

RICHARD SOUTHGATE, Mr. Shakr's grandfather .... 18

NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER AS A CHILD 28

From a daguerreotype

MR. SHALER'S EARLY HOME IN NEWPORT, KENTUCKY. . . 44

NATHANIEL BURGER SHALER, Mr. Shakr's father .... 68

MR. SHALER IN 1865 226

GEOLOGIZING IN SILHOUETTE 280

THE QUINCY STREET HOUSE IN CAMBRIDGE . . . . . 344

THE HOUSE AT SEVEN GATES 350

MR. SHALER ON HIS FARM 356

HILLS OF MARTHA'S VINEYARD 360

From an etching by Philip Sawyer

MR. SHALER IN 1894 372

MR. SHALER IN 1900 386

PORTRAIT OP MR. SHALER BY JOSEPH DE CAMP .... 400

Presented to the Harvard Union " in affectionate memory " by the Harvard
Class of 1908

BAS-RELIEF OF MR. SHALER 426

By Leila Usher, 1908

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

CHAPTER I

MY ANCESTORS AND PARENTS

IT is duly recorded in a family Bible, there being then and there
no other means of recording such events, that I was born in the
then village of Newport, Kentucky, on February 20, 1841. I
was the second child of Nathaniel Burger Shaler and Ann Hinde
Southgate, having had an elder brother who died in infancy.
My parents had been married in 1834 ; at the time of my birth
my father was thirty-six years of age and my mother twenty-
five. Three other children survived to maturity, the one early
death apparently having been due to accident.

Although the time when a man comes into the world and
the place where he appears are in certain ways important and
may well begin his story, the really weighty question concerns
his inheritances and the conditions in which they were devel-
oped. That he brings with him something that is in a measure
independent of all his progenitors, a certain individuality which
makes him distinct in essentials from like beings he succeeds,
is true — vastly true ; but the way he is to go is, to a great
extent, shaped by those who sent him his life. I shall, therefore,
do what I can to set forth the nature of the people through
whom I came.

As is usual with Americans, I cannot clearly trace my an-
cestors beyond the sea, or for more than four or five genera-
tions back. On my name side it is fairly certain that the
source was in central England, in the Warwickshire district,
with folk who in the seventeenth century bore the name in the
form of Shayler or Shaylor. Thence they seem to have moved

4 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

to the island of Jamaica, in that time when England thought
to make it a tropical Britain. They did not long remain there,
but removed to Connecticut, where the first of them settled in
Haddam. His descendants remained in that district and became
rather numerous; some abide there to this day. For a time
they seem to have maintained relations with Jamaica, since
it is written that sundry of them were drowned in going to
and fro. They seem to have been farmers with a propensity
for fighting. It is told that they had some share as subalterns
in the small military affairs of that and the following century.
The only sign of peculiar enterprise was the beginning of the
work of quarrying the red sandstone of the Connecticut valley,
which business is credited to my great-great-great-grand-
father.

Some time in the early part of the eighteenth century, my
great-grandfather established himself at Berkenridge New Ferry,
where he seems to have been a considerable landowner. During
the Revolutionary War, he appears to have played a subordi-
nate part as a soldier. He is said to have built the fortifications
at Ocracoke Inlet at his own cost. As with most other families
of that time of divisions, some went with the Rebels and some
stayed with the King. In my youth, that ancient difference
was still well remembered; certain of the clan were looked
down upon, even denied the rights of hospitality, because they
were the grandchildren of the Tories. I remember that when
one of the name came to my father's house to claim kinship,
he had to face a hard questioning about the politics of his
ancestor.

My great-grandfather of Berkenridge died during the Revo-
lutionary War, leaving what in that day and place was a con-
siderable property, and a family of three sons and a daughter.
A faithless trustee made away with the estate, leaving the
children penniless. The lads, for they were all mere children,
seem promptly to have betaken themselves to the sea for a
livelihood, and two of them won to rather distinguished success

THE STORY OF WILLIAM SEALER 5

and were soon able to care for their sister in a dignified way.
Of these brave boys I have the full story of but one, the second
in age, William, whose career was of some eminence, and in
many ways noteworthy. The basis of my information is cer-
tain fragments of his diaries and some printed records of his
service as consul of the United States to the Barbary powers
and at Havana, as well as his published writings, which, though
not extensive, are considerable. While they tell much, there is
evidently much left untold concerning this man, who had a
touch of greatness in him which carried him well through an
adventurous life.

William Shaler was born in 176-. At the age of thirteen he
went to sea on a merchantman. Nine years thereafter, he was
master of a ship which appears to have been engaged in foreign
trade. From the beginning of his career as a seafarer he sup-
ported his sister. He was evidently a zealous student, for he
became a good navigator, and gave himself a fair training in
the classics as well as in French and Arabic. His English is a
model of clearness and simplicity. He seems to have been suc-
cessful as a trading shipmaster, but to have been in some way
involved in the French Revolution. Just what part he took is
not clear. After the close of this episode, he bought a ship in
Copenhagen, provided it with stores for trading, and set forth
with his friend, Cleveland, on a voyage about the world. Their
cruise occupied several years. The story of it is told in Cleve-
land's narrative, a curious, yet forgotten, book. As fitted those
times, the voyage led to diverse adventures, including an im-
prisonment by the Spanish authorities in Chili and the refusal
of Mr. Shaler to go forth from the jail until there was a proper
explanation concerning the reasons why he was put in, and
an apology for the outrage to which he had been subjected.
His exasperation led to a project for arming and leading the
natives of southern Chili and Patagonia against the Spaniards.
To carry out this plan the ship was sailed back to Europe in
order to dispose of its cargo of furs, obtained on the western

6 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

coast of North and South America, and to procure arms. The
plan was chimeric and was not carried out.

We next find William Shaler engaged in government employ-
ment, apparently occupied in watching the actions of the
River Company in the region of the lower Mississippi. While
thus engaged, he recorded certain phenomena connected with
the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811. He was upon a "broad-
horn" boat which was carried some distance upstream by the
reflux of the current due to the widespread subsidence of the
alluvial plains, caused by the shocks and the movement of
the river waters into the depressed areas. His steadiness under
disturbance and his aptitude for seeing clearly at such times is
well shown in his narrative of the event.

The most interesting part of William Shaler's life was the
period when he was the consul of the United States at Algiers,
to which post he was appointed by President Madison in 1815.
At that time the Dey was still the "scourge of Christendom."
Nothing so well shows the gain in the power of civilization as the
fact that a century ago those malignant despots were allowed,
as they had been since the Middle Ages, to exact tribute from
all the maritime powers of Europe, to ravage their commerce
and enslave their citizens captured on the high seas. At this
moment there is sitting at Algeciras a convention of the civil-
ized states to take action concerning the internal affairs of the
last of the Mahometan states on the African shore. Now, as of
old, it is not the strength of the petty despotism that limits
action, but the rivalries and suspicions of the Western Powers
and the fear of trouble with the Mussulman world.

When William Shaler went to Algiers as consul-general to the
Barbary States, in effect as minister of his government, the
Dey was still the insolent despot he had been for centuries.
It is told that Mr. Shaler at his presentation at court, break-
ing through the ancient rule that the representatives of the
Christian governments should come barefooted and uncovered
before the monarch, made his appearance in jack-boots, with

WILLIAM SHALER

THE STORY OF WILLIAM SHALER 7

pistols in his belt. In this guise he was received, and by his fear-
lessness he acquired a good deal of influence over the tyrant.
Another example of his steady quality is given in the account
of Abercrombie's bombardment of Algiers, where the landing
parties, when the guns of the Algerines had been silenced
and the water-front of the town was in ruins, found him at
dinner in his arbor, he having compelled his servants to serve
him through the action.

At the end of his service as consul-general, William Shaler,
disgusted with the state of affairs in the principality, went to
France and had much to do in persuading the French to invade
and occupy the country, acting as the adviser of that govern-
ment in its plans for the expedition, particularly in the opera-
tions which led to the capture of Algiers. For this service he
received and refused the offer of a sum of money said to have
been the equivalent of a hundred thousand dollars. Of his long
residence in Algeria he left, as records, his sketches of Algiers
and an account of the government, — both worthy essays,
which show him to have had a certain observing power. He
left behind him a memory of good service which is recorded
by a tablet in the Episcopal Church at Algiers, placed there by
those who never saw him but knew by tradition of his quality.

After his experience with the Algerines, William Shaler
turned again to business with the sea, and, as seemed to be
recurrent with him, made and lost much money, but saved out
of the wreck enough to provide well for his sister and other
dependents of the younger generation. His life ended as consul
at Havana in 1832, where he died of cholera. When the end
was near, he sent away his secretary and other attendants,
telling them they needed their rest and that they could attend
to his body in the morning. When they came back they found
his body lying straight in shape for the grave. He was of the
quality that dares to die alone in the dark.

The second son of this household seems to have been a dare-
devil ne'er-do-well, who wound up an adventurous career as a

8 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

prisoner of war at Dartmoor in England, where he was shot
leading a revolt against the jailers. Captives were not well
treated in those days, and by all accounts those at Dartmoor
fared hardly. The stories I heard in my youth of this man indi-
cate that he was a person of ability but with little worth noting
except a certain reckless valor.

The third of his generation, my father's father, like his
brother William took to the sea when he was a lad and soon
rose to the command of his own ship and just before the War
of 1812 was a prosperous merchant dwelling in New York City.
As the embargo and the war ruined him, he turned privateer,
and in a succession of vessels was fortunate in his plundering
work, so that he in a measure recouped his losses. The last of
these vessels that he commanded was built for fast sailing and
was for a time very successful in overhauling East Indiamen.
From the many printed accounts of his adventures and from his
letters, he appears to have been a man of courage, who kept
his head in peril, and was withal of a simple generous nature.
One of his letters tells of the bravery of certain black men
among his crew who had been his slaves before they shipped.
At the end of three years of this legalized buccaneering, Captain
Shaler's ship vanished from the sea. To explain the disap-
pearance there is the story of some East Indiamen sailing
together for protection who were set upon by an American
ship: at the outset of the attack came a squall, and when it
cleared away the privateer was not to be seen. It is supposed
that she "sailed under," which is made probable by the form of
canvas she carried and the shape of her bows.

I have seen but one man who remembered my great-grand-
father. He recalled him as a stately person who had very good
horses in his carriage. Another remembered my grandfather as
a very gentle man, with a delicate, womanish face, one side of
which was blackened with gunpowder, as my informant said,
from an adversary's pistol in a "boarding" fight. Of my great-
uncle William Shaler I have had accounts from several persons,

GREAT-AUNT ABIGAIL STILWELL 9

especially from the late George Ticknor, well remembered as the
historian of Spanish literature, who knew him and bore his
memory in high esteem. These agree in that they all described
him as a singularly impressive personality of a great dauntless
aspect, but at heart lovable.

Only one of that generation, the sister, Abigail Stilwell, lived
to my day. Her brother William had established her in a
rather stately place in Lancaster, Massachusetts, with her three
children and the four left by his brother the privateer captain.
Thereto I went in 1855 as a lad of fourteen years, in company
with my father on his first return to his childhood home, after
an absence of a quarter of a century. My great-aunt was then
a venerable woman, over eighty years of age, and of a singular
dignity, it may well be said splendor, of shape and manner.
She was six feet in height, perfectly erect, clad in black silkA
capped with a tall white turban, and armed with a gold snuff-
box, to which she much resorted. I had seen several great
dames of the Virginia stamp and have beheld them since in
many lands, but none of them compared with that woman. I \
recall even now the fear of her which even her great kindness in \
no wise cleared away. She belonged to a variety, apparently
now extinct, in which the sense of personal dignity and authority
shaped the life. It is characteristic of this remarkable woman
that she was found dead sitting upright in her chair with her
snuff-box in her hand.

I remember that I was curiously interested in observing that
my father, whom I had never seen awed by any one, was visibly
cowed in the presence of his aunt; he seemed, indeed, almost
as much in fear of her as I was myself. I also recall in the days
of that visit much talk on the part of my great-aunt of matters
which dated back to my father's youth ; also of her trials with a
certain Frenchwoman then dead, who had been entangled in
the life of her brother William, and whom she had taken over
with the rest of his estate. These family stories attracted me
less than did the house and grounds of the old place. The dwell-

10 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

ing was a rather massive brick structure, in large grounds
sloping to the Nashua River. I recall that the doors were of
mahogany and the hinges plated with silver. Since then the
dwelling has been burned, and the grounds sold to the state
for the use of a school. The considerable library of William
Shaler, which seemed to my eyes very fine, — in fact, as I
know from competent persons, was rich in the old standard
editions of the classics, — went to the Boston Public Library.

My great-aunt had four children : a daughter Elizabeth, then
recently dead, had been married to an interesting fellow who
bore the name of David Stuart, a very attractive Scot who
claimed to be of kingly blood and looked it thoroughly, but was
otherwise rather worthless; there had been three sons, but one
was killed in the Texan battle of San Jacinto. Another was a
physician in Sag Harbor, New York; and the third, Elias
Millard Stilwell, was yet with his mother, at the end of varie-
gated experiments in the art of existing beautifully. Since my
father and Elias Stilwell were double cousins, they were nearer
akin than ordinary cousins german, and singularly alike in
appearance. This likeness is indeed curiously common in those
of my name stock, even when the common ancestor is four
or five generations back. Partly for this reason, we soon came
near to one another in spirit ; furthermore he had an eminent
capacity for saying things aptly. In fact, he had the greatest
capacity for phrasing I have ever known in a man who was too
lazy and contentious to acquire any fair semblance of an edu-
cation. As a young man, he had been sent to West Point, but
found a speedy exit because he thrashed one of his instructors.
From France, where he went as clerk, he fought his way home
again. Put to like work in this country, he had ended a brief
career on a newspaper beating the life out of a man who had
assailed him for some well-merited criticism. A curious thing
about his troubles was that he attributed them all to his shy-
ness, his inability to come into normal contact with men, which
led him when in any way assailed to turn demon. I see him now

A WASTED LIFE 11

as he would in his confidences wail to me of this curse of bash-
fulness, with the tears streaming down his face of old bronze.
He was fit but for one business, that of the hunter and fisher-
man, and he found in middle life a suitable place as game com-
missioner in the state of Maine. In his declining years, I often
visited him there, and had my pay in his comments on men and
things as good in their way as Thomas Carlyle's. I have seen
many wasted lives, but none where as much natural capacity
as his was fruitless. As with many other self-indulgent men, x
his interests became in the end limited to the sports of hunting
and fishing — activities which call on the primitive motives of
men, and in a mature person indicate a degradation of the
civilizing motives. So passionately was he devoted to such
business, that he warned me that he would not make me heir
to his property unless I would go with him for a month in search
of salmon. I felt that the price of my refusal was not overmuch
to pay.

My father had two brothers and a sister. The eldest brother,
William, I never saw : he was a well-educated man, having been
trained at the University of Upsala in Sweden, and in other
European schools, at the cost of his uncle the consul. There
was evidently a tincture of worthlessness in him, for with ability,
a fine presence, and perfect health he died without leaving any
sign of quality. The other brother showed a like inability to
face the world. I knew him about my father's house when I was
a lad, and found him a penetrating intelligence, a mind of a
distinctly philosophic power, but hampered by indolence and
self-indulgence. The sister, my aunt, though inheriting much
of the presence of her aunt Abigail, had not her commanding
character. She was married to a dominating brute who crushed
out the considerable talent which was in her.

I have now to describe my father, who was a very singular
man. I foresee that I shall not be able to set him forth in his
true quality. Born in 1803, he was but a lad when his mother
died of grief for her vanished husband. There was money enough

12 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

to give him a good education ; so he was sent to school in Lan-
caster, Massachusetts, where he was lodged in the establishment
which his uncle had prepared for those of his generation.
Thence he went, as all the boys were intended to go, to Harvard
College, where he entered the class of 1827. Although he had a
large measure of ability, he was only moderately successful in
his studies. Yet he gained and kept to old age a fair knowledge
of Latin and Greek and of mineralogy as it was then taught.
His combative humor led him into trouble with his teachers;
he therefore withdrew at the beginning of his last year, and
went to the Medical School, where he had as preceptors Drs.
Channing and Jackson and was much influenced by Dr. Warren.
In this school my father was successful ; for he had a distinct
aptitude for the tasks of a physician, and for a part of his life
was devoted to his profession. After graduating, — the course
was then a small affair, with most of the training given by pre-
ceptors, — he went to Havana, where his uncle was consul,
with the intention of making his career in that place. He ap-
pears to have been successful as a practitioner and to have accu-
mulated some money. But his combative motive was still upon
him, and in two years he started in search of some other spot
"to locate" in. This he found as by chance in Newport, Ken-
tucky, then a little village with no educated physician and with
the Asiatic cholera upon it. His success with this disease, due
to his resourcefulness and intrepidity, quickly gave him place
among the people. He there married in 1832 Anne Southgate,
my mother, and ceased his wanderings.

I first distinctly remember my father when he was about forty-
five years of age. He was then of a singularly noble aspect. I
recollect thinking at the time that the only other man to com-
pare with him was Robert E. Lee, whom I first saw at about
that time, — who had a like nobility of form and carriage,
though my father was much the more powerful man. Six feet
and an inch high, weighing about two hundred pounds, straight
limbed, with regular Roman features and with a certain majesty

HIS FATHER 13

of carriage, he has always remained with me as the type of what
the shape of man should be. Though I have seen many the
world about, I have never seen a better. When I came as a
youth to Harvard, I found that the memory of his form abided
not only with his classmates but with many of the common
people, — as well as his propensity for fighting. The only trace
of a physical defect was near-sightedness, which was not con-
siderable enough to require the use of glasses ; he did not indeed
use them to the end of his life. Otherwise his body seemed per-
fect. He had been well trained in fencing and boxing, and he
was a good horseman and an expert swimmer. Of his fighting
habit, for which he had an unhappy reputation in his youth, I
recall but one instance, when a huge negro sprang at him knife
in hand ; he struck the man one blow which threw him into a
heap. Lad though I was, I still remember the change in the
situation when my father in a moment was upon the fellow to
see the measure of his hurts.

As regards the qualities of his spirit, my father was absolutely,
almost brutally honest and straightforward, morally clean with
no trace of vice or even bad habits except that he smoked
tobacco in moderation. His intelligence was acute, though in-
tellectual matters aside from natural science did not interest
him. Indeed nothing interested him greatly; he seemed quite
destitute of constructive imagination, and though in some meas-
ure enjoying poetry, never cared to read it except to seek a
quotation. His talk related generally to superficial matters;
when the conversation led to the deeps he would after mayhap
a word or two, which often showed a singularly penetrating
intelligence, leap back, as if affrighted, to the commonplace.
In his medical practice he was successful in difficult cases, those
which aroused his combativeness, and often very clever in ruses
to gain his ends. Thus I have known him to help a stout man
on the verge of a collapse in Asiatic cholera, by reviling him as a
coward until the fellow's rage helped the reaction. Again, when
a woman who was sinking needed in like manner to be aroused,

14 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

he became interested in a supposititious dog-fight which he
seemed to see from the window, hurried away to observe it, and
shortly returned to find her in a fair way to recovery because of
her indignation. In surgery he was dexterous. I have seen him
when about sixty years of age remove an iron filing from a
workman's eye with the point of a common needle, and this
without glasses. His hand was as steady as it was nimble.

During a large part of my father's life he was employed by the
government as surgeon at Newport Barracks. This was a con-
venient place whereto were forwarded the sick soldiers from a
wide area. Especially during the Civil War it was a kind of
dumping ground for the obstinate cases sent in from the field
hospitals ; yet, as I have been credibly informed, the proportion
of recoveries was larger than in any other hospital of that time.
His success was in great measure due to his distrust of remedies
and his confidence in the use of tents, nutrition, and cheerful-
ness. He was among the first to put aside the singular custom
of blood-letting, not having used the lancet after 1832. When
Surgeon-General Hammond issued his order concerning the use
of calomel in the army hospitals, he offered to return all the
supplies of that drug which he had received, unopened.

My father had capacities for the making of a great physician
and surgeon, yet for thirty years he remained content with a
common village and country practice and that which the bar-
racks afforded ; with a capacity as great as I have ever seen for
breaking new ground he left it untilled. The reason for this was
an ineradicable indolence of spirit, a sense that nothing in this
world was really worth striving for ; there might be things worth
doing because there was immediate duty in them, but it was not
worth while seeking for duties not thrust upon him. There was
money enough, which came through my mother, for comfort-
able living, so why should he strive? The Civil War roused him
strongly. He went security for the first thousand muskets
which came into the hands of the Kentucky Unionists, and
sacrificed much for the cause in many ways, in friendships as

HIS FATHER 15

well as in money : this at the outset, but with the advance of the
war his interest in it as in all else gradually flagged — nothing
held him permanently.

As I look back on him, I discern ever more clearly what I saw
in a measure in his lifetime, a mark of the commonplace pre-
sented to the world, behind which the large-natured, able per-
sonality was well hidden even from himself. It was an instance
of what I have found in many, found even in myself when the
consciousness seems to be abnormally limited, when only a
small and the lesser part of the intelligence comes into its illu-
mination, the greater part remaining in the dark. It was my
father's ideal to be a stoic, to put aside all things spiritual, to
regard emotions and the speculations to which they lead as
signs of weakness. His good measure of will power united with
his lethargic humor enabled him to thrust back all the offerings
of his spirit and to keep himself in the ordinary matters of
every-day life.

After he was sixty years old my father gave up reading, and
in a great measure withdrew from the small world of his activi-
ties. It was his wont to sit for hours looking out of the window,
but evidently withdrawn from what passed before his sight. If
brought back by a sudden question, he would sometimes reveal
by a word or two that he had been far away on some specula-
tion, but he would at once hide the trail of it with some com-
monplace remark. So far as I can remember, but once or
twice in my contacts with him the deeps broke through the
well-constructed barrier and revealed a part of what was
habitually hidden. After those chance revelations he became
at once more obstinately trivial than before, as if to protest
against the momentary enlargement of his better but most
artfully concealed self. Since I was often near him until he
died in 1882, I had a chance to see the strange workings of
his complex personality, and to form the opinion that the basis
of the suppression of his better part was an intense shyness,
amounting to an incapacity to reveal himself, with the result

16 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

that what was apparent in him was a mere screen contrived to
hide the inner man. This shamefaced motive is in some measure
so common among men that it is almost a human characteristic.
We generally mask the best that is in us and find our modesty
offended if we are found out. But my father's case was a most
striking instance of this passion, for this solitude of the soul,
combined with a lethargic quality, kept him from playing the
part in the world for which his hidden capacities prepared him.
He died in consequence of a fall, in the eightieth year of his age,
after having apparently completely recovered from a ten years'
siege of diabetes, his admirable body having won the fight with
the disease.

So far as my limited knowledge goes, none of the collateral
strains of blood on my father's side gave any strength to his
stock. They appear to have been of pure English origin, with
an intermixture of Welsh and a cross of Hollandish, which came
from Van Dykes, some few generations before my own. On his
mother's side, there seems to have been a breed of a placid
quality, indolent, and with a tendency for the men to waste
their lives and squander their estates.

My mother's family, the Southgates, shows in the five genera-
tions known to me much less evidence of capacity than my
father's. Yet there is some sign of ability among them, and
many of them were interesting people. The name of Southgate
comes from the sunny side of London : it is said that the name
is from the place. From all I can learn, these sunny-siders have
long been a good kind of rather small folk. One or two of them
have come to some intellectual station as clergymen; one, by
the given name of Henry, as a very minor poet. From that stock
which came to Virginia in the early part of the eighteenth cen-
tury was Wright Southgate, my great-grandfather, who became
a successful merchant and planter, amassing a share of wealth.
He seems to have been a man of intellectual quality, for he was
enlisted in the schemes of Thomas Jefferson and gave liberally to
further them. He married a Miss Lush of Albany, New York,

HIS MATERNAL ANCESTORS 17

and had by her a son Richard, my grandfather, who being of a
scholarly turn was sent to William and Mary College. When
summoned thence to take his share in the management of his
father's business, the young man rebelled and announced his
intention of studying law. This was displeasing to the mer-
chant father, who set great store by his ships and his shops, of
which the principal was in Richmond, where the old Spottis-
wood Hotel stood. The young man and the old were alike
obdurate ; so they parted. The time was about 1790 ; the tide
of life was flooding to the West, and it bore my grandfather
with it. He had read law with the help of W [name illegible]
and other able jurists, though he was but a youth when he came
to Kentucky and after a time settled down in Campbell County,
which then included what is now a number of counties in
northern Kentucky. He was too late for the last chance of
acquiring land of the best quality by the simple process
that came to those who entered the country in the first
twenty-five years of the colonization; so he had to set about
his winning in the less desirable but still excellent fields near
the Ohio, rather than in the marvellously fertile region about
Lexington.

Though a late-comer, my grandfather was laborious and
thrifty. He practised law with great success, took land for his
fees, bought discerningly, and in sixty years amassed what was
for the time and place a great fortune. Though he had given
largely to his many children, and supported a host of imprudent
kindred, his estate was valued at his death, in 1868, at a million
and a half dollars, there being at that time probably not half a
dozen such successes in the Ohio valley. All this gain was made
not only honestly, but in a generous way. He was a good land-
lord ; he deterred no man who tried to do his part, and even of
ne'er-do-wells who swarmed about him all his days, he was
wont to say that "the good will of a cur is better than his ill
will." The worst comment he ever was known to make of any
man was that he was "a pestiferous fellow."

18 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

When I first remember my grandfather, in 1846, he was about
sixty-five years of age. His appearance and quality even then
made a strong impression on me ; thereafter until he died, for the
twelve most impressionable years I was much with him, and he
influenced me greatly. I was nearer to him than any other of
his thirty or more grandchildren, partly because he was pecu-
liarly attached to my mother, and partly because I was the only
one of the lot by nature in sympathy with his strangely delicate
quality, his abiding interest in literature, and his keen insight
into men. In his aspect and manner Richard Southgate was an
excellent sample of the old, long- vanished class of Virginia gen-
tlemen. He was a small person, or at least so appeared among
a folk who tended to hugeness of body. He was the last of the
folk in his part of the world to hold to the "pig-tail/' queue
arrangement of his hair, which was always carefully braided
and tied with a bit of ribbon, so that the end of it hung between
his shoulders. Toward the end of his life he disused the small-
clothes and stockings which were the fit accompaniment of the
queue, but he kept to the buckled shoes and the round cloak of
the ancient costume. His face, — with the white hair strained
back like a girl's to her braid, — delicate, regularly featured,
and smooth shaven, had a womanish look; but the keen alert
eyes had all of a man's strength in them. Up to his death, in
his eighty-third year, his face kept an unusual share of its
youthful quality.

In his quality, Richard Southgate curiously united the
efficiency of an adroit business man with an abiding ever-
present interest in the other side of human affairs; in history
and literature he was well read and abounded in judgments.
He had the reputation of being little given to charity. My
father, who was none too sympathetic with him, told me a
story which well illustrates his curious ways of dealing with
those about him. A tipsy teamster, one of the carriers who in
the time before railways transported goods from the Ohio into
the back country, while drunk, drove his horses into the river,

RICHARD SOUTHGATE

RICHARD SOUTHGATE 19

where they with the wagon were swept away and lost. An effort
was made to raise a subscription to help the fellow out of his
difficulties. My grandfather not only refused to give any money
for this purpose, but dismissed the idea for the reason that it
publicly approved the man's drunken ways. The subscription
failed, yet to the surprise of the neighborhood the man was
supplied with four horses and a wagon. It was found out that
Richard Southgate had contrived in a round-about way, at his
own cost, to make good the loss. By this adroit device he stuck
to his principles of not rewarding negligence and his axiom of
"not letting your right hand know what your left does." I
should like to tell far more of this interesting man, but some-
thing of his unusual ways will be set forth in the slender per-
sonal narrative of my youth.

I have been unable to find anything concerning the collateral
ancestors on my grandfather's side. What he had of distinction
appears to have come through his father from the old country ;
though through his wife, my maternal grandmother, there came
an interesting group of inheritances. This woman was evidently
a person of more than usual fineness of character. She died of
cholera ten years before I was born, but her name lived after,
so that as a lad, going about in a wide range of northern and
central Kentucky, I found a welcome as her grandchild, and a
warm place in the hearts of all sorts of people whom she had
cheered and befriended in the days when as the throng from
Virginia to the frontier were coming in there was need of mutual
help. She must have been a woman of uncommon vigor, for she
was the efficient mistress of a great household, one that held
many slaves, and a host of poor kin, who swarmed upon any
successful pioneers who had made a place in the new land. She
seems to have thought nothing of horseback journeys of fifty
or a hundred miles to help those who needed her cheer.

The qualities which made my grandmother a large figure in
her time and place, came from her father, Dr. John Hinde, a
London man, long a surgeon in the British navy, who in middle

20 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

age, with some little fortune to waste, settled in Virginia. In
the course of his service he was with Wolfe at the capture of
Quebec, and in the well-known picture of the hero's death, John
Hinde is figured as the surgeon who seeks to aid him. I recall
the account of an unsuccessful effort to recover a family por-
trait loaned to Benjamin West for use in his picture. John
Hinde first appears in the family traditions as a merry if not a
dissipated person, who gave more attention to riding after
foxes and other follies than to his business as planter and coun-
try doctor, or to his growing family. His wife, who was born a
Hubbard, seems also to have been rather a worldly person. But
in the great wave of the religious revival which led to Method-
ism, the wife " experienced religion." Her husband, it is related,
and I have seen an account of the incident in print, judged the
symptoms as indicating trouble in her brain, and applied a fly
blister to the back of her neck. When he came to dress the
blister he had a like experience, which from all accounts must
have been a striking visitation ; for the man was at once changed
in all his habits of thought and action. He became a deeply
religious person, giving up his life to charitable work, going up
and down the land as a physician and surgeon who took no pay.
It is said that he was wont to pray at every bedside for the
Lord's blessing on the help he sought to give. The accounts I
have had of the few persons who remembered John Hinde make
it clear that he was a singularly attractive person. His access
of piety having left him if anything merrier than before it came,
he went to the end of his life, at near one hundred years, in a
frolicsome relation with his Maker. When he came to die, his
last act was to feel the pulse of his wife, who was then a woman
of ninety, and to tell her that they would have to be apart for
some years.

Of the children of John Hinde I saw but one, a daughter — a
widow whom I remember as Aunt C , a most gracious pre-
sence. She was entirely blind, but her fine eyes were not clouded
nor had her face taken on the impassive look so common when

HIS MOTHER 21

the sight has long been lost. She was always happy, a cheer to
the fireside she adorned. I recall her love of children and the
devotion to her of the negro servants, her attendants, whose
services gave a certain stateliness to her life. I well remember
her habit of smoking a single pipeful of tobacco in the evening,
the bowl made of corn-cob and the stem of reed. It is the only
instance in which I ever saw a woman of station use tobacco,
except as snuff. Even in these modern days I have not en-
countered such, though I am told that it is common enough in
some societies. My great-aunt explained to me that it was the
custom of old ladies in her youth.

My grandfather had four sons and three daughters who came
to mature age. Of these but one showed evidence of effective
capacity, William Southgate, a lawyer, who made a consider-
able reputation as a popular speaker and a wit : he was for some
time a member of Congress. He was singularly loved by the
people, and with his good share of capacity should have made
for himself a large place in political life, but he came to a pre-
mature end. Another brother, Henry, also famed as a wit, — a
very Yorick in his humor, — commanded the love of men and
women, but went the same rapid way. These brothers, with
their rare charm, their trains of admiring followers, and their
swift exit, made a great impression on my childish mind. From
the social point of view they were essentially unlike anything
our race breeds in this day. Their manners and mode of thought
were those of the Stuart times, when men felt the life of their
neighbors, and dwelt in their hearts.

I begin my memory of my mother when I was about five years
old. Strangely enough, there are at least three of the slaves of the
household whose faces were enduringly printed on my mind
before my mother's found its place there. As with this, the first
deliberate review I have ever made of my threescore years of
memory, I recall my mother's qualities, it becomes clear to me
that through her came the most of good and the least of evil of
my life. For through her, probably more remotely through her

22 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

mother and her grandfather, John Hinde, came that simple
interest in my fellow human beings and a sense of duty to them,
which she so eminently possessed. In person, as I recall her at
the age of thirty, she was, with only moderate beauty, very at-
tractive from her noble motherliness. She inherited from the
Hinde stock the very English quality which came to perhaps half
the descendants of the merry doctor; the characteristics which
are summed up in the typical squire — that solid simplicity
which is the foundation of all the best in the stock. Though
blessed with a good mind, my mother was singularly without
intellectual interests. She inherited nothing of her father's
quick, wide-ranging intelligence ; all her care, and it was great,
went to her household, her numerous kindred, and her limited
circle of friends. Her excellent, unbreakable judgment and keen
discernment never penetrated beyond this seemingly narrow
field which she made by her activities a great realm. Now and
then a flash of intelligence showed that she had large possibili-
ties of thought which in other social conditions would have
awakened, but which were effectively repressed by the narrow-
ing quality of the life of the time and place.

This task of sketching my ancestry is in some ways the most
difficult that I have ever undertaken. To set forth what is
germane without touching on what is essentially private, or
perhaps is not illustrative, is hard to effect in a way to give the
result any value. The writer essentially finds that the nearer he
comes to his own time the greater his limitations ; for whatever
be his regard for history, he must have a thought for those now
living, who may be offended by over-much detail concerning
those who share with him in the lives he is depicting. I am glad
to say that there is nothing in all I know of the direct and col-
lateral kinship of my line, which I can fairly well trace for an
average of six generations, that needs be hidden. In all the host
there is not one, so far as I have learned, who has ever been
connected or even charged with other vice than fighting in a
fair kind of a way. There has been no instance of insanity or

INHERITANCES 23

idiocy in the direct or collateral kindred. There has been some
drunkenness in the collaterals, but, so far as I have been able to
learn, none in the direct ascendants. So, too, they have been
spared the more terrible maladies. In my large kinship there is
no trace of cancer or tuberculosis. My father, who was curious
in such matters, and had so far as possible informed himself
concerning the diseases of my stock, told me that he believed
that those ills had never visited any of my kindred, except in
the case of one cousin, who inherited consumption from her
mother, who was not of my blood. I have never known of any
kindred who were deformed : they have often enough been good-
for-nothing, but their shapes testify to wholesome physical in-
heritances.

So far as I can judge what I have from my ancestors comes
mainly from my mother's side of my house. I am evidently""}
nearer akin in spirit to Richard Southgate than to any other of !
my forbears. His eager interest in men and things, his skill in I
memorizing, his love of the land and desiring of it, his taste for
literature, especially for poetry, were clearly sent on to me.
From my father's side I inherit a combativeness which curiously
contends with the eminently peaceful humor which came through
the Southgates, who were disinclined to any kind of warfare.
Even before his people came to this country to settle, they
appear in tradition as buccaneers on the Spanish Main; but
among the Southgates of the direct line, or in my collateral
ancestors of that side, I have not been able to learn of a soldier.
As a whole, none of my ancestry ever came near to greatness,
yet they sent on to me a good inheritance of sufficiency, both of
body and of mind. The best of these gifts has been a capacity
for an intense interest in tasks without much reference to per-
sonal comfort in doing them, along with a power for keeping at
work, whatever might be the discouragement from illness or
ill-success, and also a certain unconscious talent for seeing the
situations in which I have been involved as parts of the whole
of actions — a talent that may be termed the historic sense in

24 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

immediate application; so that my doings, though of no great
account in themselves, have been curiously, related to large
affairs. For this quality I am most indebted to my father's
family ; it was not manifested in him, but somewhat in his father,
and especially in his uncle William, there was the capacity for
thought in action combined with that full share of will which
carries purposes to their end.

In the foregoing pages I have briefly sketched the story of my
ancestral life so far as it is known to me. I am aware of the fact
that the history of even six generations does not provide an ade-
quate background for a judgment as to the inheritances of an in-
dividual ; for the reason that while we do not yet know for how
long characteristics may remain latent, it is evident from the
history of human stocks that they may inhere though they be
not manifested for many generations. There is, however, a fair
presumption that when half a dozen stages of a life are fairly
well known, they afford a tolerable basis for reckoning as to
what comes to the last stage in the way of birthright. What
else there may be, can in some indefinite measure — if indeed
the term measure can be applied to it — be charged to the ac-
count of personal quality and incentive. It is evidently impos-
sible to determine the share of the individual in his actions.
Some naturalists hold that he has none at all; but this is a
preposterous view, because it not only denies human experience
in the face of action, but it gives no room for the advance in.the
series such as has, so far as we can discern, come about through
ffielpersonal incentive which appears to be characteristic of all
organic forms. In my own case, the best analysis that I have
been able to make indicates that all my intellectual capacities
and emotional trends have reached me from my ancestors in the
same way and about as dominatingly as my bodily parts. The
use I have made of these transmittenda, the extent to which
they have been developed, and especially their continuation in
the whole of a life, are the results of that fundamental mystery,
the individual will, controlled by and controlling the condi-

THE INDIVIDUAL WILL 25

tions which have helped to shape it. I am disposed to give to
this personal power a value quite as great as to that shadowy
domination that comes to me from the past : believing, indeed,
that what I am in relation to myself and my fellows is far more
my own than it is my ancestors'. What they sent me limited
the bounds of my little part of the great field; what I have done
in that field is my own.

CHAPTER II

RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD

/ V

I TURN now to the story of my own life, my own motives, and
the environment of nature and men that shaped them. I foresee
\ that the account will have to be somewhat jumbled and con-
fused, for the reason that every life is a compound of what is
within and what is without the personal quality and of the sur-
roundings which shaped impulses and gave them chance of
action.

Although my ancestors were wholesome in body and mind, I
was at birth and through my youth rather weakly. The trouble
seems to have been with the nervous system leading to imper-
fect digestion, so that in childhood I was what is called deli-
cate. The pictures of me and the descriptions from my elders
show up to twelve years of age a slender, retarded shape, with a
pale face and rather frightened look. After that came a rapid
growth, which led to a fair measure of bodily strength and re-
active forces. The main point is that in the years that mould
the man I was, because of innate weakness, left almost without
schooling and with no other education than what came from con-
tact with my surroundings. Up to that age I could barely read
and write. In a dame school, kept by an ancient spinster, to
which I was sent from time to time when I was well enough, I
learned nothing and was regarded as a dunce. The fact seems
to have been that in the bad air of the crowded little room my
life wilted at once. Various tokens, especially the rough talk
of the slaves of the household, led me to understand that I was
not expected to live beyond childhood. I recall that this im-
pression was not at all painful to me, for my weakness and the
consequent isolation from other children made me a rather
intense pessimist for one of my small size.

FIRST MEMORIES 27

My first memories are of a negro woman who was my nurse;
the image of her is clear, though I could not have been more
than three years old when it was formed, for I remember being
much carried about in her strong arms. She was a large, well-
shaped negress; something of her good face and dear soul is
now before me. There are three other black faces which were
printed on my memory before I find that of my mother. It is
probably on this account that the African face has always been
dear to me. It still seems, as it surely is, the more normal human
face, that of our own kind appearing in a way exceptional. My
father's face, though it was very striking, does not appear in
my recollections until later, — until the time when I was five
years old, — and none others seen before I was seven or eight
abide with me.

Because I came just after the first-born died, and because I
was frail, I was very tenderly cared for. Until I was five or six
years old I had no playmates whom I remember. It is evident
that I was for a time somewhat coddled, but there was probably
need of unusual care to bring me through a troubled childhood.
What scraps of memory I have of that time curiously do not re-
late to the house in which we dwelt, but to the open country
whereto I went often on horseback with my father, to the Ohio
River, a dear mystery, fearful yet enchanting, and to the gov-
ernment post a few hundred feet from my father's door, where
with my nurse I spent the most of my days. The first recollec-
tion I have except of the few persons mentioned, is of the parade
ground and the soldiers, above all of the music and the bugle
calls. Those notes are so embedded in me that they seem a part
of my substance and strangely move me to this far-off day. The
earliest trace of any kind of activity that I recall is an advent-
ure with the musician who beat the great drum of the barracks
band. It was my delight to see the band march around the
parade ground, and my cherished ambition to have a whack at
the drum. So, craftily, stick in hand, I hid behind a boxed tree
and managed to get in a stroke, only to be bowled over by the

28 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

irate drummer. I could not have been more than four years old
at the time, yet the delight of that deed stays by me.

When I was about five, the musterings for the Mexican War
were going on, and the barracks were over-filled, so that con-
siderable hordes of troops were encamped in the open fields
which adjoined it. On those fields, then pastures, one of the
horse batteries, I believe Ringgold's, was for some time drilled.
I was then exempt from the care of a nurse and could run about
afoot or on a pony. The movements of this command filled my
little soul with wonder; there I gained my first sense of the
power of men in action, that primitive might of war which
impresses the primitive child and childish man as nothing else
does. I well remember my longing for the unapproachable
splendor of the commander of that battery, who seemed to me
a supernatural being. Oddly enough, fifteen years thereafter I
was in his place drilling a horse battery on the same field, to
find it tedious drudgery, with moments of high life when by
chance the work went well.

The newspaper reports of the battles in Mexico read aloud by
my mother to the household made a great and enlarging im-
pression on me. Though I could not read, I had the ability to
understand a map, and I made a poor stagger at a description
of the country over which the troops passed on their way to
Mexico and of their movements in that country. As I had seen
many of the officers and sundry of the commands on their way
to the front, I had food for imagination, and of it I built a host
of pictures of imaginary events. For two or three years about
all the thoughts of my waking hours and all my dreams were
of war or fighting of some kind. The interest was aroused at an
even earlier time, for I remember my eagerness on court days to
see from near by the brutal contests between the tipsy country-
men in the Court-House yard. So too, I recall, when about five
years old, being in the midst of a riot on a race-track half a mile
from my home — people in the judge's stand shooting down at
a mob which was assailing them. While in the delight of the

NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER AS A CHILD

PLAYING WAP, 29

situation, for my dream of war was realized, I was caught up on
the shoulders of a sturdy slave and carried home. This treat-
ment remains the humiliation of my life.

As I had no playmates who satisfied my fancy of what a play-
mate should be, my time was passed in playing alone. As war
was in my heart it expressed itself in endlessly building fortifi-
cations of clay and arming them with guns laboriously made
of keys, the wheels cut from spools, and the rest of the carriages
whittled as best I could do. The old-fashioned large hollow key,
with the hole a third of an inch in diameter, properly managed
with a file, can be concocted into a miniature cannon which will
"go off." My ambition not satisfied with these small affairs, I
filched a pair of horse pistols from my father's office, razeed them
with the file, and with no end of well-concealed labor done in
my hiding-place in a barn, converted them into rather pretty
diminutive field-pieces which were able to do real damage. My
father, who had a fancy for developing new varieties of melons,
had a new patch with sundry fine specimens nearly ripe. On
these I turned my guns with such effect that they were all shat-
tered.

Although I had no constant playmates in these years of imag-
inary war, I did not feel the need of them because my imaginary
companions were numerous, and much more to my taste than
the lads with whom I might have associated. They were all
much older than myself, all for a time soldiers, great heroes
who admitted me most graciously to share their mighty deeds,
with the implicit understanding that I should not tell any one
about it all. To have an ordinary, commonplace boy, even if he
were years older than myself, imposed on this heroic society
was revolting. So I played in company with an unseen host, as
many children do, and got thereby much enjoyment.

It must not be supposed that because I lived in imaginary
war I was naturally a brave lad ; far from it. Up to my twelfth
year I was absurdly timid. Alongside of this dream of war there
dwelt a world of fear of the dark, of all beyond the field of view,

30 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

of men and beasts, even of lads no bigger than myself. I doubt
if a child ever suffered from immediate senseless fear as I did,
while my whole soul was given to warlike projects. What I have
seen in later life leads me to believe that this is a common human
condition, and that the grown men who glory in the images of
war are led thereto by their sense of their own timidity. This
seems the likelier from an incident which ended my youthful
dreams of battle. It has a certain psychologic interest and it is
the first distinct turning-point in my mental state. So, though
in itself a trifle, it needs be told.

Until I was about twelve years old, I was so far possessed by
fear that I was much put upon by the lads of my own age. This
cowardice seems to have related only to contacts with people,
for as a tree-climber I was daring and successful. I remember
the pleasure it gave me to scale a lofty beech and allow myself
to fall through the boughs, trusting to make good my hold
before I came to the ground. This I was accustomed to do
alone, so that there was no vaunting in the performance. The
sense of this childish pleasure was so fixed in memory that to
this day I never see a tree well shaped for the hazard without
desiring to try it once again. Whatever was the basis of the
state of mind, it possessed me sorely until a crisis came. A
negro servant, a mulatto belonging to a kinsman who dwelt near
my home, amused himself by bullying me in a brutal manner so
that my life became unsupportable. So with a newly awakened
spirit I determined to end with him, fully expecting to be killed ;
be it said that my fear was not of death, a fear from which I
have never suffered. I lay in wait for the fellow on the street on
a moonlight night. When the bully, who was a sturdy fellow of
twice my size and about twenty years old, tried to seize me, I
managed with a quick unexpected rush to bring him down and
to beat him on the head with a stone, so that he had to be car-
ried off and was for some time in a bad state. It was thought
that he would die, but he fortunately recovered. In this com-
bat for the first and only time in my life I felt that strange

PASSAGE FROM CHILDHOOD TO YOUTH 31

bloodthirstiness, that demoniac fury, which is in all men. I
had afterward in my boyhood and later a number of fights, but
in no other instance has the slaying motive been aroused ; so far
as I can discern, the situations have provoked a rather intense
sense of merriment, and the desire to do the antagonist no
unnecessary harm. Another effect of this crisis was to make an
end of all my fear of men and beasts. When in danger of assault
there has always been a keen reckoning on the situation with a
singular assurance that my wits would see me through.

My preposterous contest with " Bill Button" appears to have
made an end of my fancy for war. As above noted, I am inclined
to believe that this devotion of some years' duration was a
natural device to support my spirit in its fear, an ideal of
brave doing set over against the mastering sense of cowardice.
In place of the old fear of external enemies there came to me
a new terror lest the newly discovered fury should break out
again. This secondary fear made no permanent impression,
though its moral value to a growing lad was considerable. I am
inclined to think that this trifling incident marks my passage
from childhood to the youth in which the mind begins to feel
the wider realm. So far as I can see, I thereafter began to look
upon the world with a man's eyes, though it was with scanty
intelligence. This seems therefore a fit place to set forth the
conditions of the place and people where I was to take some-
thing like adult shape.

The village of Newport, Kentucky, at the time when I was
born was a place of perhaps a thousand inhabitants. To a
casual observer it would have seemed as a mere outskirt of the
large and prosperous town of Cincinnati on the northern side
of the Ohio River, with which it was connected by a ferry. Its
only title to distinction was that it was the seat of a government
military post, which occupied a few acres at the angle where the
Licking River enters the larger stream. Although the measur-
able distance between the two places is not more than a third
of a mile, they were in the old days much more widely separated

32 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

in all the essentials of society than New York and New Orleans
now are. There are sundry places in the world where bounds of
no more geographic value separate people somewhat diverse
in speech and tradition, but none known to me where neighbor-
ing folk are so absolutely parted as were these people during the
first six decades of the last century. They had nothing in com-
mon but their joint share in the English blood and speech and
a certain theoretical likeness of religion. Institutionally, they
were widely parted. The one represented the motives of the
nineteenth century, the other of the sixteenth. For there is
essentially all that difference between the motives of free com-
munities, where in the one all are of equal rights before the law,
and in the other slavery holds.

The separation of the two communities on either side of the
Ohio was intensified by certain accidents of the settlement of
this part of the country in the eighteenth century. The northern
section had been mainly sold by the United States to settlers
coming from a wide range of country, mostly from the north-
eastern states. Although in some part owned by the govern-
ment of Virginia and sold to settlers in its patent system, most
of the territory had been laid out, in the usual manner, into
townships, so that there were no large connected holdings;
while in Kentucky the Virginia system of land grants or patents,
without the preliminary sectionizing process, was adopted ex-
cept for the small district to the west of the Tennessee River
known as the Jackson Purchase, which was secured after the
colony acquired its character and never had any influence on its
social system. The result of this difference in the way in which
the territory passed into private ownership was, that while in
the district north of the Ohio River there were few holdings
exceeding a square mile or six hundred and forty acres, and the
normal size of farms was much less, being more commonly a
half or a quarter of that amount, in Kentucky the larger part
of the field had been distributed in tracts averaging several
thousand acres. Under this patent system there grew up a form

THE FEUDAL SYSTEM IN KENTUCKY 33

of proprietorship where the land was held by relatively few men,
who let it to tenants. Even when the poorer class of original
settlers acquired land, it was likely to pass to the richer holders
by purchase or through law-suits based upon the claims of older
patents. Boone became landless and emigrated to Missouri,
complaining that at the end of his adventures he had no place
in which to be buried. Kentucky inherited from Virginia the
mediaeval theory of a landed aristocracy resting upon a tenantry.
North of the river, though there were here and there landowners,
the conception of the relation of the people to the land was that
of the free man working acres which he owned.

Another influence which tended to establish the Virginia
method of proprietorship in Kentucky, and thus to fasten the
feudal system, was the peculiar division in the quality of the
settlers. These colonists were from the three very distinct
classes into which the people of Virginia had from the beginning
of its history been divided, viz. : the upper class of proprietors,
their slaves, and the group of poor whites who were well accus-
tomed to the station of tenants. They accepted the lot of the
landless and were content to get what they could out of their
station without striving for a higher. So it came about that in
the first half of the nineteenth century relatively few of the land-
owners labored with their hands; they either let their holdings
to their tenants, or, where they were themselves engaged in the
business of farming, the labor was done by the slaves. If the
holding was large, these slaves were generally controlled by an
overseer; if so small that only a few negroes were employed, the
owner would do the overseeing himself. Thus, while manual
labor was not considered as in itself degrading, — for, so far as I
have seen, any landowner of that time would, without thought
of his station, take hold with his slaves in any farming work, —
there grew up, or rather was perpetuated, the tradition of the
three distinct estates, the proprietor, the tenant, and the slave.

In the county of Campbell, where I was born, by far the
greater part of the land came by patents or by purchases from

34 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

smaller holders into the possession of two families of common
blood who migrated together from Virginia in the colonization
period. These families, bearing the names of Southgate and
Taylor, were from the first considerable slaveholders ; they both
aspired to form landed families. Unto them, as soon as they
were established, there came, as usual, numbers of their poor
kindred, those swarms of the unsuccessful— the landless of the
Virginia families, who were ever fighting to save themselves
from falling to the level of the "poor white trash/' whom the
slaves of the rich accounted as beneath their own station. These
tenant whites came not to any extent in the first movement into
Kentucky; that was made up of men of a higher social grade,
and of the frontier class, generally shiftless people who Jiad the
habits of the frontier, living by hunting and trapping. They
drifted out in search of new land to rent, or were imported by
the large proprietors, so that their farms might be rented. In
my boyhood, I knew this group of small farmers well. There
were perhaps a hundred families of the class on the lands of
my kindred. They were then mostly of the second generation,
though many of the elder were born in Virginia or North Caro-
lina— an excellent folk, curiously resembling the English cotter
of the better class, as I came to know him in my walks in cen-
tral England in the years 1867 to 1873. Vigorous, honest,
kindly, with good farming instincts, sexually wholesome, with
no other vice than drunkenness, which was rarely continuous,
but took the form of sprees on the quarterly pay-days or other
festive occasions. They were, it is true, addicted to fighting,
and were nursers of feuds, but they never murdered for money.
Their feuds then, as now in the less advanced eastern section
of the state, seem to have been due to the large share of the
class motive among them. In this regard they did not differ
from the higher-placed group of great landowners.

The most conspicuous feature of the cotter class, as I knew it,
was its shiftlessness; it was not mere indolence, though the peo-
ple were characteristically lazy; but rather an entire lack of all

SHIFTLESSNESS OF THE TENANTRY 35

traditions as to the relation of labor to life. Thus they usually
dwelt in commonplace small log cabins, when fifty days of la-
bor would have given them good dwellings of the same easy
construction. They put up with "stick chimneys," built of
small round timbers daubed with clay, which were always
taking fire or tumbling down, when a trifle of labor would build
them of the stone which could be had by lifting it from the
gullies of the worn fields. In many cases they were too shiftless
to clear the dung from the log horse-stables; they would let it
lie until it was no longer possible to get the animals out of the
doors, then pull the logs apart and build the stable elsewhere.
In my youth, I never knew of manure being put upon the land.
When, about 1855, my father began the use of it, he was much
laughed at. The plan was to till a field until it was worn out
and then let it go to grass or bushes of a kindly nature, helped
by chance sowing; commonly the soil washed away until the
lava rock was exposed. The crops were mainly tobacco and
grains, and as there was no system of rotation, the fields rapidly
became exhausted. The more careful landlords required that
their tenants should plant tobacco, a most exhausting crop, only
for three or four years, and then set the land in grass; but gen-
erally there was no adequate enforcement of the rules, so that
the cleared land rapidly became worthless. In the first sixty
years of this atrocious process nearly one half of the arable soil
of the northern counties of Kentucky, where most of the surface
steeply inclined, became unremunerative to plough tillage.

My grandfather did what he could to contend against the evils
of bad tillage; he knew of the metayer system and copied it,
taking his rents in kind, that is, in a share of the crops. I well
remember the times when the payments were made, including
not only tobacco and grains but bags of wool, feathers, and even
beeswax. To dispose of these goods, he had a store where other
things were sold as well, the place giving occupation to the ever-
present "poor kin."

The body of the people with whom I came in contact were the

36 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

poor whites. The slaves were not numerous and were owned by
not more than a score of families in the county. They were
mostly house-servants; probably not as many as two hundred
were regular field-hands. Probably not five hundred in all were
owned in the county, partly for the reason that the table-land
of the region, being all near the Ohio and the Licking rivers,
was so deeply indented by the drainage channels that it was
not suited for large plantations ; but mainly for the reason that
slaves readily escaped to the free country. What negroes there
were belonged to a good class. The greater number of them
were from families which had been owned by the ancestors of
their masters in Virginia. In my grandfather's household and
those of his children, who were grouped about him, there were
some two dozen of these blacks, mostly pretty decent and
fairly industrious people. They were well cared for; none of
them were ever sold, though there was the common threat that
"if you don't behave, you will be sold South." One of the com°
monest bits of instruction my grandfather gave me was to re-
member "that my people had in a century never bought or sold
a slave except to keep families together." By that he meant that
a gentleman of his station should not run any risk of appearing
as a "negro-trader," the last word of opprobrium to be slung at
a man. So far as I can remember, this rule was well kept and
social ostracism was likely to be visited on any one who was
fairly suspected of buying or selling slaves for profit. This state
of opinion was, I believe, very general among the better class
of slave-owners in Kentucky. When negroes were sold, it was
because they were vicious and intractable. Yet there were
exceptions to this high-minded humor.

There is a common opinion that the slaves of the Southern
households were subjected in various ways to brutal treatment.
Such, in my experience, was not the case. Though the custom
of using the whip on white children was common enough, I
never saw a negro deliberately punished in that way until 1862,
when, in military service, I stayed a night at the house of a

STATUS OF THE SLAVES 37

friend. This old man, long a widower, had recently married a
woman from the state of Maine, who had been the governess of
his children. In the early morning I heard a tumult in the back
yard, and on looking out saw a negro man, his arms tied up to a
limb of a tree, while the vigorous matron was administering on
his back with a cowhide whip. At breakfast I learned that the
man had well deserved the flogging, but it struck me as curious
that in the only instance of the kind I had known the punish-
ment was from the hands of a Northern woman.

In the households where I was intimate the slaves were on
about the same social footing as the other members of the
family; they were subjected to sudden explosions of the mas-
ter's temper much as were his children. I well remember a
frequent scene in my grandfather's house, whereto it was the
custom that I should go every Sunday afternoon for counsel
and instruction. These were at first somewhat fearsome occa-
sions for a little lad thus to be alone with an aged and stately
grandfather. I soon won his interest, in some measure by my
fears, and came greatly to enjoy the intercourse, for he knew
how to talk to a boy, and we became, in a way, boys together
in our sense of the funny side of things. It was the custom, too,
for him to divide the session of three or four hours with a brief
nap taken in his chair. Meanwhile I had a picture-book, or,
after I was about ten years old, when I could read, some work
he deemed profitable, very often verses to commit, most com-
monly from Pope, while he slept. As his rooms were near the
negro quarter, he would make ready for his siesta by sending
forth the servant-man who waited on him, bidding him tell the
people that they were to keep quiet during the performance. I
can see him now with his pig-tail hanging down behind the back
of the easy-chair and a handkerchief over his face as he courted
slumber. For a minute or two it would be still, then the hidden
varlets would be as noisy as before. Then the pig-tail would
begin to twitch, and he would mutter: "Jim, tell those people
they must be still." Again a minute of quiet, and once more

38 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

the jabbering and shouting. Now with a leap he would clutch
his long walking-staff and charge the crowd in the quarter,
laying about him with amazing nimbleness, until all the of-
fenders were run to their holes. Back he would come from his
excursion and settle himself again to sleep. I could see that his
rage was merely on the surface and that he used it for a cor-
rective, for he evidently took care not to hurt any one.

There was one man in the community at the time, of some
fortune, who had an evil reputation on account of his cruelty
to his slaves. One of them, it was said with horror which evi-
dently moved his neighbors greatly, owed his lamed state to his
master's rage. With this slaveholder the others had little to
do. They evidently regarded him as an outcast and told stories
of how he had been a "negro-trader."

Among the negroes whom I remember there were sundry very
old, who lived together in a building in the quarter and were
well cared for. They were troublesome, because one of them,
named Bristoe, had an ineradicable fancy for harboring low-
down whites, who would be found from time to time hidden
away in his quarters, where they shared food with the blacks.
Among these unhappy dependents was a certain aged drunken
vagabond bearing the aristocratic name of Lee Sutherland. He
was an ancient Virginian, with a gentleman's face and manner
still showing through his debauched misery. He had no known
kindred, and many efforts to keep him above utter degradation
had failed. In that day there were no retreats where such folk
could be stored away. Each time Sutherland turned up under
Bristoe's bed there was a hubbub in the household. Bristoe
was soundly rated, but he was too old for punishment or for the
threat of "selling South" to have any effect on him. He en-
joyed the situation, especially the peculiar dignity that came
to him from protecting a man of quality. On one occasion
when his quarters were watched, he harbored the man in the
ice-house, where the wretch, in striving to crawl beneath the
straw, had got over near the ice and was found nearly frozen to

THE VAGABOND ELEMENT 39

death ; but recovered and lived to vex decent folk for long after-
wards.

My grandfather's defence against the recurrent shame of
having Sutherland among his negroes was ingenious. Each time
he was found, after being cleaned up a bit he was put into a
wagon and hauled away for a day or two of driving, and then
left with a little money in his pocket. The creature would
slowly work his way back, to be found again hidden under
Bristoe's bed or in some near-by barn, where the old black
cared for him. At length, after a distant deportation, he did not
return, and no one knew whether he had died on his way back
or had gone to fresh woods and pastures new.

The vagabond element in the life of the place was far more
important than in a town of modern days. The idiots and the
insane, as well as the ne'er-do-wells of all classes and both sexes,
played their part in the comedy of life. The open market-house
was the resort of all this loose life. There the houseless were wont
to sleep until disturbed by the holders of the stalls. As a boy I
liked to rummage among the lot with an inquiring interest in
the odds and ends of folk. I remember one morning cottoning
to an old man I had awakened, to get his story. It seemed that
he was a Revolutionary soldier who had been wounded in the
battle of Cowpens ("Cuppens" as he called it) ; he had come in
from the up-country to draw his pension and had spent it on a
spree. There was criticism when I brought the ancient home for
breakfast, but when he was cleaned up and verified he had a
welcome.

Of all the folk who were about me the survivors of the Indian
wars were the most interesting. There were several of these old
clapper-clawed fellows still living, with their more or less apoc-
ryphal tales of adventures they had heard of or shared. There
was current a tradition — I have seen it in print — that there
had been a fight between the Indians and whites where the gov-
ernment barracks stood, and that the wounded whites had been
left upon the ground, where they were not found by the savages.

40 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

One of these had both arms broken, the other was similarly
disabled as to his legs. It was told that they managed to sub-
sist by combining their limited resources. The man with sound
legs drove game up within range of the other cripple's gun, and
as the turkeys or rabbits fell, he kicked them within reach of
his hands, and in like manner provided him with sticks for their
fire. This legend, much elaborated in the telling, gave me, I
believe at about my eighth year, my first sense of an historic
past, and it led to much in the way of fanciful invention of like
tales.

Among those men who in their youth, and even their boy-
hood, had been in tussles with the savages in the wars with the
Illinois Indians, was a certain ancient of the name of Harris,
who kept a small hardware shop which, because of his stories, I
much inhabited. His exploits, more or less true, were summed
up in certain rules as to how to "manage an Injun," which he
used to exemplify, to my grinning delight, on my little body.
Much as in the preparation for rabbit pie, you were first to catch
your " Injun." The clutch was well prescribed with preliminary
dissertation on the folly of "standing off and monkeying with
him." Then he was to be laid face to the ground; your knees
were to be planted in the small of his back; with the left hand
you were to seize his scalp lock and pull up his head, and with
the right holding the knife, taken from its sheath in your belt,
you cut his throat. You were not to scalp him, as some unculti-
vated persons were wont to do, — Harris considered that to be
bad form, "real Injun manners," — but proceed smartly to
the next. I have never had occasion to "manage an Injun,"
but if such had come to me, I am quite sure that I should in-
stinctively have essayed the task in the manner presented by
my veteran instructor.

I recall that several of these old fighters, who had worked at
the theory of battle with their savage enemies, held to the
notion that any white man could "lay down" in the manner
above described any Indian he could manage to clutch. I have

FIGHTING 41

found the same notion among the frontiersmen of the Far West
in later days. It seems likely that there is truth in it ; for such
men are in the position of teachers, the handers-on of traditions
of life and death, and do not speak as boasters. May it not be
that in the white man, as a part of the predominance of his more
highly organized nervous system, there is a greater capacity
for yielding in a few seconds a larger amount of energy for use
in the muscles? It may be that it all depends upon the intensity
of the more highly trained will of the white.

When I was ten years old, and began to be attentive to the
deeds and stories of men, there was still the chance to see many
who had taken part in the War of 1812-15. It was less remote
than the Civil War is from our time. St. Glair's defeat was only
a little over half a century in the past, sundry fights with
Indians were less remote, and just at hand were the tales from
Mexico told by the returning troops, so that I breathed an air
of combat, and of it moulded my day-dreams of valor.

The people with whom I first shaped my notions of life were,
by their history, and inevitably, somewhat bloodthirsty. Their
ancestors came largely from folk who had fought in England
and Scotland, to fight Indians in Virginia and North Carolina,
then the British in the Revolution, then more Indians and
more British in the Mississippi Valley. As they had never been
at peace for a generation, their ideal was naturally the warrior
and his battles. This led to the feeling that combat was the
fittest occupation of a man. Among the poor whites the fight-
ing in that day was commonly without the use of fire-arms and
usually of a good-natured brutality. At the county fairs, or the
barbecues, a chap with the devil in him would throw up his cap
and shout out that he was the best man on the ground. His
nearest neighbor would dissent from that proposition; where-
upon there would be a rough-and-tumble struggle even more
unlimited in its conditions than a dog-fight. Sometimes the
kinsmen or clansmen of the combatants would join in, but the
ideal was that the two should be left to settle it in a ring of

42 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

watching bystanders. To my father's office the wounded in
these battles were often brought for treatment, and as even in
childhood I often acted as his helper, it sometimes fell to me
when he was absent to do what I could to mend their hurts.
This gave me a sense of what to do in the way of surgical aid
which afterward served me well. It also brought me near to
human nature in the rough. Many of the incidents of this
experience stay by me. Especially lasting are the memories
showing the endurance and rude good-nature of these primitive
men. At the moment, I recall a certain Sam McLaughlin, who
was frequently brought for repairs ; finally, he was lugged in on
a shutter, with a knife slash across his abdomen which effect-
ively disembowelled him. My father being away, I was washing
his protruding entrails, which fortunately were not wounded,
and returning them to the cavity, while he with his head
propped up was scrutinizing the work. I said to him, "Sam,
you ought to quit fighting — you aren't good at it." "My
boy," said he, "I am the best fighter in this here county, but I
ain't good at judging men."

With the people of the better class, fist fights were not un-
common; they were looked upon as amusing though perhaps
somewhat undignified. These fist fights left no rancor: they
seemed to be mere modes of expression. I remember one be-
tween an old kinsman, a man over seventy years of age, and his
steward of like age, both of them needing spectacles to see at all.
The rounds were ended on one side or the other with the cry,
"Stop, I've lost my spectacles!" whereupon the man still pro-
vided with sight would help right neighborly to find and restore
the glasses, and then they would battle again.

Serious matters between those who esteemed themselves
gentlemen were supposed in all cases to be settled by the duel.
For this social need much preparation was made in the way of
training with arms and careful introduction into the laws and
regulations of honor. My father, who thoroughly disbelieved in
the business and privately ridiculed it, held, as I found, that it

THE DUEL 43

was inevitable that a man should accept a challenge in order to
keep his station. He had me very carefully trained, saying that
if you were a well-known expert with the pistol, rifle, and sword,
ordinary decent behavior would keep you out of such trouble.
I cannot remember when I began to shoot, but I recall, when
not more than seven years old, a weekly exercise of some hours,
partly because the light rifle used by its recoil made my shoul-
der very sore. By the time I was fifteen I was an expert rifle-
shot, including the varieties of "snap shooting" at bottles
thrown in the air, flying birds, and the like. There were many
who could beat me at the ancient tests of "candle snuffing,"
"nail driving," or other deliberate work, but I led in all such
exercises when quickness was needed.

Fencing was not a common exercise among the youths of that
time and place, but my father had me begin in Cincinnati with
a fencing-master by the name of Scherer, a Frenchman, when I
was about twelve years of age. Scherer, who claimed to be an
exiled officer, but was most likely of the drill-master grade, was
a great master, and having much aptitude for the work I was in
five years reckoned very good in small- and broad-sword, sword
and dagger, and French cane exercises, and I became passion-
ately fond of them. The master claimed that I was the best
amateur rapier fencer in this country and could hold my own
with any one in France or Italy. I kept up this training assidu-
ously until I went to Harvard, — somewhat later indeed, until
the Civil War completed my distaste for arms and all that
related thereto.

To keep together the story of Scherer, a character who de-
serves record, because he was most noteworthy of his kind, I
shall here tell more of my relations with him, which were in a
way intimate until my eighteenth year and continued until the
beginning of the Civil War. He was* a small man of the most
intense Gallic quality, the human equivalent of a game-cock
even to his tread. His eager little soul had but one idea, that of
combat, an idea which shone from his livid face, which had a

44 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

beautiful animal quality. All his talk was of fighting. His only
treasures were half a dozen duelling-swords with blood-stains
on them, and of each he had the most precise traditions as to
the place of entry, the nature of the stroke, and the result.
These he showed to those only whom he esteemed as successful
pupils; they were to him sacred relics not to be looked at by
unworshipful eyes. He was, indeed, the most perfect man of a
trade I have ever known, in that he was absolutely nothing else.

To Scherer's salle d'armes came a good many well-bred lovers
of fencing, among them Milton Sayles, afterwards known as a
politician and jurist, a young man of much quality and of a
large nature. Among them there were some reprobates, includ-
ing a dissolute Britisher with the preposterous appellation of
Captain Mars, who was a good hand with the broad-sword. It
was the custom of the well-trained habitue's of the place some-
times to fence with naked broad-swords, marking the strokes, as
the phrase is, not sending them home. One day while I thus
engaged with that son of Mars, he was attacked with a sudden
visitation of mania and began a real assault on me. One of v his
strokes was effective enough to sting me so that it became a
real duel, though my purpose was limited to disabling his
sword-arm — which was not easy, because his madness made
him insensible to the nips he received. Scherer, at the time in
another room, detected by the sound of the steel that there was
business needing his attention, looked in quickly, grasped the
situation, and with a leap pinioned the wight and flung him on
the floor. As a bit of stout daring of a little man dealing with
one twice his size, I have never seen the like.

While I was in Cambridge, I saw Scherer only from time to
time. When I returned home in vacation in the winter of 1860-
61, 1 found him awaiting me with trouble upon him. It seemed
that a rival had set up a competing school of fencing and had
challenged him to a trial, which should include a contest between
a selected pupil trained by each teacher. The contest was to
take place in a hall or theatre in the part of Cincinnati known

A FENCING-CONTEST 45

as "over the Rhine." Scherer insisted that I should be his
pupil ; this I at first refused to do, but his tearful woe and im-
precations led me in the end to overcome my reluctance to take
part in such performances. There was a throng of spectators;
for some reason the contest had aroused attention. Scherer's
bout with his antagonist was only slightly to his advantage, for
he was then about seventy years of age and no longer at his
best. When it came my turn, I found myself opposed by an-
other six-footer, most elegantly clad in white buckskin jacket
with an embroidered red heart covering the place where his own
was supposed to lie. After the ancient grand salute, we set
about it. My plan was always to take the defensive and hold it
with no returns until the quality of the antagonist was clear, his
tactics evident, and his guard dropped — as it almost inevit-
ably will drop, if there is no occasion to parry; then to take
the offensive swiftly and with determination. I managed to
protect myself for perhaps thirty passes, and had as I felt
nearly used up my limit of retreat. I recall the white teeth of
my vis-a-vis as he smiled in his amusement at a fencer who
could only parry, however well he might do that part of his
task. At length, his guard was low enough and I "stopped
true" on him, that is, lunged out the instant he did, for the em*
broidered heart. To my horror, the blade entered to the hilt,
and the fellow fell forward and sideways to the floor, pulling
the foil out of my hand as he came down, and lay as if dead.
Happily, it turned out when his clothes were cut open that the
button on the foil had not broken off, but bent sideways; it had
then ripped through the leather, padding, and inner clothes,
then torn the skin and passed out beneath the arm. The hard
blow had for the moment stopped the action of the heart. In a
few moments the man was himself again. It is an ugly thing
even in mere appearance to slay a fellow against whom you
have no ill-will, so I had a very bad minute or so before the
situation was evident ; but the real horror of it was the demo-
niacal screech of joy and triumph from that old sinner Scherer

46 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

as the wight went down. It had in it a bit of hell. I managed
to get away without a word with him. From that day I have
never held a foil or seen a fencing bout, except some of the pre-
posterous things on the stage.

In 1865, after the Civil War was over, I met Scherer on the
street. He had been an officer in a cavalry regiment, and the
trials of service had brought him to the decrepitude of old age.
To my greetings and inquiries as to his service, he said, "0
Shaler, that was a coup — that was a coup !" All that had hap-
pened since seemed to have passed from his crapulous mind.
I could not bring him back to his deeds as a soldier; the triumph
of his pupil pursued him altogether. He was a real master.

From my curiously elaborate training in arms I had certain
advantages in that it exempted me, as my father judged it
would, from being put upon or bothered with challenges. I was
but once thus troubled, and then most unreasonably. It hap-
pened that the person who supposed he was offended chose a
sensible fellow for his second, who, as he explained to me, soon
convinced his principal that he was playing the fool. On two
occasions, before I was twenty years old, — boys took men's
parts in those days, — I served as second to friends, and in both
instances easily adjusted the troubles without much parley.
The first occasion was when a silly cousin of mine with too
much wine in him challenged a well-known duellist, James
Jackson, who, as a general, fell at Perryville. Fortunately, I
knew Jackson as well as a boy of eighteen may know a man of
twice his years. I made my plea to him to give my kinsman an
easy way out. At first he was obdurate, saying that he would
have his life, — he had, indeed, reason to be vexed, — but in
the end he told his second to "fix it up" with me. My good, I
may say indeed affectionate, relations with Jackson had begun
a year before in a like absurd business in a ball-room in Frank-
fort. I had accidentally stepped into the mess made on the
floor by the breaking of a bottle of champagne, which he as
manager was trying to have cleaned up. With a sharp word, he

THE CODE 47

pushed me aside; my new-found manly dignity was offended;
therefore, as usual in such cases, I asked him for his card. His
answer was: "I beg pardon, my dear sir, I took you for a boy."
We both saw the fun of the situation and became friends. He
was one of the glories of this world ; he lifted my sense of what
it was to be a man — the ancient type of gentleman. The other
instance, when I had to compose trouble between men, was more
serious. In 1859 I went with a party of young people to the
Mammoth Cave. With me went Courtland Prentice, son of the
once well-known George D. Prentice, editor of a Louisville
paper, who, though some years my senior, was then my nearest
friend. As the railway was not completed, we journeyed in
stage-coaches privately hired. At a relay place a gentleman, a
stranger to us all, mounted the stage and sat beside my friend,
who was in an excited state and resented the intrusion in an
improper manner. It quickly came to the point where he had to
challenge the stranger, which he did on the spot. There being
no one more fit, I had to serve Prentice as second. Fortunately,
as the other principal knew no one in the throng at the Mam-
moth Cave, I had to help him to find a second, and so had a
very reasonable person to deal with. The stranger, who turned
out to be a well-known duellist from Mississippi, accepted the
invitation to battle, choosing as weapons shot-guns with buck-
shot at twenty paces distant — which meant certain death to a
novice. But once again the difficulty was easily arranged; in
fact, they were with rare exceptions mere fooling.

The only good side of the system was certain features of the
code which require that the antagonists should not dispute
with one another, and that as soon as there was a grievance it
should be put into the hands of disinterested persons ; and the
further theory that the seconds, with an arbiter if need be,
should try to compose the matter, their decision being quite
beyond appeal. One of the maxims — one often impressed on
me by my grandfather and other elders — was that gentlemen
sometimes fought, but they never quarrelled in the manner of

48 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

the vulgar. There was an interesting old fellow in my town
who instructed the younger generation in the code. This Major
H. had been an officer in the regular army and was then crip-
pled as to his right leg. He had received his wound because of
his strict adherence to one of the many peculiar rules which
determined the process of duelling. Being second to a man who
did not promptly meet his engagement, he took his principal's
place at the appointed moment, and the bullet lamed him for
life. This, to our modern sense, is something at once for laughter
and for tears, but in that vanished time it was otherwise. The
incident dignified the man and made him an authority in an
important side of life.

I am glad to say that, even as a youth, the absurdity of the
duel was plain enough to my mind; but it was an institution
like slavery : when born in it, whatever one's views of the mat-
ter, it was not easy to get out without being disclassed.

The religious people of Kentucky, there, as elsewhere among
our folk, the controlling element, shaped laws to make an end
of duelling. All who took part in such affairs were disfranchised,
unable to hold office, and liable to punishment, as if they were
engaged in a .conspiracy to commit murder. The result of this
drastic legislation was to make an end of duelling and to bring
in its place the more serious evil of "street fights," which were
far more brutal than the ancient practice of regulated battles,
when the friends of the disputants could almost always avoid
serious results. In the time of my youth I recall but two deaths
in duels ; but since that custom was abolished more than thirty
of my kindred and friends have been slain in these brutal en-
counters. It is all miserable business, but as a choice of evils,
so long as men are bloodthirsty animals, the duel was the least.

CHAPTER III

MY DESULTORY EDUCATION

THIS account of the fighting propensities of the people of Ken-
tucky began with the story of my training in arms in my child-
hood and afterward. I now return to the process of my better
education as a lad passing from childhood to youth.

At about ten years of age I began to be interested in animals.
Rather oddly, this interest was at first awakened by spiders. It
is likely that, being of a solitary humor, these lonely creatures
aroused my sympathies. I quickly came to know the familiar
species and their habits. I remember getting a number of
large glass jars from my grandfather, a dozen or more, in each
of which I kept some one kind, feeding them and watching their
web-making and other habits. I also got into the way of col-
lecting and hatching cocoons of various insects. Thence I went
to studying ants, of which there were a half a dozen species.
I remember, also, a great interest in the common beetles. These
fancies were original, for there was no one about me with the
least interest in these creatures. My father, though much given
to minerals, paid no attention to the wild life except when they
menaced his roses or other plants, and as a child I had no in-
terest whatever in plants.

After a year or two of a rather wild devotion to "bugs/'
which was the subject of much ridicule, I transferred my af-
fections to birds. I fancy that the change was due to the fact
that when I was about eleven years old there were sundry
extensive "flights" of the passenger pigeon, already becoming
much reduced in number, but by some change in their migrat-
ing movements for a time a very conspicuous feature. For
days at a time the sky would be flecked by these birds in end-
less flocks, moving this way or that in search of feeding or

50 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

resting places. At their resorts where they bred they were merci-
lessly slain and fed to the droves of swine gathered there for
that purpose. By 1855 they had disappeared from that part
of the country. It is not unlikely that the species is now ex-
tinct. Although fond of climbing, I did not get into the habit
of bird-nesting. From this boy's vice I was debarred by a keen
sense of personal relation with the creatures. I had my satis-
faction in watching their building work and in this followed
through the construction of the orioles, swallows, and some other
species. Naturally, I found my way to mating pigeons, and
thence to the other domestic fowls. At this period, much of
my time was spent on various farms, particularly on a place of
about three hundred acres, two miles from the Ohio River, now
the town of Southgate. There were extensive barnyards with
numerous and varied fowl. I had at one time near a thousand
pigeons, along with cocks and hens, geese, ducks of several
species, and several varieties of turkeys. My love for these
creatures became very great, but it gradually reverted to a
fancy for game-cocks. This was caused by the fact that near-by
was a farm altogether devoted to rearing male birds of this ad-
mirable breed for the West Indian markets, some thousand
each year being sent on their way to distant adventures. It was
a sight and sound I well remember, the passing of a huge wagon
with a frame like a hay-rick, on which were hung hundreds of
little basket coops, each holding a bird and with a little open-
ing through which he could stretch his neck for the needed ex-
ercise of crowing. As the van crept down the way to the steam-
boat landing, it was to the noise of the united challenges of all
the valiant cargo, a curious strident note that could be heard
from a mile away.

For a time I was much interested in the battles of game-
cocks. I never fought them with "gaffs," those detestable con-
trivances of steel shaped like lancets, which fit the cruel notion
of Spaniards; in fact, I always blunted the spurs so that they
could not give a deadly blow. What charmed me was the valor

COCK-FIGHTING 51

of the creatures and their curious antics and devices while in
combat. All the eager fondness for war which had possessed
me from five to twelve years of age, was at fourteen narrowed
down to a delight in the capers of these cocks with blunted
spurs. I remember being curious to find whether the creatures
learned their art and acquired their combative motive from
their elders. As an experiment I hatched one of them of a
famous stock artificially, and brought him up "by hand," so
that he did not have a chance to mingle with his kind until he
was grown. I then turned him with his natural possession of
spurs, which were keen instruments, into the above-mentioned
barnyard, where there were a dozen males of his species of the
ordinary degenerate breeds, bred for size and fecundity, as well
as two male turkeys, a Muscovy drake and some ganders. It
was but a moment before he was in battle with his natural ene-
mies; these cocks he speedily dealt with; they seemed confused
by his swiftness, and would soon turn tail: he easily daunted
the drakes and ganders, but the turkey gobblers troubled him
sorely. The last of his tasks and the most difficult was a very
large white gobbler who, when attacked, would catch his small
antagonist wherever it was convenient, oftenest by what was
left of his comb, and carry him dangling in the air. For protec-
tion the cock invented a curious manoeuvre : after each assault
with his blow of spurs, he would move between the turkey's
legs, hide his head in his feathers, and stay thus havened until
he had regained breath and strength for another stroke. With
leaps or short runs the turkey would try to have him out, but
most dexterously would he manage to keep thus sheltered until
again ready for an assault. The device was successful, so that
in a few days the best adversary was fairly routed, and the little
warrior was cock of the walk. I distinctly remember his forlorn
appearance at the end of the hard campaign: he was almost
stripped of feathers except those of the wings, his comb and
wattles were gone, he had lost one eye, but the trumpet crow
and the Scherer stride were still his.

52 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

This bird was one of the most remarkable creatures with
which I have ever become intimately acquainted, and I have
been fortunate in such acquaintances — I may say friendships —
with birds and beasts. He seemed to have for me a measure of
affection independent of any expectation of food, that I have
never seen in any other bird. He would sit on my knee and let
me stroke him as a dog would do, yet his instincts would lead
him to attack me if I meddled with his hens. On one occasion I
found a pullet of his harem imprisoned in a picket fence, where
she had managed to get her wings through a space not wide
enough for the pelvis to pass. It was a matter of some difficulty
to release her, and she squawked lustily as I strove to do it. All
the while the cock was near by, watching me with his one eye
and dancing with excitement. At length, when the pullet gave
a louder scream, his impetus carried him away and he planted
his spur in the back of my hand, making a wound the scar of
which I can faintly trace to this day.

I tell this seeming overmuch concerning game-cocks, in part
for the reason that it is through them that I came to an intense
interest in the actual life of animals, which has been to me a
source of great enlargement, and in part that I may make again
my plea for keeping what we can of our domesticated animals
near the primitive stock. Those who know only the degrada-
tions of our supercivilized domesticated birds and beasts, have
very little idea what a natural animal is. The game-cock is one
of the few which retain a fair semblance of what the wilderness
breeds; he is perhaps the most interesting of all birds.

On another occasion "the farm," so called to distinguish it
from certain larger and more remote places, gave me a most
instructive experience with animals. The owner of a menagerie
placed there for a summer under a keeper a fine specimen of an
elephant, named Hannibal, and also a camel. With the elephant
I became promptly and most intimately acquainted. He was
commonly chained to a tree on the edge of a wood, and thereto
I went every day for many weeks. The noble beast had a rather

INTEREST IN ANIMALS 53

bad reputation for his surly temper, but for me he had only
kindness. It is true I came laden with gifts, bundles of clover
and sweet corn for which he seemed duly grateful, but it was
not all a matter of fodder. The great beast liked to play with
me, lifting me with his trunk as if he would throw me a hundred
feet away, and then searching my pockets for tid-bits. I can
hear him now as he would trumpet and dance when I came in
sight and when I went away. As for the camel, all my advances
were rejected; the miserable brute spat at me. I have loathed
camels ever since. I count that noble game-cock and that
glorious elephant as among my teachers: they brought me to
love animals and appreciate man's relation to them.

Like other lads, I had much to do with dogs. They abounded
in the society in which I was reared ; but then, as now, the dog
was commonplace, not recognized as an outside animal, but
taken rather as an integral part of man. It is the creatures
which have their independent emotional life that give us the
great lesson of our kinship with the lower stages of living. This
lesson is sorely needed. I have known famous naturalists who
had never come by either an intellectual or emotional under-
standing of their place in the chain of intelligence, and without
this a man remains a stranger in this world.

The awakening which came to me at about twelve years of
age, rapidly led, through my interest in animals, to a general
interest in all the visible realm of nature. My father had some
knowledge of mineralogy and a keen eye for all natural objects.
He had in his study the remnants of what had been a really good
private collection of minerals, made while he was a student
under instruction from Warren, and in intimate connection
with Charles T. Jackson, a brilliant man, afterward well known
as a geologist. There were not more than a hundred specimens
in this little cabinet, but they were all of kinds calculated to
arouse the curiosity of a lad, beginning to awaken to the world
about him. I remember rather suddenly turning to them, espe-
cially to the crystalline shapes. The ordinary dog-tooth spar, and

54 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

the staurolites with polished ends showing the cross shape, set me
to thinking as to what shaped them so. A specimen of " stink-
stein/' with its peculiar odor when struck or rubbed, gave me a
sense of the hidden properties of things. I wore it out in repeat-
ing the experience, and for a time went about making like
experiments on all the kinds of stone I could find, in which I
detected a great variety of odors, and pleased myself with the
notion that each variety had its own distinct smell. As there
were practically no crystalline rocks in any place within three
hundred miles of my abode, all these specimens of my father's
collection were to me as from another world. I began to search
for the like in my endless ramblings afield, and to my great joy
found some gravel beds just to the east of the town of New-
port, in which there were granitic and other pebbles from the
Archaean rocks. The question as to what these pebbles meant
came to me with its revealing power.

I well recall my father's explanation as to the origin of these
bits of peculiar rock in the mill-bottom gravels, an explanation
which shows that he had some knowledge of the general geology
of the Ohio Valley. It was that they had been brought down
from the mountains by the waters of the Ohio River and depos-
ited where I found them, when the bed of the stream was higher
than it now is. As a matter of fact, these gravel beds are a part
of the frontal deposits made by a tongue of ice in the last glacial
period, and the crystalline pebbles were brought from the
Archaean district of Canada. Yet the explanation served me
well ; as a means of mental expansion more than any other con-
cept, it led my mind to conceive of the far-reaching actions, of
the world as a place where work was done. It was practically
through this my first attention to rocks in the field, that I first
came to discern that the plentiful fossils in the lower Silurian
rocks about me had a meaning. I must have seen them from
an early age, for they were everywhere in the fields, and I was
by instinct a mouser after things in the earth. The first found to
attract my attention was a common trilobite, the Calymene

INTRODUCTION TO GEOLOGY 55

senoria; it is most often found rolled up, so that it distinctly
resembles a gigantic oniscus, or sow-bug. This likeness caught
my eye and led to the notion that there were such creatures
turned to stone. My father knew in a general way what it was,
and so I found the path to the idea that the strata of the country
about me had been made on old sea floors and that the queer
things they contained were the shapes of creatures which had of
old been alive. This conception I came to when I was about
fourteen years of age. It at once took a firm hold upon me. It
was one of the shaping understandings of my life. I soon found
access to certain geological books in the Mercantile Library in
Cincinnati, and among them there was a two-volume edition of
Murchison's "Silurian System," the first geological book I ever
saw. Most of it came beyond my comprehension, but the figures
gave me a clue to names of fossils, and at fourteen years a lad
has enough of the primitive in him to set a great store by names.
Probably the most effective source of enlargement for me
in these passage years was a series of events which turned me
toward astronomy. Mitchel, the well-known astronomer, had
established an observatory on the river bluff in the eastern part*
of Cincinnati, the buildings of which I saw, and the uses of
which I had heard. I had also heard an interesting Irishman,
by the name of Vaughan,1 who taught in the government school
that I attended, kept at the barracks for the children of the

i This guileless Irish dreamer excited the sympathy of the community, and my father
invited him to spend several summer vacations at his house. During one of these visits he
volunteered to teach my sister and me something of astronomy. The lessons were usually
given outdoors under the grape arbor, the ground serving for blackboard ; on it he drew
with his cane diagrams commensurate with the sweep of his thoughts, so that before the
hour closed his illustrations compelled us to perambulate the garden a good many times
over. Although beginning simply enough, his talks soon became too abstruse for us to fol-
low, and lured by the shade of a big tree it was our habit to steal away and amuse our-
selves with terrestrial objects, while he, all unconscious of the desertion, would continue
to wander alone in celestial spaces. At table he was so absent-minded that dishes would
be passed before him unheeded, until some member of the family would put food upon his
plate and tell him decidedly that he must eat, whereupon he would mechanically go
through the process of filling his empty stomach. Now and then he would disappear, and
after a search be found in some humble lodging where the only evidences of sustenance
were a number of empty paper bags which originally held the peanuts that for days had
kept body and soul together. — S. P. S.

56 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

officers and soldiers. Vaughan knew much of astronomy and
was a man of imagination and of great descriptive powers. His
talks were beyond my understanding, but I had from them a
dim sense of vastness which perplexed me. At this time, my
father in some way obtained for the period of several months
the use of a small reflector telescope which, as I remember it,
had a mirror about ten inches in diameter; it was made, I
believe, by a man named Barlow of Lexington, Kentucky, who
made an orrery, or planetarium, showing the movements of sev-
eral of the leaders of the solar system, which was kept in the
Mercantile Library of Cincinnati, and in which I greatly de-
lighted. The telescope, which I soon learned to manage, was good
enough to open the heavens to me : up to that time only the sun
and moon had in any way moved me. The lunar craters greatly
excited my curiosity, as did also the satellites of Jupiter, but the
great awakener was the ring of Saturn. I do not clearly see why
it was so, but the sight of that ring system was intellectually the
most important single incident of my life; this first impression
and the memory of the startling effect of it on my mind, stays
by me with a distinctness that belongs to nothing else of that
time.

I have thus told in brief the conditions of my surroundings
which served to awaken and in some measure to restrain the
awakening of my mind. It is fit now to set forth the little I
have to say concerning the effects of this desultory education,
by noting certain states of my mind. First, as to what is termed
religion. On this side I was little developed. My father never
went to any church, and though he was always silent on the
subject, I easily knew that he attached little importance to
what was taught there. My mother was in a limited way a
church-goer and kept a pew in the Episcopal church, though
she often went to the Methodist meetings, taking me to one or
the other. Of these churches, both of the orthodox type, I
remember only the tedium of the performance and the develop-
ment of an intense hatred of the being who, with the power to

EARLY ATTITUDE TOWARD RELIGION 57

arrest Satan and his works, permitted him to torment men.
This led to a wild desire to grow big enough to slay the pictured
demon who would permit such iniquities. Against the devil
himself I had no such rage, for it was clear that he was only a
bigger kind of bad man, such as I saw about me. This was
before my teens, when my fancies were proportionately valiant;
after I passed twelve, came utter disbelief, or rather a turning
away from the whole matter.

The concept of death came to me earlier than I can recall. In
the barracks hospital men were constantly dying, and as I
played in and about the building the performance went on
under my eyes. The funerals with the covered bier, the band
playing a dead march, and the escort, were my delight. I tagged
on to it to see the brief but stately ceremonies, to hear the vol-
ley, and then the quickstep home. So death came to be accepted
as the complement of life. With this went a curiously intense
belief in immortality, altogether instinctive, for I had no
teachings concerning it except in sermons which did not affect
me. I was not at any time interested in the matter of a life after
death, but accepted it as an absolute reality based on feeling.

The only movements of the spirit in the religious field which
I can remember, came from two sources : my mother's singing —
she sang simply and sweetly — of the better hymns. "From
Greenland's Icy Mountains" and "Jerusalem the Golden"
would make me weep, I think because of the singing and not for
the religious sentiment. Oddly enough, I had a curious kind of
affection for Christ; I revolted at his submissiveness, but the
sense of his love for all living creatures made him dear, despite
that infirmity, in which he was so unlike the heroes with whom
I still dwelt. The other spiritual influence came from the negroes.
A number of them used to meet at night to talk religion beneath
a shed which lay open to the northern sky. One of them, well
named "Old Daniel," had a fervid imagination and excellent
descriptive powers. He would picture the coming of the great
angel as if it were before his eyes; the path of light shooting

58 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

down from about the North Star, — the majesty of his train.
Then the rolling up of the heavens "like a scroll" — I did not
know what this process was like, but it seemed vaguely fine —
and then the burning up of the world. I was always greatly
moved while hearing these exhortations, which must indeed
have been rather wonderful things, but they made no perma-
nent impression upon me. In fact, I regarded them as "nigger
talk."

Until I was twelve years of age I think that I had no sense
whatever of natural beauty. I showed no disposition to draw
or to model, except with my preposterous fortifications, which,
as I recollect them, indicated a considerable ability to shape
clay to my mind, and a decided ability for pop-gunning. But
as I entered my teens, the sense of natural beauty suddenly,
indeed remarkably, awakened. In less than a year I suddenly
developed a temporary rage for drawing. Without any lessons
or examples, I covered square yards of whitewashed walls with
landscapes, in part copies from books, but as I recall with some
trace of inventive power in them. People came much to see
them, so that, I found myself an infant prodigy. Then, alas, I
was sent to a drawing-master in Cincinnati, a German by the
name of Welsh. He set me to hard tasks, and the desire evapor-
ated, so that in six months I detested it altogether. I have
never since been able to draw in a way to give me any pleasure.
I am inclined to think that I must have had some sense of
pictures at that time, — they have always pleased me when the
drawing was true, — for an incident shows that I was not blind
to the expressions of nature. While with Welsh as a very inept
pupil, some people came to look at a landscape he was painting.
They admired it as a sunset; when they had gone away I asked
him, to his great delight, if it were not a sunrise. That I saw the
difference, which was plain enough to any seeing lad of fourteen,
made him think that I would be an artist; but I was at this
stage incapable of the needed labor.

My newly awakened love for the aspects of nature was shown

AWAKENING LOVE OF NATURE 59

by my eager search for points of view of the landscape, especially
those which included the Ohio River, which from the first had
been a source of movement to me, at the outset awaking the
sense of mystery, which swiftly passed to that of beauty. The
sense of mystery, that emotion which makes against the com-
monplace state of mind, was from the beginning strong in me,
as I believe it is in most sensitive persons. At first it was min-
gled with the primitive fear, — fear of the dark, of the depths
of the earth, of the great river, of men and animals. This sense
of mystery appears to have been a kind of emboldened fear, and,
with that of natural beauty, to have evolved itself from the
feeling of awe before the great mystery of all things. At first
this aesthetic sense seemed to relate only to the larger aspects of
the world, to sunrise and sunset and the vistas of the great
stream. Though my father was given to a love for flowers
and I was in the habit of caring for them in the garden and
greenhouse, they did not greatly delight me while I was a child ;
all emotional sense of the beauty of such things began to develop
some time after puberty.

Turning now to my formal schooling, it may be said that I
had none of any account until I was more than ten years of age.
My father judged it well to let me go my way up to that time;
all the slight efforts to cage me in a room and make me learn
definite lessons seem to have made me ill. I suspect that a
share of this illness was fictitious, contrived to avoid the hated
caging in the school-room, but it had a real basis in a certain
abnormal nervous sensitiveness which has always made the
house a prison to me. That it was not from laziness is shown
by my considerable zeal in following my vagarious activities.
Between eleven and twelve, I was sent to the above-mentioned
barracks school, which was under the charge of the government
chaplain, an educated Virginian of high character and ancient
lineage. The teaching was mainly in the hands of two men who
were sergeants in the permanent garrison of the post, men of
training and large quality, who, as was often the case in the old

60 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

army, sought refuge there from the battle of the world, in which
they had been beaten. It was a rough-and-tumble school, made
up of some children from the garrison and a dozen or so lads
from town families. There I learned the elements of Latin,
Greek, and mathematics, acquired reluctantly with frequent
long absences, due to nervous illness and general insufficiency
of health. In my eleventh year these troubles began to take
the form of megrim, commonly known as sick headaches, a
torment which for fifty years sorely vexed my life. This malady,
the opprobrium of medical science, came to me by double in-
heritance, and on both sides of my house it had affected my
ancestors for at least three generations. For some years, until I
trained myself to go on with my work while suffering, these
visitations troubled me for at least two days in a fortnight. One
of the compensations of age is that they greatly diminish in fre-
quency and weight. After about three years in this school,
where I learned very little except the art of dodging duties, in
which I became fairly expert, in my fifteenth year my father
found a tutor for me, a German-Swiss clergyman, who had
wandered with his wife and children to this country in the
movement of 1848, and had been obdurately unsuccessful in his
efforts to establish himself in charge of a church. As, next after
my grandfather Southgate, this man had the most influence in
shaping my mind, — in fact, the most of any in the passage
from youth to manhood, — I shall now seek to give an account
of him.

Johannes Escher was from eastern Zurich, of the well-
known family of that name. He was of moderate parts and
had been well credited at Heidelberg and Tubingen. Though
trained as a theologian, his bent was altogether towards philo-
sophy: he was a Hegelian with the curiously intense devotion to
the faith which characterized the followers of that master. His
absorption in his philosophical creed withdrew him from the
world, so that his interesting wife and attractive children seemed
remote from him. His only keen interest that remained in his

>" OF THE - \

UNIVERSITY j

OF /

A SWISS TUTOR 61

middle age was in the classics and in the poetry of his own lan-
guage. All the rest of life appeared to be unreal to him. It was
probably the admirable contrast of the quality of this dreamer
with those about me that caused me to cleave to him; so that
we were for three years very near to one another. Naturally
curious about people and their ways, I found in Escher a revela-
tion of a new genus of mankind ; his ways of looking at matters
curiously interested me. Moreover, in this my fifteenth year, I
began to have some capacity for continuous work and did my
hard lessons in Latin, Greek, and German under his tutorage
with assiduity. His method of teaching was for me the best.
As soon as I could read Latin with a little facility, he forced me
to read aloud to him rapidly without rendering into English, he
reading brief comments in that language and compelling me
to ask my questions as best I could also in Latin. In this way
he forced me to think in the language we had in hand. I had
already been fairly trained in Latin grammar; I was now made
to use Zumpt's more ancient but better work. In this way we
went over a much larger body of literature than the ordinary
student traverses, including all of Virgil, Caesar, Ovid, Cicero,
parts of Horace, Tacitus, etc. From the point of view of scholar-
ship, this left much to be desired, yet as I was made to commit
a large part of the Iliad and much of Cicero, I am inclined to
think that I had more of value from my tasks than most students
gain. In Greek his method was similar; but I went not near
so far with him in that language as in Latin. I did some com-
position work in the way of written translations and a little of
it in metric form, but this part of his teaching was ill done.

In German, Escher pushed me forward rapidly in speaking,
writing, and reading, so that while with him I read practically
all of the poetic work of Goethe and Schiller and parts of the
other notable poets who have written in that language. At that
stage of my life I had already gained some acquaintance with
English poetry and had acquired the art of committing verse in
such a measure that I had won a wager by committing Byron's

62 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

"Siege of Corinth" and reciting it without error in one day. I
was less successful with German, but memorized several thou-
sand lines of its classics. Here I may turn aside to note the fact
that this habit of committing to memory was very common,
indeed fashionable, in the society in which I dwelt as a youth ;
it was held to be an index of culture, a necessary part of a gen-
tleman's outfit. I recall an old kinsman, a man who seemed
absorbed in a life made up of business cares and dissipations,
who, when suddenly called on in a gathering, declaimed Man-
fred's soliloquy correctly and with vigor. I have heard many
others of the same common stock do like feats. This fashion
seems to have been a survival of the old English habit, when
literature was taken more seriously than in this day. Thus it
was that by the time I was eighteen years of age, in competition
with the youths about me, I had stored away not less than fifty
thousand lines of English, Latin, and German verse, a large part
of which stays with me to this day and has been a helpful store.

With Escher I found my way to the society of Germans in
Cincinnati, a most interesting group of men from whom I had
much enlargement. Some of the ablest of these were accus-
tomed to meet at a beer hall in the part of the town north of the
canal. There were many of these men of quality, the best of the
exiles of 1848. Of them I recall Stallo, — afterwards minister
to Italy, — a newspaper editor, and a rabbi whose name has not
abided with me though his admirable shape is still plain. These
were strong men: their talk made a great impression on me,
and their personal quality did much to lift me to a higher level
of ideals than any our people supplied.

Gradually, probably with no purpose of teaching his philoso-
phy, Escher inducted me into the mystery of Hegel, so that by
the time I was seventeen I was deeply infected with his noble
madness. The field of metaphysical speculation opened before
me as a new universe; of all the vagarious devotions of my
childhood and youth this took the firmest hold upon me. I
began to read all I could of philosophers and their writings.

YOUTHFUL LOVE OF PHILOSOPHY 63

The Mercantile Library in Cincinnati had many such books
which I devoured. I recall the pleasure with which I bought a
set of G. H. Lewes's "History of Philosophy," a rather poor
book as I now see it, but then a treasure in my eyes. I had two
German manuals, the titles of which I have forgotten. The
curious thing about this prolonged excursion is that I really got
something out of it. I appear even to have gained an adequate
idea of Kant's "Critique," though I doubt if I could compass it
to-day without much labor. With all this intense interest in the
speculations of men and the history of the evolutions of their
systems, I had no real belief in the essential verity of them.
They charmed me as an exercise of wits much as did chess, to
which at this time and at various later periods I became ad-
dicted. The sense of the difference between speculative and
experimental inquiry was so far in my nature that when at
about nineteen years of age I came in contact with the work of
Auguste Comte, my interest in philosophic systems rapidly
declined, to be roused in a limited way in after life, and then
only as the means of rationalizing the evidence afforded by the
phenomenal world.

While my youthful love of philosophy, though for two or
three years very great, bore no immediate fruit, the ground on
which the seeding fell was essentially strong, and it had certain
secondary effects which have been of permanent value to me.
No youth can be filled with that vast concatenation of semi-
logical deductions from an impossible postulate which makes
up the system of Hegel, and in the end purge himself of it all,
without very enlarging experiences. If he goes further, and
sympathetically takes in the speculations of the Greek and
German philosophers, and works himself through the main
notions of the English and Scotch schools, even if at the end he
casts it all away, he has a thought background for all his life.
If one can be in the society of these futile giants and in the end
escape from them, it is well for him. Intellectually there are, in
my opinion, few things worse than to be cramped and kept in

64 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

any kind of logical prison, but they are capital places for exer-
cising the wits.

One effect of the study of philosophy was that I became very
much interested in the history of Greece. I read several works
on the subject and bought a set of Grote's great twelve- volume
book and studied it with much care when about seventeen years
of age. Long afterwards I found an abstract of these volumes
which I had made. It was laboriously done, and with a measure
of intelligence which gave me a certain respect for the vanished
lad which I had not previously entertained.
'As I look back on the stages of my life up to my eighteenth
year, I have the curious impression that it was not a continuous
existence, with a progressive intercalation of characteristics,
but a number of disjointed personalities tagged with a common
name. The child up to about ten years of age was not the father
of the lad of twelve; nor was that rather ill-conditioned urchin
gradually transformed at fifteen into the beginnings of a specu-
lative philosopher. These individualities inhabited one unfolded
body, but while there were links connecting them, they seem to
have been curiously unrelated. This impression is doubtless
partly due to the lack in this formative period of a continuous
thread, such as is afforded by the usual uninterrupted process
of schooling. I was left free to move with the natural currents
of my inner life, so that heredity and what may be termed
natural environment had free play. For long I thought that this
lack of systematic training in my youth, though in some meas-
ure due to my frail health, was a wrong done me. As I have
grown older, and seen some of the effects of our schooling in
stunting the development of youths, I have come to the conclu-
sion that in my case it was a piece of good fortune that I was
thus left mainly to my native impulses. It cost me rather dear
on some sides of my education, especially in the field of mathe-
matics. Had I been properly ushered into that science in place
of being left to my own devices, I should have gone forward to
a fair measure of command of it as an instrument of inquiry,

RESULTS OF A DESULTORY EDUCATION 65

instead of being compelled to flounder with its methods or avoid
them altogether. The lack of adequate knowledge of calculus
has ever been to me a great hindrance in my work./

The lack of adequate training in the classics, which I suffered
from the imperfection of my youthful training, has been a source
of regret rather than inconvenience in my later life. I gained
more than a fair scholarly sense of the value of Greek and Latin
thought and phrase, so that I have been able to possess myself
of its meaning and quality. As regards my own speech, in
which I never had a lesson except from the proof-readers, the
society in which I dwelt and some native capacity for appre-
ciating men, served me fairly well; better, indeed, than the
formal teaching which has been the share of those of my station.
Of the other modern languages with which I have been thrown
in close contact, German, French, Spanish, and Italian, my
acquaintance has been limited to a capacity to speak and read
them in an effective smattering way, which, though unscholarly,
has sufficed to open books and the hearts of men at my need.
Out of the jumble of experiences which served me as an educa-
tion, came, above all, a capacity to find from time to time my
bent and to follow it with a fair measure of determination ; to
be in effect my own master for my own purposes; to rest little
on authority and to have a real love of the discoverable fact.
Unlike the overtrained youth of the modern school, who is
crowded for all his years of preparation so that his spontaneous
impulses never have chance to take shape, I was allowed to
evolve myself in a more normal way. Something of the very fair
success of this experiment in my case was due to the fact that
the life I shared, though rude, was that of very actual men, and
to the combination of the effective environment which bore in
upon me in a way fitted to the needs of my nature.

CHAPTER IV

FIRST VISITS FROM HOME

THERE were certain experiences of my life between my four-
teenth and eighteenth years which have not found their place in
this story, but deserve telling, for they had their share in my
shaping. Up to the age of fourteen I was kept within a narrow
range of country, not wandering further away than twenty
miles from my birthplace; the farthest, to certain large farms
belonging to my grandfather about that distance up the Licking
River, which were in charge of a kinsman by the name of Hinde,
a large, simple-minded man, the type of the English squire.
There I fell in with a more primitive folk than dwelt in and near
the town, people essentially like those who were later discovered
by literary folk in the mountains of eastern Kentucky and
Tennessee and the adjacent parts of Virginia and the Carolinas.
With them I learned the arts of the hunter. Deer were still to be
found and wild turkeys were abundant. The men had the skill
of the frontiersman and his traditions in tracking game. Two
of these rustics stay in my mind : one was a gray-haired old man
who had an amazing skill with the rifle then in use, the long,
heavy-barrelled piece with a bore so small that a hundred or so
spliced bullets were had from a pound of lead. As for shot-guns,
he despised them utterly. I remember that when a friend of
mine joined our hunting party armed with a double-barrelled
fowling-piece, this ancient hunter, after examining it carefully,
said, "Stranger, you ain't a-going to tote that ar thing with us;
there's no knowing what it '11 do."

Among the lads near my age, was one of sixteen years who
was a really marvellous shot, especially at wild turkeys on the
wing, very difficult birds to hit with a rifle-ball. One day we
started a flock in a wood where in their flight they were only

CONTACT WITH A PRIMITIVE FOLK 67

visible in crossing a narrow roadway. The boy shot the first to
appear, placed the bullet in the small space between the base of
the wings and the top of the thighs where it needs to be placed
so that the wounded animal can neither run nor fly; the distance
was paced by the master of the hunt and determined to be two
hundred and eight yards. It was not a fluke, for the fellow did
much such shooting. He had that curious organic perfection
which alone makes such deeds possible.

Because I came to know these countrymen and acquired that
habit of dealing with the wilderness, I was often called on by my
elders to take charge of the search for the "corners" of land held
under the ancient titles when the only record was made in some
such phrase as " beginning at a white oak by two sugar trees and
a poplar on the upper waters of ten mile creek, thence running
north-easterly 1600 poles to a red oak," etc. As in many cases
it had been two or three score years since these corners were
established, the axe-marks in the "corner" and "witness" trees
were often extremely obscure, sometimes completely grown
over; not infrequently one or more of the trees had fallen and
gone to decay. On one occasion a land suit turned on the ques-
tion of establishing a corner marked more than seventy years
before. The only person who had ever seen it was a man nearly
ninety years of age, who had been with the surveying party that
first "ran out" the trail. In his dotage, the old fellow had only
now and then command of his wits ; but by staying with us for
a fortnight while we rode through the woods, he slowly recov-
ered his memory of the place and finally selected a tree as most
likely the one we sought. The surface showed nothing that could
be identified as an axe-mark; but by carefully scraping the bark
and wood away we came upon ancient buried scars, which were
evidently made by a tomahawk, such as the surveyors of the
eighteenth century used ; so the title was established. This case
of slowly recovered memory interested me much and aroused in
me a sense of the mystery of mind that has not passed away.
I regard these experiences with a people of another age and

68 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

quality as among the most enlarging that came to me in my
youth.

In 1854, when a lad of thirteen, I made with my father a
journey to Massachusetts and Long Island, — by railway to
Cleveland, thence by steamer to Buffalo, and then on again by
railway. To this day the sense of the breadth of the world which
came with this seeing stays with me. Vast indeed was the
impression afforded by the sky-line of water on Lake Erie. I
knew that the northern shore lay not far beyond sight, yet the
oceanic effect, the greatest the world has to give those who are
from the depths of the land, entered my soul; no others of the
manifold impressions I have had from the seas have been thus
lasting. I must have been in a vivid state on this journey, for all
the impressions of it remain startlingly clear. The wide stretches
of the landscape and the peculiar waltzing effect which rapid
motion gives to its features ; above all, the sight of the first con-
siderable hills, the glimpse of the far-off Catskills, and then the
sight of Greylock as we neared Pittsfield, stay printed on my
mind. Most interesting was the curiously strong sense that the
land was not like what I had before known. This impression
recurred every time I returned in after years to Massachusetts,
though it was not long before I came to perceive that the mean-
ing of this strangeness was that the surface of the ground in this
part of the world had been shaped by glacial action, while the
fields of my youth bore the stamp of free water.

Our first stopping-place was Lancaster, Massachusetts. Of
my experience there at the home of my great-aunt Abigail
Stilwell I have already told. Thence we went to Boston, where
my father had many college friends, who thronged about him;
he was evidently dear to them. Now for the first time I saw
that the man of forty years had been a boy. For the first time
in my life I heard him called by his given name, for my mother
always addressed him as " Doctor." My surprise, mingled with
a certain indignation at the freedom of these schoolmates with
my father, shows clearly that he was a strangely withdrawn man.

NATHANIEL BURGER SHALER

A VISIT TO MASSACHUSETTS 69

Among these old familiars of my father were men who as
persons interested me much. There was Cornelius C. Felton,
professor of Greek in Harvard College, and afterwards its presi-
dent, a large and large-hearted man; Horatio Greenough, who
also dwelt in Cambridge; Epes Sargent Dixwell, a schoolmaster
of renown ; Charles T. Jackson, the chemist and geologist, and
many others with whom I was afterwards to have relations.
I recall in Jackson's house how he told my father the story of
his relations to the discovering of ether and how Morton had
cheated him out of his fame, and how he wept and raved in the
telling. I had never before seen a man thus chagrined, and
wondered greatly why he should be so about such a trifle —
as it seemed to me then — and ever since. When we came away,
my father said to me that in his opinion Jackson had been the
discoverer, but that he was a rather timid person and did not
venture to make the full trial of the agent himself, and so had
turned to Morton as a person who would take the risk of the
experiment.

At first sight, Harvard College greatly interested me. It was
then a small affair, but to me, who had never seen anything of
the kind, it seemed very great. From it I had the first sense of
historic antiquity as it is embodied in edifices. There were then
only what are now termed the old buildings of the Yard and the
Divinity School and the old Medical School in Boston.

In 1857, because I suffered much with ague, I was sent for
three months to Sag Harbor on Long Island, where I stayed
with a sister of my father's. I was then a lanky youth of a soli-
tary, phlegmatic temper. I spent my time tramping the woods
and keeping company with the sea. I had no congenial society,
save that of certain rough sailors, some of them Lascars, a
distinctly bad lot, but they interested me and taught me a bit
of sea and ship lore that afterwards I had a chance to find* serv-
iceable. I remember best a sojourn on Montauk Point, then a
solitary land where considerable herds of cattle wandered over
the watery open country. They were wild, after the manner

70 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

of the herds on the plains of the West, and would crowd about
a stray huntsman. On one occasion while I was hunting
plover, they crowded me over the edge of the sea cliff, till I
had to stop them with bird-shot from my fowling-piece —
not in rage but from stupid curiosity. The noble solitude of
the place was strangely attractive to me; there I first came to
know the splendor of such isolation.

I have not been on Montauk since that visit of half a century
ago. I have kept away from it because the memory is so rich
and full that I have feared to disturb it by reseeing. The light-
house, a great pond with an ancient house where I lodged
between it and the sea, the cry of the plover, the air from the
sea, are as yesterday in memory; above all, a startling feature
when by chance the face of the moon rising above the ocean
was crossed by a ship, so far away that for a moment it was
framed in its round. It was here that the sea came to my soul.
Save for that fortnight at Montauk, which did much for me, I
have no pleasant recollections of my visit to Sag Harbor. I did
not do well with the youth of the place; they treated me ill and
did not take the consequences in good part. Among the older
folk were some who were broadened by wide contact with the
world. I saw that they were queer figures; they treated me
kindly, but at that time I was a solitary — a bit misanthropic.
The fact that I volunteered to serve some kind of a visit upon
a bully who had threatened dire things to any one who would
beard him in his den, — a lonely farmhouse, — finding him at
the time very peaceable, seemed to convince the older folk that
I was in some way dangerous; only with the sailors of the
whaling ships did I find men after my mind.

CHAPTER V

SOME KENTUCKY MAGNATES

ANOTHER set of chapters of my life were my visits to Frank-
fort, the capital of the state, where I had friends and kindred
and whereto I resorted during the sessions of the Legislature,
when in a small way the place was a brilliant centre of life, of
a life that has long since passed away. Thereto came for a
month or so in the winter some hundred people of local distinc-
tion, not a few of whom had made or were to make their marks
in a wider circle of affairs. I generally lodged with an old kins-
man, a Mr. Edmund Taylor, cashier of the State Bank, in those
days a station of considerable dignity. At that time it was a
law that the cashiers of such banks should severally dwell in
the buildings where their business was done. This was with the
idea, as I was told, that the domesticity of the work would en-
sure a greater measure of honesty in administration. These bank
houses were solid, spacious mansions, with the business offices
opening into the family quarters. In his way, the cashier who
effectively had charge of the business was a magnate and a con-
siderable figure in his little world. My kinsman was in years
an old man past seventy when I remember him clearly, excel-
lent in his business duties, but very merry, greatly addicted
to dancing. I have seen him keep it up until dawn of a winter
night.

The amusements of the people who congregated in Frank-
fort were dining, dancing, and card-playing for both sexes,
getting drunk and sober for a large part of the young men, and
a most endless discussion of politics by all the assembled mul-
titude. It was a life of the ancient Stuart quality, quite unlike
anything I have found elsewhere. The essence of it was an ex-
traordinary sense of the value of the individual to himself and

72 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

his neighbor; the people were more conscious of one another
and of themselves than it seems possible for them to be now.
In many ways, the relations of the folk were socially ideal; I
never heard of any shame relating to any women of the assem-
blage. With a certain set of the youths it was the thing to pose
as rakehells, but there was also a sober set, as I remember the
larger part of the men old and young, who set their faces against
all manner of filthiness. Getting drunk was not thought to be
distinctly unmannerly, but the tipsy wight was led aside by his
friends and given to the servants for safe-keeping. I have seen
as many as a dozen of them thus in durance at a single ball.
The effect of this habit was ruinous; about one in four of the
young men I knew at this time went to ruin in that way.

There is a common notion that the men of the South were
a licentious lot and that their relations with negro women
was a feature of that time. My recollection is that by far the
larger number of them were as continent as are men to-day in
any part of the world known to me; that something like four
fifths, perhaps nine tenths of them were wholesome, essentially
clean-minded fellows, who had no habits of incontinence. As
for intercourse with the negro women, while it doubtless oc-
curred, I can say I never knew of an instance of it in those
gatherings, and the whole of the life was so largely almost in-
credibly a matter of general knowledge that if common I surely
would have known of it. In my observation of such matters,
I know of but three instances where those entitled otherwise
to the station of gentlemen had such relations.

As for card-playing with money, it was a very common habit,
as common as it was in England forty years ago when I there
played whist with clergymen of the Established Church for
small points, so that if lucky you might win ten shillings at a
sitting. Playing for money was a rather common vice, espe-
cially with the elderly men. One of them, a half great-uncle
on my mother's side, was an admirable specimen of his class;
a grave, dignified person of cultivated manners and much esprit,

VISITS TO FRANKFORT 73

who would have perfectly fitted in the Bath of Brummel's time.
He was a great master of the game of poker, for he was an
uncommonly good judge of men, the highest compliment that
was bestowed upon a man in those days, when judging men
and women was the main business of life. This ancient worthy
would have chastised his grand-nephew if he had found him in
a game at his table.

Though I have been much thrown with gamblers, those of
the green cloth in my youth and those of the stock market in
later years, I have never been able to come into their state of
mind. Even as a youth I had no fancy for the business, though
I liked the American game of poker for the play of wits, and
had some profit from that side of the experience. I particu-
larly liked to watch skilful players when the stakes were high
to see the human motive of the performance ; there is no other
game, save that of war, where there is so good an opportunity
to see how minds work.

I count my visits to Frankfort as in a high measure educa-
tive. At home I had few associates of my own age who were
in any way interested in matters which interested me. In the
gatherings at the capital I found several youths of the Eugenia
who were facing the same problems that I envisaged ; who were
setting themselves largely against life. Three of these young
men were my kinsmen, of remote degree but near enough to
make a bond between us. Two of them went down in the Civil
War, and one, Sanford, was assassinated by Goebel, who after-
ward met like end on his way to his place as governor of the
commonwealth. Now and then came to Frankfort some of the
older men who had won distinguished place in public affairs —
John C. Breckenridge, then Vice-President of the United States ;
Crittenden, of the famous attempted compromise; Elder Breck-
enridge, then the head of that house of strong men ; and many
others of less note. In those days it was easy for a lad just near-
ing to man's estate to know his elders. They were on the watch
for such as might serve them; moreover, in my case, they all

74 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

had known my uncle William Southgate and had loved him
dearly. I evidently had a great physical resemblance to him,
though he was a small man, and at seventeen I was near six
feet high. Countrymen would often accost me with the ques-
tion, "Ain't you some kin to little Billy?" In this way my en-
trance among the leaders of that time was made easy.

Above the town of Frankfort, on the top of the steep bluff
of the Kentucky River, is a burial-place where lie the bones of
many heroes, sons the Commonwealth has lovingly gathered
in one fold. It is a beautiful site for this simple Valhalla, with
its wide outlook over the noble vale it crowns, to my eyes won-
drously enriched by the sense of a people's care for the fame
of its illustrious dead. Thereto was the usual walk of young
and old, to take the sunset and whatever else came to them
there. A wider outlook on varied temples of fame in Europe
and elsewhere has not diminished my feeling for that simple
place of graves. Even now it makes in me a larger impression
than the cloistered dust of Westminster Abbey or the rows of
busts on the Pincian Hill ; hiost likely because of its simplicity,
and the contrast between it and the very commonplace scenes
about it.

In Frankfort I met many of those who had played their little
parts as soldiers in Mexico and soon were to show themselves
in larger action on the wider fields of the Civil War, as well as
many near my own age who were to find a soldier's place, and
the most of them their graves in that same deadly struggle. I
recall John Hunt Morgan, then judged a man of small parts,
who as a subaltern had done nothing at all distinguished in
Mexico, but who was to win fame as a Confederate commander
which would rank him with Wheeler and Stuart. This man,
who became the type of a daring raider, seemed to me a com-
monplace person. He held a "poker hand" timidly, playing
for certainties, and with little of that "knowledge of men"
which was then and there held to be the sum of wits. There
were the Marshalls, — Thomas, Humphrey, and John, — three

THE BETTER PEOPLE OF KENTUCKY 75

very able men, who gave no fit account of themselves to their
generation. Of the first of these I have a separate story to tell,
for he has a special interest to me; they were all kinsmen of the
great John Marshall. There are a score more of strong men who
knew their strength and helped me to the station of manhood,
though few of them helped themselves to their fit place in the
world.

The impression made on me by the better people of Ken-
tucky, as I saw them in the gatherings at Frankfort, an im-
pression not lessened by later and wide intercourse with men,
such as came soon thereafter, was that there was a singular
development of power, one of those great openings of thought
that is now and then, though rarely, offered to the world, —
in this case vainly. I am quite sure that this judgment is
not colored by the enthusiasm or the ignorance of youth; for
before my contact with these people was ended, I had been for
a year or two a student in Harvard, associated with a very
selected group of youths and mature men. Moreover, in that
day even more than in this fifty years later, I was given to
critical observation of the ways and nature of men. I question
if in the history of our race there was ever a better presenta-
tion of varied power than in the generation that was matured
and maturing at the outset of the Civil War in Kentucky.
There were reasons why there should have been such devel-
opment and why it should have come to naught, leaving the
people on a lower plane than they have been since the founda-
tion of this commonwealth. To see the meaning of this inter-
esting social history, we must first note that the population of
Kentucky, or at least of the central district which has given
character to its society, was made up, in a measure not ex-
hibited by the other secondary settlements of this country,
of folk selected by circumstances for their vigor and capacity.
So far as the whites were concerned, it may be doubted whether
any plantation of men of a greater average of physical and
mental vigor has been established in this country. This is shown

76 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

by what is of record concerning the origin of the colonists, and
is well attested by the history of the people in the first two
generations of their life in this new field. By the middle of the
last century, the trials of those who found a state in the wilder-
ness were well by, the settlers were prosperous, the burthen of
life was light, the climate admirable, so that they were ideally
placed for further and high development in the intellectual
field. Just such a flowering of strength and capacity as I saw
in my youth was the natural, we may say the inevitable, out-
come of such a history.

The failure of the Kentucky people to make good their pro-
mise; the fact that the youths of my time whom I judged to
be my betters have left no sign, is in my opinion to be accounted
for by a peculiar combination of circumstances, of which the
Civil War was the most potent. In that trial a large part of
the best of the youth perished, leaving no succession. There
are no trustworthy statistics to show the numbers who owed
their death or permanent invalidation to military service, but
the total probably amounted to not less than twenty thousand.
The whole number of men who stood in arms on the two sides
was about one hundred and thirty-five thousand, and of these
it is likely that at least one sixth were taken from the support
of their society which then had a population of less than a
million people. This sacrifice was in peculiarly large measure
from the intellectual, the state-shaping class. In far larger
proportion than the Northern states, this class contributed
men to the armies, and the percentage of deaths of these
natural leaders was very high. As I look back I count thirty
lads and young men of this group whom I knew who thus passed
before they came to their best years and left no children. More
than half the expectancy of the state that I knew was thus
swept away.

Not only did the Civil War maim the generation of Ken-
tuckians to which I belonged, it also broke up the develop-
ing motives of intellectual culture of the commonwealth. Just

DEBASING INFLUENCE OF THE WAR 77

before it I can see that while the ideals of culture were in a way
still low and rather carnal, there was an eager reaching-out
for better things; men and women were seeking, through his-
tory, literature, the fine arts, and in some measure through
science, for a share in the higher life. Four years of civil war,
which turned the minds of all towards what is at once the most
absorbing and debasing interest of man, made an end of this
and set the people on a moral and intellectual plane lower than
that they occupied when they were warring with the wilder-
ness and the savages. War is always degrading to the states
that urge it, but it is most so when it is between brothers and
hearthstones; therefore the tide which was setting towards
the better life was stayed ; the thoughts of men turned back
towards the primitive. Many of those who might have led were
slain; others sought homes elsewhere — for a society thus
racked by civil war is no place for a man who seeks to make
a career. In 1855 there were few communities holding more
of promise for our race than that of the new commonwealth;
in 1865 few that were less hopeful.

I have referred above to Thomas F. Marshall, a man of sin-
gular attractiveness and talents with whom I had a curious re-
lation. I first met him when I was about fourteen years of age,
when he, for some time a congressman, had through drunken-
ness fallen into a curious half -abandoned mode of life. He was
then an oldish fellow, but retained much of his youthful splen-
dor. He was about six feet three inches high, but so well built
that he did not seem large, until you stood beside him. His
face, even when marred by drink, had something of majesty in
it. Marshall, when I knew him, picked up a scanty living as a
lecturer. When sober, which he often was for months at a time,
his favorite subject was temperance. On this theme he was as
eloquent as Gough ; in his season of spree, he turned to history.
The gradations were not sharp, for he would, as I have seen
him, preach most admirably of the evil of drink while he sup-
ported himself in his fervent oratory with whiskey from a silver

78 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

mug. In matters of history, he had read widely. One of his
favorite themes was the mediaeval history of Italy. I recall
with a distinctness which shows the impressiveness of his dis-
courses his story of Florence, so well told that ten years after,
when I saw the town for the first time, the shape of it and of
the neighboring places was curiously familiar. Along with some
other youths, I noted down the dates of events as he gave them
and looked them up. We never caught him in an error, though
at times he was so drunk that he could hardly stand up. I have
known many historians who doubtless much exceeded him in
learning, but never another who seemed to have such a capacity
for living in the events he narrated.

I had no sooner met " Tom" Marshall than we became friends.
He at once took a curious fancy to me, talked to me as though
we were of an age, and gave me my first chance of such contact
with a man of learning and imagination. The relation, while
on one side largely profitable to me, became embarrassing, for
the unhappy man got the notion that I could stop his drinking
if I would stay with him. A number of times when he had his
dipsomaniac fury upon him I found that by sitting by his bed
and talking with him on some historical subject, or rather lis-
tening to his talk, he would apparently forget about his drink
and in a few hours drop asleep and awake to be sober for some
months.

Sometimes these quiet interviews were most interesting
to me. I recall one of them when I found him in an attack
of half delirium. His memory, always active, took him back to
the days when he was in Congress and to a scene when he,
a very young member of the House, had been chosen by some
careful elders to lead an attack on John Quincy Adams. They,
the elders, were to come to his support when he had drawn
the enemy's fire. It all became so real to him, that he sprang
out of bed and in his tattered nightgown gave, first his own
speech with all the action of a young orator, and then the de-
liberate, crushing rejoinder of his mighty antagonist. At the

THOMAS F. MARSHALL 79

end of it he fell back upon his bed, cursing the villains who led
him into the fight and left him to take the consequences.

My relations with Marshall continued until I went to Cam-
bridge, but my influence over his drinking gradually lessened
as he sank lower, and his able mind began to be permanently
clouded. When I had been some months at college, I espied
the poor fellow in the street, carpet-bag in hand, evidently
making for my quarters. I sent word by a messenger to my
chum, Hyatt, to receive and care for him, but to say that I had
left town, which was true, for I went at once to Greenfield,
where I had friends. Hyatt was also to provide the wanderer
with a suit of clothes and a railway ticket back to Kentucky.
I stayed away until I learned that Marshall was on his way
home. I have always been ashamed of my conduct in this mat-
ter, but the unhappy man was at that time of his degradation
an impossible burthen for me to carry; once ensconced in my
quarters it would have been impossible to provide him with a
dignified exit, and there was no longer hope that I might re-
form him. Yet the cowardice of the action has grieved me to
this day.

Two years afterwards, in 1862, I saw Marshall for the last
time. I was with a column of troops going through the town
of Versailles, Kentucky. He was seated in front of a bar-room,
with his chin upon the top of his cane. He was so far gone that
the sight merely troubled his wits without affording him any
explanation of what it meant. His bleared though still noble
face stays in my memories as one of the saddest of those weary
years.

Among the interesting and in a way shaping incidents of my
boyhood, was a brief contact with Abraham Lincoln about
1856. He was coming on foot from the town of Covington ; I
was on horseback, and met him near the bridge over the Lick-
ing River. He asked the way to my grandfather's house, which
was about a mile off. Attracted by his appearance, I dismounted
and asked him to get on my horse, which he declined to do; so

80 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

I walked beside him. Probably because he knew how to talk
to a lad — few know the art, and those the large natures alone
— we became at once friendly. When I had shown him into
the house, I hung about to find his name. As I had never heard
of Mr. Lincoln of Illinois, it was explained to me that he was
the man who was "running against" the Little Giant. We lads
all knew Stephen A. Douglas, who was so popular that farm
tools were named for him : the Little Giant this and that of corn-
shellers or ploughs. While Mr. Lincoln was with my grand-
father, my mother dined or supped with him. When she came
home she said : " I have had a long talk with Mr. Lincoln, who
is called an Abolitionist ; if he is an Abolitionist, I am an Abo-
litionist." I well remember the horror with which this remark
inspired the household : if my mother had said she was Satan,
it could not have been worse. The droll part of the matter is
that all the reasonable people about me were in heart haters
of slavery. They saw and deplored its evils, and were full of
fanciful schemes for making an end of it. But the name Abo-
litionist was abominated.

I never knew what brought Mr. Lincoln to my grandfather's
house. It is likely that he came because a certain doctor of
central Kentucky, an uncle of Mr. Lincoln, a widower, had re-
cently married an aunt of mine, a widow. This union of two
middle-aged people, each with large families, brought trouble;
since family traditions were against divorce, a separation was
effected which had an amusing though tragic finish. When all
other matters of property had been arranged and P. had be-
taken himself to his plantation in Mississippi, as an afterthought
he set up a supplementary claim to a saddle mule belonging to
my aunt which he had forgotten to demand in the settlement.
This re-opened the question, and it was determined in family
council that the grasping doctor should not be satisfied. We
boys had the notion that Mr. Lincoln's visit related to this
episode of the mule, for shortly after the "critter" was sent
with a servant by steamboat, to be delivered to the claimant

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 81

at the landing of his plantation on the Mississippi River. In
due time the negro returned and made report : it was that the
unworthy suitor came with a group of his friends to witness
his success, mounted, and started to ride away, but the beast,
frisky from its long confinement, "stooped up behind," as the
darkeys phrase it, and threw his master and killed him. Whether
Lincoln had a hand in the negotiations which led to this finish
or not, I am sure that the humor of it must have tickled him.

CHAPTER VI

POLITICAL CLOUDS GATHER

BEFORE taking up the story of my life as a student at Harvard,
it is well to round out the necessarily rambling account of my
boyhood life by telling something of the political life of the
years immediately preceding the Civil War, especially of the end-
less discussions concerning the slavery question and the place
of Kentucky in the war between North and South which all
sagacious persons foresaw. From the time I was twelve years
old, my grandfather in his Sunday afternoon lessons used often
to say to me : " My lad, when this comes, you belong on the side
of the Union." He, as others, knew the issue to be inevitable,
and his exhortation did much to determine my eventual state
of mind. He, too, was an Abolitionist, though he shaped the
purpose on the lines of the Liberian colonization project, on
which he abundantly discoursed to me.

In my boyhood, say from 1855 on, the idea of secession be-
gan to be discussed. It had but few advocates among the noted
men, who were generally Henry Clay Whigs, with nothing but
denunciation for Calhoun and all his works. I recall being held
in my father's arms when I was perhaps eight years old to
hear Clay make a short but impassioned speech. I cannot re-
member anything about it, but I can see that eager face and
swaying body, and hear the cheers of his audience. In this
period, from 1850 onward, the irritation between the slave-
holding and the non-slaveholding sections became steadily more
and more intense. Now and then negroes ran away. About
1857, those belonging to my grandfather, my aunts, and my
mother, all household servants, some of them old people, de-
camped in one night. I remember the excitement when at
dawn a certain Sam Morton, who had also suffered from the

"LIVING WITHIN YOURSELF" 83

exodus, roused the families. My grandfather at once ordered
that they should not be pursued. In the course of three
months there came a letter from the party, then in Canada,
begging that they be allowed to return. This he refused to
grant, saying that they had broken the bond that bound him
to look after them, and that he would have nothing further to
do with them. By threatening to " sell them South," the ancient
threat which he never would have executed, he kept them from
returning. This was one of several sudden migrations from my
part of the country which were laid to the charge of " Under-
ground Railroad" people, and served to increase that irrita-
tion of the folk, which was furthered by the failure of sundry
efforts to have fugitive slaves returned by law.

It was the custom of the large householders in the early days
of Kentucky to provide so far as possible for their needs by
domestic work. This plan of " living within yourself," as it was
called, was retained and carried very far by my grandfather,
so that very little money was spent for any provisions. Flour,
rice, soap, candles, most kinds of meat and all vegetables were
prepared in the house or sent in from the farms; so, too, the
cloth of various kinds, coarse cotton and linen, the woollen
goods known as jeans for every-day wear. My grandfather
even went so far as to undertake the manufacture of silk, hav-
ing brought in an Italian family for that purpose. At that time
some silkworms were grown in the neighborhood and the co-
coons were reeled, spun, and woven in a little factory. This
work was maintained up to about the time of his death with
such success that the women of the family rejoiced in an abun-
dance of excellent black silk. So good was it, indeed, that it
took the premium in the so-called World's Fair held in New
York about 1854. I recall my sense of importance when first
clad in a suit of silk from "the factory." All the domestic arts
attracted me much, especially the dipping of the candles, where
the wicks were set in a frame so that they were alternately low-
ered into the hot tallow and lifted up to cool. The growth of

84 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

the candles was a matter of wonderment, for the heated fat
is nearly colorless while the candles are white. The reeling of
the silk and the wonder of the grub inside concerned me most.
I was allowed to see the living grubs feeding on mulberry leaves
and spinning their cocoons and thereby came to know the
stages of the creature's life up to the chrysalis. Oddly enough,
for I was a prying lad and about eight years old, I had not
noticed these changes among the wild insects. My infantile
military mania must have closed my eyes as it shuts those of
grown men.

From the many sturdy old men who were about me in my
youth, I had many stories of the pioneer stages of the settle-
ments of northern Kentucky and the neighboring parts of
Ohio. These tales are all too dim for re-telling, but the quality
of these brave old fellows stays with me. As is usually the case
with the really valiant, they were very gentle. There was in
them not a trace of the roistering cowboy who masquerades as
"a terror/' but is cowed by the silent, woman-faced "real
thing." Of this group I remember best a certain Richard
Taliaferro, a remote kinsman, a very gentle giant, who as a lad
of fifteen had captained a party of women, children, and some
slaves from eastern Virginia to their destination on the Ken-
tucky shore just above Cincinnati. They travelled by horse and
wagon to the Monongahela River and then built a broadhorn
on which they floated down the Ohio, seeking for the sign of
their landing-place, a white flag on a tree-top. They found it,
and established near by the home of his long life. When I
last saw him about 1888, he showed me over the place. Of
his house, which he dearly loved, he said, "Here were raised
eighteen children and there never was a quarrel among them."
He was himself the embodiment of peace.

At this stage of the trouble between North and South, " Uncle
Tom's Cabin" appeared. I well remember the excitement it
created among my own people; the irritation was the greater
because it was believed that Mrs. Stowe, who lived for a time

ABOLITIONISTS IN KENTUCKY 85

in Cincinnati, had drawn her characters from people in some
way known to her who dwelt on my side of the river. It was
believed that her picture of St. Clare, the gentle slaveholder,
was drawn from my grandfather, while Legree was sketched
from a neighbor whose character and history fitted well to that
villain. The incident of Eliza's flight across the river over the
fields of floating ice probably came from a tradition which was
current as far back as I remember, certainly as early as 1847.
In place of accepting these literary coincidences as a compli-
ment, they were taken in high dudgeon. In that remote age
there had been little experience with newspaper reporters, and
while not much was private, it was esteemed a gross offence
to put a man in print in that fashion.

At this time there were some indigenous Abolitionists, of
whom Cassius M. Clay was the most conspicuous, but because
they were natives of the state they were tolerated. Clay was,
indeed, regarded as amusing. He was known as a furious per-
son, a very fire-eater and no mean orator; it was therefore the
private sport of the young men to send him a letter with many
signatures stating that he would be killed if he ventured to
preach his vile doctrine in their country. The expected result
was that he would shortly enter the forbidden ground, seize the
Court-House and, laying his pistols on the judge's desk, pro-
ceed with his furious harangue; thus affording an occasion for
what the boys called a circus. So far as I knew, he was never
harmed or even insulted on these excursions; he was taken as
a joke. It is true that his press in Lexington was destroyed.
All the serious people respected the man's courage and his will-
ingness to stand by his principles. It was otherwise with Abo-
litionists who came into the state. One such, a man named
Bailey, undertook to run an Abolitionist paper in Newport.
He was said to be from New England and he had the shape of
the Yankee of caricature. His press was looted by a mob of
young men, and he was compelled to leave the state.

Gradually the friction concerning slavery bred up a strong

86 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

party in favor of that institution. At first this group was in-
significant; from what I remember, and what I have learned
from the people of the generation before me, not one in ten of
the men of Kentucky would have sided with South Carolina
if the nullification doctrine had led to war; I very much doubt
if five per cent of the voters in 1850 would have favored seces-
sion. It was the misfortune of the Civil War period that the
preliminary stage of the combat lasted so long that there was
a chance for the amazing hatred of the Abolitionists to develop.
It knit the slaveholding states together, gradually breaking
up the Emancipation Party, which up to about 1840 appeared
to make steady growth in all the Border States. This new
opinion came by the gathering of the young men about certain
leaders of distinction, themselves youthful. John C. Brecken-
ridge was the strongest of these strong men who adopted the
"States'-Rights" view of the federal relation. They were not
numerous, but they were able and their arguments strong. It
was this theory of government, rather than any affection for
slavery or sympathy with the plantation states, which led a
large part of the people to become what was then called
Southern sympathizers. In a way, it was a recrudescence of
the old motive of independence which had led to the Kentucky
Resolutions of 1798, a state of mind which had been to all
appearance long dead.

I can just recall the excitement of the controversy as to the
place of Kentucky in the struggle which was assumed to be
inevitable in 1857. At that time I became a member of a de-
bating society where the most of the members were lads of about
my age, but older than the most I now see who count one and
twenty years. Such societies were common throughout the
state. All our interminable debates concerned the burning
question as to the tenets of federal and state authority. We
all came to know the Federalist, the Constitution, the great
speeches and the court decisions almost by heart. In those
contests I took a large part, and developed a capacity for pub-

A DEBATING SOCIETY 87

lie speaking which has been quite effaced. That I made a fair
success of it is shown by the fact that I was chosen president
of the society before I was eighteen years of age, though I was
the youngest of its members. What surprises me as I look back
on those exercises was that I had a swing of phrase and ration-
ality of thought which attracted judicious elders and led them
to believe that I was to be an orator.

It was my habit to make briefs of my little speeches and to
rehearse the discourses in the neighboring woods. Long after-
ward I came across the plan of the argument for a speech on the
secession question; it ran as follows: At the outset I gave a
hearty assent to the principle of State Rights, by which system
alone it was possible to secure the benefits of local government,
of a government near to the people and adjustable to their
needs. But to establish and maintain such a system it was
necessary to preserve the Union as it existed ; for if it were
divided into a slaveholding section and a non-slaveholding sec-
tion the inevitable consequence would be interminable war be-
tween those opposed nations, each of which would have to seek
the strength consolidation only could give with the consequent
destruction of state rights. This thesis was, doubtless, taken
in part from the ancient debater, and the illustrations from
what Marshall had taught me ; but the judgment was, in effect,
original and the argument good. I have never seen it set forth
in just this form. It had at least the merit of clearing my mind
as to the situation. It kept me on the Union side, though there
were strong, almost mastering influences due to my youthful
friends that inclined me to go South. Whether my arguments
convinced others I do not know, although they had a rather
wide currency, since they found their way into print and thus
to speakers who were often heard.

The political debate which went on in Kentucky between
1858 and 1861 probably was the most universal and effective
of any ever held by a commonwealth. Men, women, and chil-
dren shared in it, with the result that I have noted elsewhere,

OF THE

UNIVERSITY

88 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

that when the time for action came almost every person knew
his mind. There was hardly a turncoat or a laggard in judg-
ment. Moreover, the long study of the problem enabled the
people to see how complicated it was, and how great was the
room for diversity of opinion. To this was due the manfulness
and dignity of the actual war, so far as it was shaped by the
commonwealth, and the speedy reconciliation of the divided
brethren when it came to an end.

It was generally accepted, as far back as I remember, that
there would be an effort of the North to secede from the
Union. As an instance of this, I may note that as a child I
heard in the family a good deal of talk concerning Zachary
Taylor, who was in some way a kinsman of my mother's peo-
ple. This interested me, because he was one of the heroes of
the Mexican War, — one of the imagined campaigns of my
childhood, — as was also Jefferson Davis. Among the things
told was Taylor's saying, that if the Union ever went to the
devil, Davis would be in the lead. Shortly before my mother
died in 1891, I asked her about this memory, taking pains
not to lead up to the answer. She repeated this remark
attributed to Taylor, telling me further that Davis had mar-
ried Taylor's daughter without his consent, and that the re-
mark was probably due to irritation on that account. I learned
also that they were afterwards reconciled. It seems not un-
likely that even at that early day Davis may have been among
those who believed that the free and the slaveholding states
should separate.

I also recall the fact that in 1857, when my father planted a
vineyard on a hill about two miles south of the Ohio River, I
urged before the work was begun that the place would from its
commanding position be a part of the fortifications for the de-
fence of Cincinnati; it turned out to be the case, for the vine-
yard was ruined by the great earthworks erected in the centre
of it in 1862. This incident was recalled to my memory by my
father in about 1880, he attributing to me the remark that "it

SECESSION TALK 89

was too good for grape-shot, to be used for grapes." I much
doubt the pun, but I well remember how I dreamed of the use
of the site for a fortress as early as 1854. I had seen forts at
various places on the seaboard.

CHAPTER VII

I BECOME AGASSIZ'S PUPIL AT HABVABD

IN 1858, when I was seventeen years old, it was determined that
I should have a good education. My parents could well afford
this, for my grandfather had left considerable property and be-
sides that there were other means. The plan was that I should
have a liberal training, and then make up my mind as to what
profession I would adopt. It was at first proposed that I should
go to West Point, but my fancy for war had passed, and not
even the argument that there was war to come, and that soon,
affected me. My desire, moved by my teacher Escher, was to
go to Heidelberg; fortunately it was determined that I should
begin my exploration of the realm of higher learning at Har-
vard College. We supposed that I was far enough along to
enter the sophomore class in 1859, and after graduating that
I would go to Germany for further study. For my own part,
I cared little where I went or what I did. There was need of
enlargement, the resources about me were used up, and I was
so shaped that if a change had not been made, I should have
wandered away in search of adventures.

My father went with me to Cambridge, and as it was well on
in the first term, I was placed under a tutor recommended by
his classmate, Dixwell. I was then a lank fellow, six feet high,
very slender, nimble from a good though limited physical train-
ing, still rather feeble from attacks of malaria and megrims.
As for my training, what has been said before shows that it was
from the schoolmaster's point of view a jumble of unrelated
matters, — a very poor basis for collegiate study, which took
no account of a training in arms and equitation, and as little
of philosophy and geology or a knowledge of human nature.

PREPARING FOR HARVARD 91

Still, on going me over, my tutor thought I could be put in
the sophomore class in the autumn of 1859.

Although my studies interested me, — anything did, for I had
then and ever since a capacity to be interested in anything put
before me, — my tutor most commanded my attention. He
was a senior in Harvard College, and had a well-deserved name
for scholarship in the classics as well as for a miscellaneous as-
sortment of talents and knowledge. He was reputed to be the
best player of the game of checkers in the country ; knew the
political history of the United States amazingly well; was
learned in pugilism, having at his tongue's end the story of all
the prize fights of recent times ; withal he was the merriest little
man I have ever seen. His curly head and radiant visage
charmed me at first, and remain as treasured recollections in
a whole gallery of such memories. I well recall my first morn-
ing with him, when, after going over the best of what I could
and could not do, he asked me if I could box. I pleaded guilty
to some knowledge of that ignoble art. At that time I had not
learned of his interest in it, and thought that I would be lowered
in his eyes by the confession. To my surprise, indeed to my
horror, for I had a swordsman's contempt for the business, he
insisted on my having a bout with him at once. I had learned
boxing in Scherer's school of arms, where it was taught by a
competent man, but classed as a very degraded form of fight-
ing, ranking below quarterstaff . It was regarded as an ignoble
if sometimes necessary means of defence, only to be resorted
to in extremity when you were contending with common people
and had no blessed steel at hand. The eager little man proved
very unskilful. At the very first tap he tipped over, his head
going against a window-pane, smashing the glass but happily
not harming him. I shall never forget my mingled wonder and
exasperation at this incident. My training with the reverend
philosopher Escher had set up in my mind a category of the
tutor into which this new-found specimen by no means fitted.

My work with my mentor went in a fair way for some months

92 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

during the winter and spring in Cambridge, and during the
summer in Keene, New Hampshire. In Cambridge, I found
myself in an unhappy social position, for the reason that my
station as a sub-freshman, as an inferior to the men of my own
age already in college, was humiliating to my sense of self-im-
portance, and in marked contrast to that I had won at home.
In Keene, I found myself in a charming New England com-
munity, where the life resembled that to which I was native.
There the fact that I could ride, shoot, act in theatricals, spout
poetry, and descant on philosophy put me back into the class
of men, so that I was myself again. While in Keene, there came
an odd interest in my education which, though but a trifle,
proved most telling. My tutor, with whom I had read much
Latin verse in a manner which he approved, for my scanning
was uncommonly good, — I had a natural ear for it, — one
day asked me the rule for the quantity of a syllable, only to
find that I was absolutely ignorant of such written prescrip-
tions. The long list of these rules was then produced — they
were to be learned at once. Now I cannot by any contrivance
manage to fix in my mind a succession of irrelevances. If he
had commanded me to commit all of Ovid, I should willingly
have set about the task; as it was, I asked him if in his opinion
Horace had learned those precious rules. He was sure that he
had not, and equally certain that I must learn them if I had
any expectation of getting into Harvard College. On that issue
we parted. I refused to spend time on an unnecessary bit of
purely formal work.

I was the more content to give up a training in Harvard Col-
lege, for the reason that my stay in Keene had convinced me
that I was more naturalist than humanist, in that I could not
content myself with the book side of culture. The life of the
fields, the brooks and rocks, was nearer to me than that of the
men and thoughts of long ago. Moreover, in some way I had
come across Agassiz's essay on classification, then just pub-
lished, and in it I found something at once of science and

FIRST MEETING WITH AGASSIZ 93

philosophy. As I recall it, this essay was the introduction to
Agassiz's series, never completed, of contributions to the nat-
ural history of North America, the volume concerning the Tes-
tudinata. These creatures had interested me in my childhood;
I had one of them among my first "pets" when I was about
ten years old, and fancied, I think with good reason, that he
learned to know me and to come to my call. While at Keene,
I became much interested in several aquatic species which were
new to me. The essay and the descriptions in the memoir, along
with the other contacts of nature in that lovely district, re-
awakened my enthusiasm for the world below man, so that the
demand of my tutor that I should set me to learning rules for
scanning Latin verse came most inopportunely for my college
education.

At the time of my secession from the humanities, Agassiz
was in Europe: he did not return, I think, until the autumn
of 1859. I had, however, picked up several acquaintances
among his pupils, learned what they were about, and gained
some notion of his methods. After about a month he returned,
and I had my first contact with the man who was to have
the most influence on my life of any of the teachers to whom I
am indebted. I shall never forget even the lesser incidents of
this meeting, for this great master by his presence gave an im-
portance to his surroundings, so that the room where you met
him and the furniture stayed with the memory of him.

When I first met Louis Agassiz, he was still in the prime of
his admirable manhood; though he was then fifty-two years
old, and had passed his constructive period, he still had the
look of a young man. His face was the most genial and
engaging that I had ever seen and his manner captivated me
altogether. But as I had been among men who had a free
swing, and for a year among people who seemed to me to be
cold and super-rational, hungry as I doubtless was for human
sympathy, Agassiz's welcome went to my heart, — I was at
once his captive. It has been my good chance to see many

94 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

men of engaging presence and ways, but I have never known
his equal.

As the personal quality of Agassiz was the greatest of his
powers, and as my life was greatly influenced by my immediate
and enduring affection for him, I am tempted to set forth some
incidents which show that my swift devotion to my new-found
master was not due to the accidents of the situation or to any
boyish fancy. I will content myself with one of those stories,
which will of itself show how easily he captivated men, even
those of the ruder sort. Some years after we came together,
when indeed I was formally his assistant, — I believe it was in
1866, — he became much interested in the task of comparing the
skeletons of thoroughbred horses with those of common stock.
I had at his request tried, but without success, to obtain the
bones of certain famous stallions from my acquaintances among
the racing men in Kentucky. Early one morning there was a
fire, supposed to be incendiary, in the stables in the Beacon
Park track, a mile from the College, in which a number of horses
had been killed and many badly scorched. I had just returned
from the place, where I had left a mob of irate owners and
jockeys in a violent state of mind, intent on finding some one
to hang. I had seen the chance of getting a valuable lot of
stallions for the museum, but it was evident that the time was
most inopportune for suggesting such a disposition of the re-
mains. Had I done so, the results would have been, to say the
least, unpleasant.

As I came away from the profane lot of horse-men gathered
about the ruins of their fortunes or their hopes, I met Agassiz
almost running to seize the chance of specimens. I told him to
come back with me, that we must wait until the mob had spent
its rage ; but he kept on. I told him further that he risked spoil-
ing his good chance, and finally that he would have his head
punched ; but he trotted on. I went with him, in the hope that
I might protect him from the consequences of his curiosity.
When we reached the spot, there came about a marvel; in a

AGASSIZ'S PERSONAL QUALITY 95

moment he had all those raging men at his command. He went
at once to work with the horses which had been hurt, but were
savable. His intense sympathy with the creatures, his know-
ledge of the remedies to be applied, his immediate appropria-
tion of the whole situation, of which he was at once the master,
made those rude folk at once his friends. Nobody asked who
he was, for the good reason that he was heart and soul of them.
When the task of helping was done, then Agassiz skilfully came
to the point of his business — the skeletons — and this so
dextrously and sympathetically, that the men were, it seemed,
ready to turn over the living as well as the dead beasts for his
service. I have seen a lot of human doing, much of it critically
as actor or near observer, but this was in many ways the great-
est. The supreme art of it was in the use of a perfectly spon-
taneous and most actually sympathetic motive to gain an end.
With others, this state of mind would lead to affectation; with
him, it in no wise diminished the quality of the emotion. He
could measure the value of the motive, but do it without lessen-
ing its moral import.

As my account of Agassiz's quality should rest upon my
experiences with him, I shall now go on to tell how and to what
effect he trained me. In that day there were no written exam-
inations on any subjects to which candidates for the Lawrence
Scientific School had to pass. The professors in charge of the
several departments questioned the candidates and determined
their fitness to pursue the course of study they desired to un-
dertake. Few or none who had any semblance of an education
were denied admission to Agassiz's laboratory. At that time,
the instructors had, in addition to their meagre salaries, —
his was then $2500 per annum, — the regular fees paid in by
the students under his charge. So I was promptly assured that
I was admitted. Be it said, however, that he did give me an
effective oral examination, which, as he told me, was intended
to show whether I could expect to go forward to a degree at the
end of four years of study. On this matter of the degree he was

1

96 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

obdurate, refusing to recommend some who had been with
him for many years and had succeeded in their special work,
giving as reason for his denial that they were "too ignorant."

The examination Agassiz gave me was directed first to find
that I knew enough Latin and Greek to make use of those lan-
guages; that I could patter a little of them evidently pleased
him. He did n't care for those detestable rules for scanning.
Then came German and French, which were also approved:
I could read both, and spoke the former fairly well. He did
not probe me in my weakest place, mathematics, for the good
reason that, badly as I was off in that subject, he was in a worse
plight. Then asking me concerning my reading, he found that
I had read the essay on classification and had noted in it the
influence of Schelling's views. Most of his questioning related
to this field, and the more than fair beginning of our relations
then made was due to the fact that I had some enlargement on
that side. So, too, he was pleased to find that I had managed
a lot of Latin, Greek, and German poetry, and had been trained
with the sword. He completed this inquiry by requiring that
I bring my foils and masks for a bout. In this test he did not
fare well, for, though not untrained, he evidently knew more
of the Schldger than of the rapier. He was heavy-handed and
lacked finesse. This, with my previous experience, led me to
the conclusion that I had struck upon a kind of tutor in Cam-
bridge not known in Kentucky.

While Agassiz questioned me carefully as to what I had read
and what I had seen, he seemed in this preliminary going over
in no wise concerned to find what I knew about fossils, rocks,
animals, and plants; he put aside the offerings of my scanty
lore. This offended me a bit, as I recall, for the reason that I
thought I knew, and for a self-taught lad really did know, a good
deal about such matters, especially as to the habits of insects,
particularly spiders. It seemed hard to be denied the chance
to make my parade; but I afterward saw what this meant,
that he did not intend to let me begin my tasks by posing as a

AGASSIZ'S LABORATORY 97

naturalist. The beginning was indeed quite different, and, as
will be seen, in a manner that quickly evaporated my conceit.
It was made and continued in a way I will now recount.

Agassiz's laboratory was then in a rather small two-storied
building, looking much like a square dwelling-house, which
stood where the College Gymnasium now stands. The struct-
ure is still extant, though in forty-six years it has three times
changed its site and uses, having been first a club-house for his
students on Divinity Avenue, where the Peabody Museum
has been built ; it went thence to a site on Jarvis Street, where
it served as the club-house and theatre for the Hasty Pudding
Club; from there a little further west to its present location,
where, after being long the habitation for the department of
French, it came to be a part of the little establishment for teach-
ing students astronomy. Agassiz had recently moved into it
from a shed on the marsh near Brighton bridge, the original
tenants, the engineers, having come to riches in the shape of the
brick structure now known as the Lawrence Building. In this
primitive establishment Agassiz's laboratory, as distinguished
from the storerooms where the collections were crammed, oc-
cupied one room about thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide
- what is now the west room on the lower floor of the edifice.
In this place, already packed, I had assigned to me a small
pine table with a rusty tin pan upon it. Of other students,
all somewhat older than myself, there were : Alpheus Hyatt,
F. W. Putnam, A. E. Verrill, E. S. Morse, Richard Wheatland,
Caleb Cook, and a person by the name of Lamb. Hereto also
came from time to time but not regularly Theodore Lyman
and Stimpson. There was also in some narrow quarters
a translator, a Swede, whose name is gone from me, and a
sterling old person, Gugenheimer, who served as a preparator.
Agassiz's artists generally worked at his near-by dwelling or at
his place at Nahant. One of the small rooms upstairs was a
sleeping-place for Putnam, who served as keeper of the estab-
lishment. I have given what may seem unnecessary details

98 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

concerning this primitive laboratory and museum, in part for
the reason that there is, so far as I know, no record of it, and
also that it may be set over against the existing conditions of
what used to be called Natural History in the University.
~ When I sat me down before my tin pan, Agassiz brought
me a small fish, placing it before me with the rather stern re-
quirement that I should study it, but should on no account
talk to any one concerning it, nor read anything relating to
fishes, until I had his permission so to do. To my inquiry " What
shall I do?" he said in effect : " Find out what you can without
damaging the/ specimen ; when I think that you have done the
work I will question you." In the course of an hour I thought
I had compassed that fish; it was rather an unsavory object,
giving forth the stench of old alcohol, then loathsome to me,
though in time I came to like it. Many of the scales were
loosened so that they fell off. It appeared to me to be a case for
a summary report, which I was anxious to make and get on to
the next stage of the business. But Agassiz, though always
within call, concerned himself no further with me that day,
nor the next, nor for a week. At first, this neglect was distress-
ing; but I saw that it was a game, for he was, as I discerned
rather than saw, covertly watching me. So I set my wits to
work upon the thing, and in the course of a hundred hours or
so thought I had done much — a hundred times as much as
seemed possible at the start. I got interested in finding out
how the scales went in series, their shape, the form and place-
ment of the teeth, etc. Finally, I felt full of the subject and
probably expressed it in my bearing ; as for words about it then,
there were none from my master except his cheery "Good
morning." At length on the seventh day, came the question
"Well?" and my disgorge of learning to him as he sat on the
edge of my table puffing his cigar. At the end of the hour's tell-
ing, he swung off and away, saying, "That is not right." Here
I began to think that after all perhaps the rules for scanning
Latin verse were not the worst infliction in the world. More-

FIRST WORK UNDER AGASSIZ 99

over, it was clear that he was playing a game with me to find
if I were capable of doing hard, continuous work without the
support of a teacher, and this stimulated me to labor. I went
at the task anew, discarded my first notes, and in another week
of ten hours a day labor I had results which astonished myself
and satisfied him/Still there was no trace of praise in words or
manner. He signified that it would do by placing before me
about a half a peck of bones, telling me to see what I could
make of them, with no further directions to guide me. I soon
found that they were the skeletons of half a dozen fishes of dif-
ferent species ; the jaws told me that much at a first inspection.
The task evidently was to fit the separate bones together in their
proper order. Two months or more went to this task with no
other help than an occasional looking over my grouping with
the stereotyped remark: "That is not right/} Finally, the task
was done and I was again set upon alcoholic specimens, — this
time a remarkable lot of specimens representing, perhaps,
twenty species of the side-swimmers or Pleuronectidae.

I shall never forget the sense of power in dealing with things
which I felt in beginning the more extended work on a group
of animals. I had learned the art of comparing objects, which
is the basis of the naturalist's work. At this stage I was al-
lowed to read and to discuss my work with others about me.
I did both eagerly, and acquired a considerable knowledge of
the literature of ichthyology, becoming especially interested
in the system of classification, then most imperfect. I tried to
follow Agassiz's scheme of division into the order of ctenoids
and ganoids, with the result that I found one of my species
of side-swimmers had cycloid scales on one side and ctenoid
on the other. This not only shocked my sense of the value of
classification in a way that permitted of no full recovery of my
original respect for the process, but for a time shook my con-
fidence in my master's knowledge. At the same time I had a
malicious pleasure in exhibiting my find to him, expecting to
repay in part the humiliation which he had evidently tried to

100 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

inflict on my conceit. To my question as to how the nonde-
script should be classified he said: "My boy, there are now
two of us who know that/'

This incident of the fish made an end of my novitiate. After
that, with a suddenness of transition which puzzled me, Agassiz
became very communicative; we passed indeed into the rela-
tion of friends of like age and purpose, and he actually con-
sulted me as to what I should like to take up as a field of study.
Finding that I wished to devote myself to geology, he set me
to work on the Brachiopoda as the best group of fossils to serve
as data in determining the Paleozoic horizons. So far as his
rather limited knowledge of the matter went, he guided me in
the field about Cambridge, in my reading, and to acquaintances
of his who were concerned with earth structures. I came thus
to know Charles T. Jackson, Jules Marcou, and, later, the bro-
thers Rogers, Henry and James. At the same time I kept up
the study of zoology, undertaking to make myself acquainted
with living organic forms as a basis for a knowledge of fossils.

Just after I entered with Agassiz, the construction of his
museum was begun with the small part of the now great edi-
fice which constitutes the end of the northern wing. There
were four rooms on the ground floor, each with galleries, and a
like number, similarly galleried, on the second floor. Early in
1860 the building was ready for use. Then came the work of
transportation of the collections stored in the laboratory and
elsewhere to their new domicile, and the effort to arrange them
in some kind of order, so as to give to the public the semblance
of a museum ; for from a generous public came the money and
placation was necessary. Into this work the students were in a
way impressed; so for a year I was with others occupied in
sorting and arranging a jumble of materials, odds and ends from
all over the earth. In the old storage place there was no chance
to exhibit any of the show specimens. So far as I can remem-
ber, the only thing that people came to see was a large glass
jar containing several heads of Chinamen, which some one had

THE NEW MUSEUM 101

brought from a place of execution. The sight of this was much
sought after, especially by women in search of a sensation. In
the course of a year a collection was installed which in certain
ways was then the best in this country.

My share in the work of bringing a preliminary order into
the new museum was considerable, and while for some months
it broke all systematic study it was largely profitable. It gave
me a chance to gain hard contact with a great range of animal
forms, both recent and fossil, and to it I owe a general know-
ledge of organic forms which I could not have otherwise ac-
quired. There was at that time no other means of finding one's
way to such information. Agassiz's lectures gave us little.
Though very interesting from their personal quality, the field
they covered was curiously limited. In the first term he gave
about twenty-five lectures on zoology and in the second about
the same number in geology. The first series began with a very
interesting sketch of the general principles of the science, which
quickly passed to problems of classification and thence to ques-
tions of comparative anatomy, practically limited to the polyps,
acalephs, and echinoderms. In the years from 1859 to his death
in 1873, whenever he gave these lectures, perhaps six or eight
years, their form and contents remained unchanged. The geo-
logical series was practically altogether devoted to the sim-
pler problems of stratigraphy or the succession of geological
periods ; about one third of the course was given to the glacial
period. Except for the noble and marvellously contagious
enthusiasm with which he approached the subject and the
admirable pictures of the masters he had known, the lectures
were not profitable to his students; in those regards — the
weightiest possible — they were most valuable.

By far the greater part of the instruction I had from my
master was in divers bits of talk concerning certain species
and the arrangement of the specimens. He would often work
with me for hours unrolling fossils, all the I while keeping up a
running commentary which would range this way and that, of

102 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

men, of places, of Aristotle, of Oken. He was a perfect narra-
tor, and on any peg of fact would quickly hang a fascinating
discourse. Often when he was at work on wet specimens while
I was dealing with fossils, he would come to me with, say, a fish
in each hand, that I might search in his pockets for a cigar, cut
the tip, put it between his teeth, and light it for him. That
would remind him of something, and he would puff and talk
until the cigar was burned out, and he would have to be pro-
vided with another.

As soon as Agassiz's collections were removed to the new
museum, the old building (now to be known as Zoological Hall)
was put on rollers and taken across lots to its second station
on Divinity Avenue. It was then given over to what was called
the Zoological Club, an association of about a dozen students
who were working with him. It was so arranged as to provide
bed-rooms, a dining-room, and a room in the centre of the upper
story with which the bed-rooms connected, to serve as the
meeting-place of the Zoological Club, whiclTwas organized at
this time and became the centre of our life. I had the good
fortune to receive in the allotment a sleeping-place and a study
connected therewith. These, as I did not lack money, were
well furnished. As my quarters lay on the path from his house
to the Museum, my master got into the habit of coming for a
bit of talk, not always on science, perhaps oftenest about peo-
ple he had known, about politics, in which he was keenly in-
terested, or about his plans and perplexities. It seemed to me,
as it did to some of my mates, somewhat curious, for I was the
youngest of the lot and a newcomer. I now see that it was
probably owing to the fact that in some ways I was then
a good deal more of a man in my knowledge of the world
than my elders and betters of the association. Something
was due to the fact that I had been trained by Escher, an
educated fellow countryman of his, and had known some of
the "forty-eighters," and profited by the enlargement that
acquaintance offered; still more, perhaps, to the fact that I

THE ZOOLOGICAL CLUB 103

had become in a way intimate in the houses of some of his
friends in Boston.

In my room my master became divinely young again. He
would lie on the sofa, drink what I had to offer, — I brought
with me the then Southern habit of offering wine to guests, —
take a pipe and return in mind to his student days, or to his
plans for work, or to his scheme of a museum which should
present the animal and vegetable kingdoms so plainly that he
who ran would perforce read — and deeply. I have never known
a mind of such exuberance, of such eager contact with large
desires. I was in thorough sympathy with this museum and
with his projects, so that I had large profit from these inter-
esting meetings, for they awakened an enthusiasm for con-
structive work which I doubt if any other accident of life would
have aroused.1

The meetings of the Zoological Club, at which all sorts of
problems were discussed, were never attended by Agassiz. To
our request that he would join us his answer was that we had
better work alone, though he advised us to gather about us all
who were interested in our problems, and to give our joint
studies a wide range. I see now that, while much concerned for
our advancement, his aim was to have us stand alone, or at
least to lean only on our mates. Although he could not help
shaping those about him to his mode of thought and was often
indignant with them when they departed from his path, he
had a sound practical sense of the danger of founding a school
of followers; more than once he commented on this error of
other masters.

It was Agassiz's habit to use his students to explore fields

i In Mr. Shaler's note-book for April 7, 1860, is this entry : " Professor Agassiz in his
lecture this morning dwelt upon the requirements of a scientific man who would be more
than a mere species-describer. The great test, he said, was to be able to deal with your sub-
ject in different ways. In amplifying the idea he said it was well to be able to give in a
single sentence the whole matter of months of labor, in a form so true that a scientific
man could read in it not only the extent of your knowledge but also the habit of your
mind. He declared he could learn all this from an answer couched in the most laconic
form. He said he should require of us in our several departments first a monograph, sec-
ond a scientific lecture, third a popular lecture, fourth a simple child's tale." — S. P. S.

104 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

for him. This was an inevitable element in his method of teach-
ing, and has been inevitably followed by all inquirers who have
taught. In this process of exploration it was his custom to set
one of us to work on a group of animals concerning which he
had some knowledge, so that he could guide his inquirer, at
least at the outset of his investigation. I recall that in this way
I began a study of the family of the conchifers known as the
Arcidse, including the fossil and recent trigonias. For a while I
felt that I was following on the trail which he had broken, and
then, as in the matter of the geographical and geological dis-
tribution of the genera and families, etc., I began to teach him
a bit that he did not know. He was as eager to receive as to
give, and what I supplied went into his memory as his own dis-
coveries, which in a way they were, for the direction of the work
came from his mind. In time, as will be noted hereafter, this
plan of collaborative work gave him trouble, as it has given
trouble to others who taught in the same way, — in that good
old way that makes the pupil feel that he is the master and
thereby wins to his powers.

At this time the relatively small community of scientific men
about Boston contained a much larger measure of ability than
it now does. Besides Agassiz, who by his wonderful personality
held the foremost place, there were Jeffries Wyman, Charles T.
Jackson, Asa Gray, William B. Rogers, William Cranch Bond,
Benjamin Peirce, B. A. Gould, as well as a host of lesser yet able
men, among whom I may name William Stimpson and later
Jules Marcou. The most usual meeting-place of these men, or
of most of them, was the Boston Society of Natural History.
Of this society I soon became a member, and shortly was en-
gaged in its then active life. Thence until about 1870, with the
exception of the two years and a half from the early part of
1862 to the autumn of 1864, this institution was much in my
life. At first my efforts were limited to bringing about debates
amongst the elders, by asking questions which were contrived
to accomplish the end. Our particular aim was to set Agassiz

BOSTON SCIENTIFIC MEN 105

and Rogers, who were chronic enemies, by the ears. When
this could be accomplished, — and to that end there were many
contrivings among the youngsters, — we were sure of good
entertainment, often protracted over several successive meet-
ings. Agassiz was admirable in discourse, — when at his best
the most simply eloquent speaker I have ever heard, — but
his capacity for debate was small. Rogers, on the other hand,
was not only an able and learned geologist, but very skilful in
argument, with a keen sense of the logic which should control
statements. Oftenest these debates related to the theories of
the glacial period, but they covered much ground. In 1860
and 1861 the Darwinian hypothesis was often in the field,
though at this time and place it had little support from any
one — except Asa Gray, who could rarely be induced to say
anything about it.

At this stage of my life, about 1860, I came into close rela-
tions with Jeffries Wyman, whose lectures I regularly attended,
and in whose laboratory work I took a small share. In some
ways he was the most perfect naturalist I have ever known.
His physical weakness, combined with his exceeding modesty,
— shyness is the better word for it, — kept him from winning
a large place in science; but within the limits of his powers, he
had the best-balanced mind it has been my good fortune to
come into contact with. His work on the question of sponta-
neous generation, a part of which I saw, was a very model of
how an inquiry should be made. Though he published but little,
his store of knowledge of the whole field of natural history was
surprisingly great, and, as I came to find, it greatly exceeded
that of my master Agassiz in its range and accuracy. A part
of his quality was his certainty and the balanced judgment
which enabled him unerringly to attain to it. As a proof of
this quality, I note an instance. From an Indian mound I had
obtained two lots of bone which were evidently fragments of
human tibise, though they were somewhat malformed. To make
sure of this, though the determination seemed certain, I took

106 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

them to Wyman, asking him what they were. To my surprise
he said that he would examine them and let me know next
week. When I said to him that he surely knew at a glance, he
remarked that if I had brought him a human skull for inspec-
tion he would take time to it.

Jeffries Wyman's balance of mind was shown in his noble
sense of justice, of which I had a curious example, after I had
known him for a year or two. It was about 1860 that a student
in the School, who had come thereto after my appearance, was
seized by a fancy for making a journey to the far East. To
provide himself with means for this venture, he went about
among the patrons of Agassiz's work soliciting contributions.
Some of the givers may have had an idea that they were giving
to a project which had his approval, though he had not been
consulted in the matter. The young man's action exasperated
Agassiz and led him to an outbreak of rage, the first I had
ever seen him in, for he was generally admirably composed in
manner, even when inwardly troubled. He had the offender's
effects put out of his room in Zoological Hall and summarily
of his own authority dismissed him from the School. This
expulsion he announced to a meeting of the students of the
laboratory, giving his reasons for it. Knowing the purpose of
the gathering I refused to attend it, for while I was not on good
relations with the fellow, and regarded his conduct as improper,
I refused to have any part in his punishment. I tried, indeed,
to dissuade my master from his summary course, but without
any other result than a berating.

The sense of even-handed rather formal justice which has
always controlled in the discipline of Harvard University, and
which requires that no student shall be expelled without a full
hearing of the case before an unprejudiced board, was much
shocked by the summary treatment which Agassiz gave to his
pupil. Probably because I had refused to countenance the per-
formance, Wyman, who appeared to have charge of the in-
quiry which the authorities made, came several times to ques-

JEFFRIES AND MORRILL WYMAN 107

tion me about it, and our discussion of the matter brought us
to the place of friends, though we were generations apart. His
effort to form a judgment of this case, his inevitable fairness,
made a great impression on my mind; it was the most beautiful
exhibition of fairness and sympathy I have ever seen. Out of
it came the conclusion that while the action of Agassiz was rash
and illegal, the results were on the whole just. I distinctly re-
call how well Wyman weighed a suggestion of mine that it would
not be right to judge Agassiz's course of action by the rules of
the place where he was, but rather by those which held in the
part of the world where he had acquired the standard of con-
duct which he brought with him when in middle life he came
to this country; that the College in taking him took not only
his learning but his habits as well ; that these would not always
happen to fit a New England school was to be expected.

Jeffries Wyman was one of three brothers who had a place
in the life of their time. Morrill, the elder, was a physician
of distinction who served the community of Cambridge, espe-
cially that of the College, for over sixty years. He had the same
simplicity and honesty that characterized his brother Jeffries.
He also knew most accurately the difference between know-
ledge and conjecture, and brought to his judgment of malady
a rare penetration as well as an inventiveness in devising the
means of help. Though successful by dint of his success, he
lacked a full share of popularity because of his unwillingness
to humor his patients. If he found nothing the matter with them
he was likely, after looking at the pictures on the wall and
making some irrelevant remarks about politics or the weather,
to go away without any evident consideration of the case. If,
however, there was reason for it, he would set about his task of
helping with amazing devotion. When near eighty years of age,
long by the time when he was willing to undertake any surgical
work, he found himself in face of a case of strangulated hernia,
when to save the life an immediate operation was necessary.
He had no surgical instruments with him, but he at once and

108 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

alone etherized the patient and with pen-knife and scissors did
an entirely successful operation. Although by thrift and sav-
ing he amassed a considerable fortune, becoming as usual in
such work somewhat close, he held obstinately to the low
charges for his services, which were half a century ago a dollar
for office advice, two dollars for a visit, and a like moderate
scale for obstetric and surgical work. Moreover, he was given
to the practice of refusing any compensation from people in
stress for money. The only approach to a quarrel, in the forty
years of our intimacy, was on an occasion when he asked me to
tell an impecunious colleague of mine that he had no bill to pay
for the long and devoted services rendered him in a grave ill-
ness. I refused to do this on the ground that such a communi-
cation should not pass through an intermediary, because even
that slight amount of publicity would offend the recipient of
the charity. After a time, finding that it was the curious family
shyness that ailed the kind doctor, and that the matter was
weighing on him, I bore his message, with the result that while
the sick man accepted the grace it broke up our friendship.
My first contact with Wyman was in the winter of 1858-59,
when there was much diphtheria about. Having a sore throat,
I sent for him. Knowing that he was a busy man, and as it was
in the night, I had ready a candle and a spoon which I handed
him as soon as he came in. He looked at the offending throat,
said it was not diphtheria, remarked that I had been well
brought up, and went his way with no further word. When I
sought him to pay for his services, he said that there was no
charge, as I was a physician's son. He had apparently inferred
this from the preparations I had made for his visit. It was only
when I explained that though I was under age, I was supported
by money which had come to me from generations beyond my
father, and that my use of it in no wise affected his welfare, that
he was willing to take his fee. The acquaintance thus begun
soon ripened into friendship, which was ever a support and in-
spiration to me. His advice given in many perplexities was

CHARLES T. JACKSON 109

always wise and inspired by a wide-ranging knowledge of men
and things. He was the very type of that best of all groups of
men, the well-trained, devoted physician.

A third brother of this interesting family, Rufus Wyman,
was personally little known to me, for he, too, shrank from
any kind of publicity, and thus was hard to know. Like the
others, he had the quality of devotion to his fellow-men with
so complete a willingness to put aside all considerations of self
that he never saw what his deeds meant in terms of sacrifice.
An instance of this came to my attention, when an invasion
of cholera slew a number of people in Boston and Cambridge,
among them Gould, the zoologist. Rufus Wyman saw several
people looking at a house on the other side of Main Street, in
Cambridgeport. Asking what was the matter, he learned that
there were cases of cholera there, and that no one dared to go
in. He went at once, stayed there and served as nurse until
death or recovery made his help no longer necessary.

Next to Jeffries and Morrill Wyman, my relations were
closest with Charles T. Jackson, a man of a totally different
type; in fact, he and the noble brothers were at opposite ends
of the great procession of my time. Jackson was a man of un-
common ability and of wide learning in chemistry and geology;
most willing to help youths to their advancement but with an
eager, most human, often pitiful hunger for applause. He could
not rest on his solid accomplishments, on his for the time ex-
cellent geological work, and his full share in giving the greatest
boon ever given to suffering men and beasts, but he must have
a share of the approval of his fellows, for his mental digestion,
so to speak, with every meal. Boston, with its chariness of
praise and its unreasoning shallow contempt for demonstrative
persons, afforded him no outlet for his great talents, which
closely verged on genius. Had he lived in Paris, where a per-
sonality is appreciated for what it is worth, and not in the
atmosphere of decaying Puritanism, where he was stifled, he
would have won a great place for himself, and, what is better,

110 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

happiness. From Jackson, whom I often saw at his house and
oftener in the Society of Natural History, I had much in the
way of information. I never went to him for help without find-
ing it, but my errands related solely to matters of fact, of which
he had a great store. He did not teach sympathy for his fel-
lows, but he needed it overmuch himself.

Jackson had a great deal of divining power, with a limited
amount of field observation — he was not zealous of seeing -
he could make safer inferences than any geologist I have ever
known. This is shown in his work on the Narragansett Basin
in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as I discovered when I fol-
lowed in his footsteps; he evidently saw but little, yet he cor-
rectly inferred the principal features of the structure of that
interesting field. I have measured a large part of the work
accomplished by my predecessors in this country and have
found no instance where a difficult interpretation concerning
the underground altitudes of a series of strata was so well done
as in his report on this region. It is, so far as I have learned,
the first piece of work in which a great syncline was adequately
determined from only limited outcrops, for the most of the area
is covered by the waters of the great inlet known as Narragan-
sett Bay. The constructive imagination which led him to fore-
see the value of the anaesthetic properties of ether, was clear in
all his geological work which I have traced in the field.

My contacts with Asa Gray were limited; he and Agassiz
were in feud, so that except for hearing his lectures and now
and then a word concerning some plant I had trouble in nam-
ing, I saw but little of him until after I had become a teacher
in the School. Thenceforth until his death we were much to-
gether, for my grateful acceptance of Darwinism was a bond
between us, as was also my general interest in botanical ques-
tions. My separation from him in the earlier days was, as I see
it now, a misfortune, but inevitable; for in those primitive days
when the students in the Scientific School were members of
warring camps, each set against the others, in a desire to win

JOSIAH P. COOKE 111

this or that, it was dangerous for a student to be seen in parley
with the enemy, and the leaders were not supposed to have
much to do with the adversary's recruits. Coming as Agassiz
did as a foreigner, successful in his efforts to get money for his
large purposes, intense and outspoken as regards the ancient
methods of teaching in the College, he naturally met with much
opposition, which in his strong way he did not conciliate but
overrode. The result was that his students found it well to
herd together and have little to do with the followers of the
other men. This, be it said, was not true in the case of Jeffries
Wyman, with whom, despite incidental frictions as in the case
above mentioned, Agassiz always retained friendly relations;
he had indeed a great admiration for him. The fact that my
master, who was the very antithesis of Wyman, understood
and valued him, showed me that he had a rare capacity for
judging men, and further that his conflicts with others were
not due, as some thought, to his grasping desires.

Although in the curious system of instruction then existing
in the Scientific School, essentially one of apprenticeship, the
students of geology and zoology were not required to attend
any other instruction, I went to certain courses of lectures, par-
ticularly to those given by Josiah P. Cooke in chemistry and to
those of James Russell Lowell in literature. Cooke's lectures
and experiments — there was no formal laboratory work —
gave an excellent outline of the subject as it was then known.
At first, owing to a certain solemnity of speech combined with
a nervous trembling which affected his voice as well as his hands,
he made a somewhat unpleasant impression. Yet soon his ear-
nestness, his willingness to help us to understand, made him
valued for his real worth. From him I learned a little of chem-
istry and chemical physics, which has made me deplore my lack
of real learning in that vast field.

Outside of natural science, the only teacher I listened to in
my student days was Lowell, whose lectures I attended off and
on for three years. I was first attracted to him by hearing that

112 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

he was to lecture on Goethe, at that time an object of my wor-
ship, since unhappily relegated by what seems to me to be a
better understanding to a secondary place, both as a humanist
and as a naturalist. Lowell was then a fellow worshipper and
that led me to hear him further. There was to me a peculiar
fascination in his quality, though I did not then nor afterward
when we were colleagues come to like him. As I saw it, he was
the most perfect and most natural poser I have ever known.
This acting was not of a purpose, he appeared to try to hide it
even from himself, by contriving a garment of naturalness
which he wore cleverly, but it did not hide the self -conscious-
ness which tormented him. As I learned afterward, he had a
devouring hunger for praise, which seemed necessary to lift
him out of the self-critical humor which possessed him. While
I felt this defect in the man in such a measure that at times it
made me fairly ache to look at him, his lectures fascinated me :
he gave me indeed my first contact with a man of high literary
quality, with something of true genius in him. He read his lec-
tures; they smell of the lamp, but he read them admirably;
some of them stay with me after near half a hundred years.
But none of his hearers seemed to come any nearer to him than
I did, and I was kept at a distance. Any effort to get with him
after his lectures led to failure. A few vague polite words made
it plain that "those who did not leave when the performance
was over would be put out by the police."

I particularly desired to know Lowell, for I had a hunger for
the human quality that he knew, at least historically, so well.
I desired to know him also because he was an Abolitionist and
I was at that time curious as to the state of mind of cultivated
men of that faith. I failed in this latter purpose with Lowell
as I did with Edmund Quincy, the only other strong Anti-
slavery man I hoped to approach. Quincy was my father's
classmate and they for certain reasons had been thrown closely
together, but he made it plain to me that he could not have
relations with people who held slaves as my family did. This

BENJAMIN PEIRCE 113

hint was so tactfully conveyed that I was neither vexed nor
amused, but rather grieved at his preposterous state of mind.
Whenever we met in after years, the dear old fellow always
greeted me with a certain distinguished consideration such as
you give and have from your enemy under a flag of truce. I
shall have more to say of this curious state of mind of the Anti-
slavery people further on in this narrative.

Of the other men who were in some measure my teachers
while I was formally a pupil, I have the clearest and most de-
lightful memories of Benjamin Peirce, professor of mathematics
and astronomy. I was never in his classes, — they were re-
served for college men, — but whenever there was a lecture to
which I had access I heard him, with a greedy half -comprehen-
sion. He had a penetrating mathematical mind, compounded
with a vigorous constructive imagination. I recall a course of
lectures by him in which he dealt with a confounding variety
of subjects, including curves and billiards, winding up with a
drawing on the blackboard to which as a finale he with great
effectiveness pointed, saying : " If an archangel had to make a
universe he would do it in that formula." This made a vast
impression on my mind at the time; it was long after that I
came to see that your mathematical, like other mills, gives
forth no more than you put into it, however changed in shape
the product may be, and that the aforesaid formula held no
more than certain human concepts of energy, matter, and law,
so that even an archangel would find it a task to make any-
thing whatever out of them. During my undergraduate days
my relations with Peirce were limited, partly because I had no
adequate preparation to follow his vast excursions, but more
for the reason that he and Agassiz were enemies, with occa-
sional intermissions of loving friendship, and as in the case of
Gray I found it best to bide with my own lot. After I became
a teacher, our relations were intimate and to me largely profit-
able in wide understandings.

Among those who came to Agassiz with the broadening of

114 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

his prospects which the newly founded museum gave, were
certain men who were in some measure my teachers. First of
these I will note X., who had been trained by the master as
a mineralogist and embryologist. Although he was a man of
moderate parts, he had a decided capacity for the work as-
signed to him and taught it fairly well. From him I gained some
skill in the relatively limited knowledge of those subjects which
existed at that time, but no inspiration whatever. He was sin-
gularly affected by a notion that he was a genius who was in
process of being discovered by Agassiz, and his whole mind went
to securing his safety from that appropriation. While I saw
that there was some slight basis for this idea, it was clear to
me then as now that when a great and naturally avid per-
sonality comes in contact with a subordinate of mediocre tal-
ents, such a result is in some measure inevitable. I tried to
make the sufferer see that for the ounce of value he gave he
received a pound in return, but it was not in him to see it.
Others who came in contact with Agassiz suffered from the
same incapacity to understand the situation. The result in this
case was a break which led to X.'s retirement from the univer-
sity, and to his failure as a worker on his own account, which
ended in his death a few years afterwards.

The other collaborator of Agassiz, who had far more influ-
ence on my life, was Jules Marcou, who had been his pupil,
though the difference in their ages was but a few years. Marcou
had already made a place for himself by his work on the Meso-
zoic rocks and his connection with the Mexican boundary sur-
vey. He was a native of Salins in the French Jura, but he had
been in this country before and had married a Boston woman
of distinguished family and considerable fortune. He was a
characteristic Frenchman, of the especial type that marks the
people of the region whence he came, so that they fit rather to
our notions of Swiss than of French. He was some inches over
six feet in height, slender, slightly stooped, with a handsome
face that reminded me much of the portrait of Leonardo da

JULES MARCOU 115

Vinci. He never learned to speak English easily, to make it a
second mother tongue as Agassiz did, and at that time his use
of the language was most imperfect. Partly because I well
understood him in French, but rather because of our common
interest in geology, we soon came together and were long near
friendsf He was the first real geologist with whom I had a chance
to take the field, and from him in 1860 in a prolonged excur-
sion to Gay Head on Martha's Vineyard/I had my first lesson
in actual exploration under the eyes of a trained man. Unfor-
tunately, Marcou, though versed in the identification of hori-
zons, had no sense of structural geology; so I was in no wise
helped in the task of unravelling the complicated tangle of
greatly disturbed strata which is there exhibited. In his opin-
ion the folds and faults which are evident in the outcrop were
altogether due to the slipping of the beds. Though these land-
slide movements have evidently had some effect in producing
the tangle, I saw at the end of a week of work that this
effect was but slight, and that other influences had been the
main source of the complexity. This was my first piece of
interpretation ; it brought me no further than the stage of
drilling, yet it was most profitable* /Nearly thirty years after-
ward, on returning to the inquiry and setting about it with
deliberation, the problem was solved.

I made a number of other shorter journeys with Marcou, all
in the neighborhood of Boston. On these I learned from him
more of the traditions of field work as he had received them
from the various experts with whom he had been in contact.
Yet he was little skilled in solving the riddles of geological
structures and entirely inattentive to the meaning of physio-
graphic forms. But as in that day few cared for those problems
I was left to my own devices. I puzzled out some things in the
structure of the Boston Basin by much footing over the ground
and plotting sections and the dips of the strata; but it was
years after, when I had a chance of help from the Swiss field
workers, before I obtained any command of the methods I

116 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

needed in my work. Marcou's main influence on me while I
was a student came through his great knowledge of men and
their deeds. He knew the work of the leaders of the science
very well, and his intense interest in people, and delight in
talking about them, helped me to get the traditions of the sci-
ence. To him and afterwards to Lyell I owe a considerable
amount of knowledge of what geologists have done and their
quality not only as men of science but as men. I have never
found any one else so rich in this important lore. Jf

In 1860 I came in contact with the brothers Rogers, William
and Henry, then famous for their work in Virginia and Penn-
sylvania. With the latter of these able men my personal con-
tacts were limited, but I heard him expound his theory of
mountain-building, which was in effect that mountains were
great translation waves in the crust, made by earthquakes,
essentially like those made by the wind on the surface of the
sea, which had been arrested in their forward movement and
remained as it were frozen as we now find them, except for the
changes which erosion has brought about. I am glad to say
that in the debates on this hypothesis in our club, I set myself
against it, on the ground that we see no such waves attending
earthquakes, and further that the rocks would be shattered by
such movements and not folded as we find them. It was by such
debates on every question which came up that I had much of
the best training of my undergraduate time. Probably it was
this proposition of Henry D. Rogers that fixed my interest on
mountain structures and led me to read nearly all that had
been written on the subject.

With William B. Rogers, as he had married in Boston and
come to live there, my relations were nearer than with his bro-
ther Henry. We met in the Society of Natural History, where,
as above noted, I was wont to contrive debates between him
and Agassiz. I can see before me now the noble shape and
brilliant countenance of my master, as he eagerly, often in-
cautiously, set forth his hypothesis, while Rogers, keen-faced

AGASSIZ AND WILLIAM B. ROGERS 117

and alert, prepared himself for his attack. When his turn came,
with an odd gesture by which he seemed to turn his eagle eyes
"hard aport," he would launch on a task of mingled criticism
and construction, in both of which he was most effective. While
it was on, the contrivers of the fracas would rejoice in the profit
of it; it was always large. They were both game-cocks, so that
on a higher plane I had once again the pleasure of my boy-
hood in watching their evolutions. Much came to us from
these debates.

It was well known even to Agassiz's students that Rogers
desired to have a place in Harvard College as professor of geo-
logy. He was admirably well fitted for this position, a man of
distinguished general ability, well informed in the science and
an admirable teacher. Agassiz was at once professor of zoology
and geology, though I believe that I was the only person who
ever took the degree in geology while he taught at Harvard,
and I had mainly to depend on outside help and fight hard for
my training. It was not indeed until, after graduating, I spent
two years in Europe and there had the help of half a dozen
able teachers that I felt fairly well grounded on the dynamic
side of the science; my training having been mainly biological.
Large-minded as my master was in most of his contacts with
men, he could not be persuaded to allow Rogers beside him.
Presuming, it may be, on our relations, which had become rather
those of man with man than pupil with teacher, I tried to de-
bate the proposition with him, only to find that it was not
debatable. It was a pity, for from this refusal to give him the
place in the School to which he was entitled by his quality and
station, Rogers was in a way compelled to turn his energy to
the creation of a rival institution, the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, with the result that Boston supports two rival
schools in a field which has fair place for but one.

CHAPTER VIII

SOME COLLEGE COMPANIONS

NEXT to the elder men, my teachers, in the subjects which in-
terested me, I have to rank as helpers a number of persons
also a generation in advance of me who were only incidentally
my instructors. Of these, two or three were in the entourage
of Agassiz. One of them was Hansen, a Swede who served as
a translator of Scandinavian languages, Russian, or any other
foreign tongue save Latin, Greek, French, or German, which
we were expected to deal with as best we might. He was a very
interesting fellow, this Hansen, a huge blond Viking, with a
rare spirit in him. A lover of music and poetry, good at a song,
mingling gayly his age with our youths, all the day he was
merry, but at night he had the most frightful dreams. His room
was next to mine, and very often I had to go to his bed and
wrestle him to consciousness. His visitations had a demoniacal
fury and brought him a torment I have never known the like
of. When awakened he was in a state of sorrow that wrung
our hearts, but quickly he would cast his woe aside and be
his merry self again. Gradually I learned from his unconscious
speech, what I confirmed long afterwards from a person who
knew his history, that his wife and children had been burned
to death before his eyes. The daytime valor of this man taught
me much.

We had as keeper of our club-house an interesting Scotch-
man, by the name of William Glenn, who was a preparator in
the Museum. Though a mechanic, he had been much about
museums and had known many naturalists in Great Britain.
He was, moreover, a disputatious philosopher of rather wide
reading in the Scotch school, concerning which we had endless
debates. Glenn's wife, an attractive lower-class elderly Scotch-

UNIVERSITY

OF

FOLEY OF KENTUCKY 119

woman, was our housekeeper, an efficient matron of the young
men who lodged in the hall, marvellously bitter of tongue, but
full of motherly goodness. This couple interested me greatly,
and we became near friends. I am sorry to say that they did
not find favor with the other youngsters ; so they fared ill, their
life being made a burthen by certain reprobates of the rather
ill-conditioned society.

Of the students who were with Agassiz, few of them became
my friends, though I kept on good enough terms with all of
them. At first, I was intimately associated with one of them
from my part of Kentucky, whom I had known a bit in boy-
hood. So we naturally came at once together for the months
before the club was set up in the Hall. We spent our evenings
together, alternating in each other's rooms. Foley being by
two or three years my elder and a masterful man, a while he
was the leader of our doings. He was the most perfect speci-
men of a physical man I have ever known : six feet, two inches
high, evenly built, weighing about two hundred pounds, and
as nimble as a cat. After the manner of his Kentucky kind, he
was a born fighter, rejoicing in battle in a most amicable way
— whacking seemed to warm his heart. The memory of him
always reminds me of somebody's picture of a gentleman in
line of battle : —

And now he hummed a snatch of song: and now he smote a knave.

Foley bred about him an atmosphere of combat which led the
toughs of all the neighborhood to try their hands on him. Look-
ing one summer evening from my window, I saw him coming
up the street. As he passed through the hedge two men jumped
at him ; in a flash he had knocked them down ; straightway he
picked them up and threw them over the hedge into the street,
the whole process taking less than ten seconds. Then he came
up to my room as if nothing unusual had happened. To my
question as to who the chaps were, he said, " Dunno; never saw
them before," and made no further reference to them.

120 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

Beginning with the occupancy of Zoological Hall as a club-
house, Foley was for some months my chum. We got on well
together. He tried his best to take on studious ways and showed
no little ability, so that the master had great hopes for his
future, but fighting — and what goes with it — was too much
for him. Some of his feats were in their time famous. One mid-
night he came home with a policeman's coat and billy under
his arm. A huge member of the force known as the "Infant
Hayes" had tried to arrest him, merely to be laid down and
stripped of his uniform and club, which were returned the next
day with Foley's compliments and address. Naturally, the
vanquished giant held his peace. About the same time, coming
out from Boston on the well-remembered "last car" of those
days, he was set upon by a party of roughs ; he kicked them off,
and not liking the behavior of the conductor and driver he
kicked them off also. He then drove the car to the stables, ex-
plaining that the men had stopped in the "Port" and would be
up shortly. As my chum was never ill-humored or unfair, and
especially as he was never vanquished, he became a privileged
character, the idol of the gentlemanly and other villains of
eastern Massachusetts. In six months I found the association
unprofitable ; so in all friendliness we dissolved partnership and
he lodged elsewhere. At the end of the year, he left the School,
to become afterward a distinguished officer of cavalry in the
Union service. He stays in my memory as the best type of his
class I have ever known.

My next chum was Alpheus Hyatt of Maryland, a man of dif-
ferent quality from Foley. He, too, was much my senior, and
had a large place in my life. Although my experiences had been
wider than his, he earlier developed maturity of mind ; in fact,
at nineteen I looked up to him, then about twenty-two, as an
ancient. He had attained to a perfectly definite theory of life,
while I was still an explorer. I well remember his arraignment
of me as a dreamer and a vagarist who would drift through life
doing what the moment bade me do, with no sense of a definite

ALPHEUS HYATT 121

goal, such as he had set for himself. I felt that much of his
denunciation was well founded — somehow I never cared for
goals, — the mileposts have proved more interesting to me.
What I had absorbed of philosophy, and had insensibly shaped
into a plan of life, made me interested in thinking and doing
for their own sakes and not for those accomplishments which
bred fame. On this, as on most other matters, we had endless
profitable quarrels, such as lead to firm friendship. We were
together for a year, when we concluded that we were both
naturally solitaries, and he moved to Divinity Hall just across
the way. We parted to be even better friends and more helpful
to each other than before. The bond lasted until his death in
1902.

After Hyatt left me I had no permanent chum. For a time
Leslie Waggener, another Kentuckian, who was a student in
the College, lodged with me, and we were very near to one an-
other until he graduated (in 1861) and went directly to the
Confederate army. The first Confederate uniform I saw, he had
made in Boston and donned for our diversion just before he
went away, he knowing that Hyatt and I were soon to be his
official enemies. We thought nothing of this incident at the
time, but seen across the years I see the pathos of it.

Waggener's name reminds me of another friend of those
years ; the reason for the reminder I shall tell below. This other
was Philip Sidney Coolidge, a grandson of Thomas Jefferson.
I met Coolidge when I first came to Cambridge. We ate at the
same table, and though he was some six or eight years my
senior we soon became intimate. He was then an assistant in
the Observatory. The common ground was, as I recall it, a
common longing for the width of the world. I have seen much
of men, but never another who was as curiously interesting as
this son of an ancient and staid Boston family. Coolidge was
brought up in France, and spoke his English with a French ac-
cent, for which misfortune he berated his forbears who were
responsible for it. He was a rather small, delicate person, with

122 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

a soldierly courage, with a gentle pale face, and a large nose
adorned with eye-glasses. Though soldierly in bearing, — he
had been trained at a French military school, — he seemed to
be physically a somewhat weak person. I was sufficiently
experienced not to mistake that ancient sign of danger, the
woman's look. He had led a strangely roving adventurous life
as a soldier in the Franco-Italian-Austrian War of 1859, as
engineer of a revolution in Mexico, and as a member of a gov-
ernment exploring expedition on the Pacific. He had roamed
about afoot in various terrestrial wilds and was seeking celes-
tial realms. Even then I knew something of Sir Philip and
fancied in my friend there was something of his famous name-
sake: a like interior of valor, with a like outward insufficiency
or what the unobservant take for such.

One short story will tell more of Coolidge's quality than all
my inadequate description. I had been reading some book of
travel in China, and, in the manner of a youth, was airing my
knowledge in the talk that went round at our boarding-house
table. I had spoken of the northern Chinaman as a well-devel-
oped man, saying he would average a certain height — what-
ever it was in the book. A chap questioned my statement.
Knowing Coolidge had been in China, I asked his opinion. He
assumed that he thought the estimate was right. The caviller
said, " I should like to know, sir, what foundation you have for
your opinion"; having for answer, "I saw a hundred of them
beheaded, and I measured them afterwards." I have heard
sundry "sockdologers," but this was the most perfect of all,
quite ideal in its efficiency. At the moment, and for long after-
ward, I supposed that the statement was an invention well con-
trived to silence the troublesome fellow — so indeed all probably
took it. But thirty years afterward, on telling it at my own
table, as a sample of apt invention, another friend said, " That
statement was no invention; I saw Coolidge do it." He went
on to explain that they together had witnessed the execution,
and that when it was over Coolidge, with a curious fancy for

A STORY OF THE WAR 123

exact fact which marks the true idealist as distinguished from
the mere dreamer, had, with the permission of the authorities,
proceeded with his measurements. Some time after the Civil
War began, Coolidge found his place as Major of the Sixteenth
Infantry of the Union army. At Chickamauga he commanded
the regiment and, holding his place when the line broke, was
killed. So I needs must go forward ten years and complete here
the story of my Philip Sidney's end.

From a captured officer who was not, as I remember him,
from his regiment, I learned shortly after the battle of Chicka-
mauga that Waggener had been killed on that field. My in-
formant had seen him dead upon the ground at the close of the
action. As was the way in those days, I bade him farewell with
but a fanciful grief and thought little more about him. In 1874,
being then state geologist, I happened to be in Kentucky. It
came to my mind that my friend was from that place, and that
he had kindred there. With this memory came a grief for his
loss I had not felt before. Thus moved, it occurred to me to
seek his family. I was directed where to find some of them, and
set out for the place. On the way, I encountered a man whose
shape led me to say, "Sir, are you a kinsman of Leslie Wag-
gener?" To which he answered, " That's my name, sir." " But,"
I said, "the Leslie Waggener I have in mind was killed at Chick-
amauga." " No," he rejoined, " he was n't killed, though he was
left as dead. There's no other Leslie Waggener and never has
been." While I silently stared at him, for once in my life quite
nonplussed, he in turn said, "You look like Nat Shaler." I told
him that was my name, but as if repeating my words, he said,

"The fellow I mean was killed at Stone River; Jim , who

knew him well, saw him lying dead." I answered him that there
were two good reasons why that was n't true; first, that I was
not at Stone River, and, second, that I was very much alive. At
this stage of our strange business, we sat down on a box in front
of a store and gaped at one another. The odd part of it was,
as we afterward remarked, that there was in our hearts no trace

124 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

of our old mutual affection. The situation was almost disgust-
ingly odd. Each had long accepted the other as dead and the
sometime love did not find its way back. Waggener was the
first to recover his balance enough to start conversation. He
began by asking me something about Coolidge, who was killed
at Chickamauga. Then he told me the reason for his question.
The story ran as follows. Waggener was with the force that
broke the Federal line where the Sixteenth Infantry was sta-
tioned; as the shattered remnant went back, he saw Coolidge
standing in his place with the point of his sword up, making
what the soldiers called a "defy." Waggener recognized him,
knew that his signal of no surrender would quickly lead to his
being shot, and ran toward him. When he was a few score feet
away, he was himself shot, and did not recover consciousness
for some days thereafter. I should hesitate to tell this improb-
able story but for the fact that I wrote down what passed at
that strange meeting. It should be said that the dead friend-
ship between Waggener and myself quickly revived and lasted
to the end of his beautiful life, in 1896. He became President
of the University of Texas, but was finally borne down by the
wound he received while trying to save his friend from the death
he strangely sought.

Last of the list of those students with whom I was intimate,
and on some accounts the nearest to me, I name George Emer-
son. He was not of Agassiz's lot, but was engaged in chemistry
under Horsford and mineralogy with Cooke. He came about the
time I did; and though he was my elder by several years, he
soon became a near friend ; along with Hyatt he was, until the
time of parting, in the centre of my life. Probably the bond
between us was in part due to his delicate health and to the care
I felt called on to give him. He already had tuberculosis, and
was, as I saw, doomed to a speedy death. Emerson had the
quality which has gone with many of his name whom I have
known. Of all the youths of my time he was in spirit the near-
est to the front. The fact, well known to himself, as well as to

GEORGE EMERSON 125

us, that he was soon to die, may have had much to do with his
journeys to the spaces ; but this sense of the finish did not make
him sorrowful ; as the phrase has it, he " burned his own smoke."
I doubt if there was much to burn, for his was a brave soul. In
shape he was small, rather shrunken, — for the malady clutched
him in his adolescence, — but he had the Caesar nose, that cleav-
ing prow of a nose which is the only feature of the face which
in my experience tells of true valor.

I talked much of high things with Emerson in our rooms in
Cambridge and our walks about the town. He could not range
far, for his breath was scant; but I was glad to go slowly with
him and to rest often, for we always went far in these short
farings. We were most together on the occasions, rather fre-
quent, when he took me to his home in Greenfield, in the Con-
necticut valley. Here he had some property and a lot of inter-
esting people, his kindred and friends. My memory of those
good folk is now faint, save for the abiding impression that they
were living the quiet, deep, unsignifying life of the New Eng-
lander, that Puritanic life so different from the housetop-shout-
ing mode of living I had been accustomed to. One of these fig-
ures is still vivid — that of an old gentleman with a soldierly
figure and a noble face, who had been much about the world,
having spent long years in India amid rich experiences. This
dear man was mildly insane, and because of his occasional per-
turbations shunned by the people of the town, even by his kin-
dred. I was accustomed to deal with such unfortunates, be-
cause in the community where I began the task of dealing with
neighbors, his like were allowed to go about getting what they
could from human intercourse, and their capers were looked
upon as amusing. So I took many long walks with this sturdy
madman, and greatly enjoyed what he gave me from his ample
store of memory and the simple kindly philosophy which was
mingled with it. When once in an hour or so he would "fly
off the handle," I would not notice the aberration, but steer
him back to himself with some question concerning his experi-

126 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

ences in the far East; once back into his reminiscences of his
sane life, he would run on for a while, a most delightful com-
panion. The dear fellow soon saw the way I managed to keep
hold of his sound remainder, and his dumb gratitude, told in
look and tone in the way only the gentle soul can tell it, moves
me as I write these lines. I have long forgotten his name, but
his face stays with me, the brave face of a man who was fight-
ing to save his remnant from the deep, so that I would know
it at a glance if it came again to view.

The last time I was with Emerson over a Sunday at Green-
field, — it must have been in the autumn of 1861, — we talked
over the matter of his end, which was then evidently not far
off. His regret seemed to be not for the early passing of his life,
but for the failure of his plans for work that would remain un-
done. He turned to the disposition of his little patrimony, some
twenty thousand dollars, which he desired to leave for scholar-
ships in the Scientific School, to which he was attached by the
sense of its large purposes and certain future, but he desired to
mingle his care for the unknown with benefaction to those who
had been near to him by giving a life estate on his property
to H. or myself. It was decided that it should be H., who had
least in the way of expectations. So it was thus arranged. Our
mutual friend had the benefit of the trust until his death thirty
years after Emerson passed. That the money, which now helps
to support poor students in the University, will perpetuate
George Emerson's name for ages is my hope. All else of him,
the infinite eke of his great nature, the world will never know.

I never saw Emerson after our last meeting in Greenfield,
but in the autumn of 1862 I had a letter from him which came
to me in active campaign while Bragg was in Kentucky, in
which he told me that his disease was making progress, that he
could not die in peace with the sense that Hyatt and I were in
the lines, and he crawling about his home. He begged me to find
for him the chance to stand up for a punch in the good cause.
I took time to write him that this was impossible ; that it needed

RICHARD WHEATLAND 127

all of a well man's strength to keep one's feet long enough to take
the stroke; and that he would add one more to our cumbered
hospitals. I never heard from him again; after this last lashing
out against fate, he sank into the repose that usually comes to
those who die of consumption, and passed quickly.

One of my neighbors, rather than comrades, of Agassiz's train,
was , an interesting fellow who went about his tasks nim-
bly and merrily, but with an utterly commonplace motive which
made him quite uninteresting to our small hyperphilosophical
coterie. He was of my age to a year, but seemed to me hope-
lessly young, I suppose for lack of the aforesaid philosophy.
Had stuck to zoology he would have made a great dis-
sector of species, for he took to that dismal task as a duck does
to water. Withal he was frolicsome ; he played a large part in the
rackets which went on in our hall and was much in society,
where his eminent physical beauty made him welcome. At the
first tap of the war drum, he was away and by the time he was
twenty-two he commanded a brigade. I have heard it said that
he was the youngest man in the service to earn a star for his
shoulder. In 1865 he found no place in the regular army, but
fell into avocations where he won no credit and died. It is the
fashion to say that arms make a man fit for citizenship ; that is
in some measure true of the material which finds a place in the
ranks ; in my experience it is quite otherwise with youths of the
higher order there. In our Civil War the effect was usually de-
structive of purpose, and the training that fits man for it.

There were two men much older than my set who were to be
connected with Agassiz's pupils who gave me a share of their
store, William Stimpson and Richard Wheatland. Wheatland
was a Salem man who came often to the laboratory and at
times worked with us for months, then would be away, — for he
too was a consumptive, as were so many of the better sort in
those ancient days. From him I had a sense of the fundamental
measurement of the real Puritan stock of the Salem Colony;
through his eyes I first saw past the appalling solemnity which

128 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

marked the real nature of the Yankee life. He had not much to
give, but he revealed to me that things were "not as deep as a
well nor as wide as a church door"; and this gift helped much
to reconcile me to a society which, seen on its face, was to one
of my breeding by no means inviting. He soon passed out of
my sight, but not from memory, which holds him dear. His
was the common fate of Yoricks — to be forgotten before they
are dust; in certain ways, high ways, they are the best of their
times, but because a laugh cannot be perpetuated, they fall into
quick forgetfulness, or at best they have an echo in the hearts
of those who knew them.

William Stimpson was a naturalist of no mean capacity. If
he had not been turned to species-describing, a task akin to
"gerund grinding," he would have come to largeness. As it
was, his keen interest in animals of all kinds, his real love for
them, made him something much better than his printed work.
It was his affection for creatures as well as his general wit that
quickly brought us together. Stimpson was much my senior,
probably by ten years or more. He had rather cut loose from
Agassiz, for he had a fierce independence of spirit which did not
allow him to profit by mastery. Yet he now and then worked in
the laboratory, at that time on molluscs. We used to debate
the Darwinian hypothesis privately, for to be caught at it was
as it is for the faithful to be detected in a careful study of a
heresy. We had both read the " Vestiges of the Natural History
of Creation," Lamarck's "Philosophic Zoologique," and first
the Darwin- Wallace papers and then the newly published " Ori-
gin of Species." Agassiz had given a large part of his lectures
in one term to denouncing these works, and to the assertion
that species were absolute creations. He never even suggested
how the special creation came about, and when, at the end of
a lecture, I pressed him for some conception of how a species
first appeared, he stated that it was a " thought of God," thereby
showing the curious mysticism which lay at the foundation of
his nature. The logic of these views bothered Stimpson less than

WILLIAM STIMPSON 129

it did me, because he was a man of facts and not fancies. He
was puzzled by the transitional varieties between many of the
species of molluscs he was studying, especially those occurring
among the freshwater gasteropods. On one occasion I saw him
throw one of these vexatious shapes on the floor, after he had
studied it for a long time, put his heel upon it and grind it to
powder, remarking, "That's the proper way to serve a damned
transitional form."

CHAPTER IX

CRUISING AND CAMPING

MY first experience with dredging was with Stimpson in the
summer of 1860 along the coast of Maine. This art of searching
the bottom was then in its infancy, but what there was of it he
knew well by much very intelligent practice. We never worked
at a greater depth than about a hundred fathoms, and at that
depth, by using a large sand-boat, drifting with the strong tides ;
practically all our work was in the lateral belt. It was in general
our practice to use a rowboat with a sail to get to and from our
ground ; but we trusted to our oars for dragging the apparatus
over the bottom, two of us pulling while the third — Hyatt
was with us for a time, and for the rest a boatman — "tended
dredge." Since he was not strong, having, like so many others,
consumption, Stimpson did little of the pulling, so that I had a
season of hard work, enlivened and more than repaid by the joy
of the deep and its riches. I well remember the enthusiasm with
which Stimpson would greet a good haul. When the dredge
came up well-laden, it was his custom to drink to it in rum which
was always aboard, and of which he partook greatly. Filling a
glass, he would dextrously stand with one foot on either side of
the boat, swaying with it as he sang : —

"I was born upon the water and had ne'er a mother fairer,
And for mother's milk my father gave me only old Madeira;
So following out my early training I wander still upon the sea,
But water yet I ne'er have tasted ; water is no drink for me.
Water, no, no, no, water, no, no, no,
Water is no drink for me."

Then with "Here's to the haul" and a gulp, we would turn
to the business of picking out the treasures. A month of this
dredging took us pretty much the length of the Maine sea-front.

AN AMATEUR GRECIAN 131

We lodged where we chanced to be, generally with some farmer
or fisherman. There comes back to me the memory of a good
overnight place on Ironbound Island, in Frenchman's Bay. We
landed there at sunset of a summer day, memorable to me
because there had been a partial eclipse of the sun, which we
had seen through bits of smoked glass taken with us for that
purpose. The house, as seen from a distance, was a curious
structure set against a hill, two stories in front and none behind,
where it came against the steep slope. I was sent to parley for
food and lodging. On the way, seated apart on a stone, I came
upon an old, bareheaded man, who was reading in a loud rev-
erential voice from a book in a language which at first seemed
a jargon unknown to me. I went slowly near to him, waiting
for him to look up, or at least to make a pause, in order that I
could speak to him without being rude ; but he kept steadily on
in his preacher's tone and I had a chance to find out what he
was up to. He was reading Greek, without having learned the
sounds that fit the signs. When the letters could not be guessed,
he gave them a sound which he had devised for each. Where
the letters were much like the Roman form, he'was right enough,
but there were enough that he could not interpret to make the
whole effect very odd. At last, the good man came to the end
of his chapter, when I told him who we were, and what we were
about. He handed me the book, asking if I could read it. I read
him the first verses, to which he listened most intently. When
I stopped, he said we might stay as long as we pleased. Then
he added, " See the old woman, and don't tell her I said you can
stay." I found the dame somewhat difficult. I had to dissem-
ble concerning my interview with the old man, laying the accent
on the Greek, but we lodged there for three days, of which nearly
every waking moment spent ashore was of necessity given to
teaching my eager pupil how to pronounce Greek. If I had been
a tenth part as zealous a student as he was, I should have been
a great scholar. It was interesting to see that he really knew
the New Testament Greek; he had fairly worked out the gram-

132 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

mar and syntax in his simple way, so that he appeared not to
render it into English as he read, but to think in the language.
His joy in acquiring the pronunciation was affecting; it was the
crown of his life.

My note-book of this dredging expedition was burnt years
ago; thus I have lost the name of this dear fellow whose friend-
ship I acquired through the Greek alphabet, but I remember
his story as he told it me. He had been to sea until he was too
old for that labor. He was entirely self-taught, but he had an
apt pupil in himself, for he had much sound learning, including
rather difficult mathematics. He had devised and made an in-
teresting lot of instruments for nautical observations, novel
forms of sextants and queer contrivances for observing and
computing, and, what was more remarkable, tools for graduat-
ing the various circles he needed in his constructions. He was
a religious enthusiast and for all his active life had longed for
a chance to study Greek in order to read the Christian part of
the Scriptures in the original ; he was skeptic enough to distrust
the translations. So when, at about seventy-five, he had leisure,
he possessed himself of the text of the New Testament in the
original, and without grammar or dictionary set to work by a
process of comparison with the English version to learn the
language — it was amazing to see how well. As we sailed away,
I saw the old man in the place where I found him, and heard him
fairly shouting his Greek in the letters and sounds he had
learned.

Our voyage along the coast was replete with incidents of con-
tact with the then remote and primitive people who dwelt there.
It was the richer for Stimpson's rough art in dealing with their
curiosity as to our purpose, which must have seemed strange
enough to folk who thought they knew all manner of dealings
with the sea. Between Grand Manan and Eastport, while we
were pulling in a rough sea as for dear life towards the shore,
a fisherman sailing in one of the sharp-sterned, high-pooped
schooners of the time, found his curiosity too much for him.

DREDGING OFF EASTPORT 133

So he bore down on us, caught up, and called out, "Some kind
of fishing?" "No," said Stimpson, "we ain't fishing"; where-
upon the skipper pays off, and sails away a mile. When over-
come again, he turns about, runs up to us, lays to awhile in
silence, then, "Lost your anchor?" to have for brief answer,
"No, have n't lost no anchor." Forth once more, but lest he
burst with ignorance, he comes about very near and in a plead-
ing tone calls, "Wall, what be ye doin'?" Stimpson, in his fa-
vorite attitude of one foot on either gunwale, explains. "Don't
you see, skipper, we are turning Grand Manan over to fill up
Eastport Harbor." "Shough," roars the skipper like a blowing
whale, pays off, and sails away. When we arrived in Eastport,
we found that our fame as "naturals" had preceded us.

After we parted with Stimpson, I went with a companion to
Trenton Point in Frenchman's Bay and spent a month in fur-
ther dredging and roaming about with one or two companions
whose names I have forgotten. We stayed in an interesting
family, the master being an old sea-captain of rough, unsym-
pathetic, almost brutal outside, which was a mask for a very
tender, sympathetic nature. He affected to despise us and our
occupation ; but one stormy night when the three of us had been
caught out in the bay, and came near losing "the members of
our mess," getting home only at break of day, I thought I saw
his boat reach the wharf just ahead of us, and his hulky shape
slip into the house just before we entered. In the morning, he
affected utter unconcern whether we had been in danger or no;
but I found from others that he had gone forth in the storm
alone in his boat to search for us.

At Trenton Point, I fell in with an interesting Englishman,
who was a country teacher of music. I believe his name was
Ramsbottom or some such queerness. He was a well-trained
musician, oddly out of place in the hamlet Where he dwelt; I
fancied a man with a history, such as may be found here and
there in corners. He had trained a very good voice, which ren-
dered high-grade music admirably well. This chap was a mas-

134 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

terful fellow indeed, for he made me play on the violin in his
orchestra. I had had a year's training at it, and he made me sing
solos which I had never done before or since. Therefore I fairly
judged him a master. He certainly was mightily entertaining.

From Trenton Point we took by boat a tent and simple camp
"outfit" to where Bar Harbor now stands; tied the boat in the
bushes about where the steamboat wharf is; and spent some
days exploring the island of Mount Desert, then very little
known. We camped for the most of the time on Green Moun-
tain, where, boy-fashion, we amused ourselves by starting
boulders down the steep to hear them crash into the woods be-
low. Thence we went to Eagle Lake, built a raft and with our
shelter tent managed to sail the length of it ; but near the end
of the voyage there came a stout wind, and the waves broke
the raft to pieces, so that we lost our effects and had to swim
ashore, and make our way ignominiously to our boat and back
to our boarding-place.

This trifling bit of a camp journey in Mount Desert was a
great event in my life, for it brought my feet for the first time
upon a mountain-top. It is true that the height was trifling, —
but a matter of fifteen hundred feet or so, — and I had seen
greater elevations in the distance; but the way to experience a
mountain is to climb it with a pack on your back; you then
sense its mass in a way that sight does not enable you to do. I
have never had this sense of mass so borne in upon me as in this
climbing of Green Mountain. I remember how the uniform
structure of the elevation corresponded with my text-book
knowledge, which led me to seek the outward dip of strata from
an axis as the essential feature of such edifices. I came to a fair
idea of the truth that it and the associated hills were the re-
mains of the crystalline material which had been thrust up into
the folded stratified rocks, which had at one time covered the
country and had since been eroded by streams and glaciers.
Some remnants of this ancient covering I found in the schists
about the north shore of the island.

BOUNTY-CATCHERS 135

Two other very diverse memories of impressions had on this
journey remain with me. One is of a great fire which ravaged
a primeval forest of pines near the shore, which I saw from our
boat. The flames rose for at least fifty feet above the tops of the
tall trees, and, fanned by a strong wind, marched with great
rapidity, so that in an hour or two an area of some hundred
acres was swept away, leaving only the headless charred trunks
standing amid the smoke. Since then I have seen the fire of
battlefields and a city in flames, but there was a solemnity in
this burning of a great wood, a sense of personal loss, keener
than they aroused.

The other impression is that of a preposterous fleet of ancient
ships, locally called "bounty-catchers," sheltered from all the
dangers of the deep in a well-landlocked harbor. It was a
strange-looking lot of archaic craft, some of them of obsolete
shapes, that could only by care be kept from falling to pieces.
In good weather these queer things would be led forth into the
more open water, but not to the deep sea, to go through the
pretence of fishing, all this in order to earn the bounty then
paid to fishing vessels, — so much for each ton of their inca-
pacity. This was the first of the many processes of cheating
the government I had ever seen. For at the government post
whereabout my early days were passed, there was always a
strict economy and diligent care for the mint the officers had in
their hands.

During the autumn of the same year, in the Thanksgiving
recess which then existed in the University, I went with Foley
to the Umbagog Lakes in Maine, a journey of ten days or so.
Many of the incidents of this outing stay clearly in mind. In
Portland, where we had to wait for some hours, we bethought
ourselves that we might need some whiskey. There being no
evident bar-rooms, we went into an apothecary's and asked for
a little of it, to be told that we needed a physician's prescrip-
tion to obtain any kind of alcoholic stuff. Not to be balked, we
entered another shop, where I handed the attendant the needed

136 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

bit of paper with the usual IJ and with the Latin for whiskey,
"spiritus frumenti," adding thereto a trifle of iron oxide. This
prescription was at once filled.

Stopping over night at a little inn in Andover, on the way
into the wilderness, I found an old man seated by the fire in the
public room. He asked me whence I came, and on learning that
it was from Cambridge, near Boston, he said that he had been
there, but that it was quite a while ago. I asked when it was,
and learned that it was on the day of the Battle of Bunker Hill,
when he was a lad. He had nothing to do with the fighting, but
seemed to retain a clear memory of the battle and the anxiety
of the people in the village. Although in my boyhood I had
seen men who claimed to have been soldiers in the Revolution-
ary campaigns and to have fought at Cowpens, King's Mountain,
and Yorktown, this was the only ancient I ever encountered
who had memories of the earlier stages of the Revolution.

In the then conditions of transportation in the Urnbagog
country we had to have a guide and pack our camp effects and
canoe over portages. Our guide was a half-breed, a drinking
fellow, who proved very insolent at the outset of our journey
with him. We came to bettered relations through a trifling
incident. In packing over a carry, he in the lead, a spruce
partridge stood in the path, so that he halted, looking at it. I
saw my chance to show him that we were not so green as we
looked, and with a small revolver which he did not know I had,
I fired at the bird and killed it; the bullet went within half a
foot or so of the brute's ear. There was no risk of harming him,
for I was so close that the shot could not go wild. He walked on,
picked up the bird, and put it in his pocket; did not even look
at me, but was afterwards very friendly. It was not that he
was frightened that he became more amiable; the fact that I
had shot by his head and hit the mark put me in the class of
respectable persons — those who knew something of the wilder-
ness and its ways. A part of the rather absurd but effective
training of the lads with whom I had been brought up was to

SPORT AT THE UMBAGOG LAKES 137

practise shooting under these conditions, when we would graze
the neighbor. It was a rather risky thing to do ; I do not re-
member that it was countenanced by our elders, nor do I
recall any accident arising from it. No doubt it helped to that
quality of steadiness which the marksman needs and does not
easily acquire.

One day's fishing at a logging-camp, where we lodged by a
dam which parted the upper and the lower lakes, satiated me
with this sport. We caught more lake trout than the settlement
could consume ; a lot of the fish had to be thrown away. It was
evident that fishing was not to my mind ; so I borrowed a shot-
gun, and went after spruce partridges in some near-by clearings.
The stupid birds permitted themselves to be slain with aston-
ishing ease, and as they were in great plenty I soon wearied of
this sport and lugged my bag back to the camp with the convic-
tion that butchering animals was no longer amusing to me as
it had been in my boyhood. I have never been able to reawaken
the motive, which was innately strong. I am inclined to think
that it is a primitive emotion, which normally does not survive
the passing of the childish state of mind, which in many ways
is savage in its propensities. When men retain the ancient cruel
spirit which leads them to slay with pleasure, the reasonable
conclusion seems to be that they have failed to grow to the
stature of the civilized man.

Winter came upon us in a great storm, which broke just as
we were setting out in a canoe for a sail down the longest of the
lakes in the Umbagog chain. The wind was so strong that we
could not return to the camp, nor could we keep the little sail.
The only manoeuvre was to run before it, paddling as hard as
we could. The snow fell so thick that we could not see the
shores; we therefore steered by the direction of the waves, and
at the end of the voyage came ashore with such momentum that
we were cast beyond the beach up into the woods, our craft
being wrecked and all three of us somewhat the worse for the
sudden landing.

138 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

Although in its prime object this little expedition was a fail-
ure, — for I did not enjoy what most would have called excel-
lent sport, — the touch of hardship of a character I had never
found in the Kentucky woods was grateful to me, and the
beauty of the New England wilds was entrancing. J-also en-
joyed the contacts it gave me with a new kind of man, the Maine
lumberman. In that day, these men of the axe were all bred on
the soil, and a more vigorous set of fellows could not have been
found on the planet. The camp where we lodged, near the dam,
was occupied by about threescore of them. Not all of them were
in it every night, but all gathered there on a Sunday, when the
most of them had a spree, not much else but animal spirits in it,
but plenty of those, which their hard work seemed in no wise
to lessen. The camp consisted of a single great square structure
built of logs, perhaps sixty feet on a side; around the margin
was a sleeping-bench some eight feet wide; within that tables
and in the centre a great altar-like fireplace, with a dependent
sheet-iron chimney with a great hood to catch the smoke. Here
the cook did his simple business of preparing meats in early
morning and at night. There were cabins for stores and great
stables for the oxen, which were to haul the logs to the lakes and
streams as soon as the snow came in plenty. Altogether it was
a rude life, but it strongly appealed to me, though then, as ever
since, it was painful to me to see the noble woods slain and fields
where they had grown made a bitter desolation by fire.

CHAPTER X

AN EXPEDITION TO THE GULP OF ST. LAWRENCE

THE last of all the journeys I made while a student was a con-
siderable expedition to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1861. This
was rather carefully planned so as to fit into the scheme of our
training. It came about in this way. My small experiences in
going about had awakened in me a great desire for a longer
coastwise journey, which would give an extended contact with
both sea and land. Since I was then studying the Silurian sys-
tem in my vacations in Kentucky, and knew the points fairly
well, the publications of the Canada Survey on the island of
Anticosti interested me greatly. The report of the explorer
and the writings of Billings showed that forms existed there
which differed from those of the Ohio valley or those of Great
Britain and Scandinavia, which I knew from the collections in
the Museum. In the autumn of 1860 I met Lord Head, then
Governor-General of Canada, at Professor Ticknor's house in
Boston, and talked with him of my plan of studying that island.
He was a very kindly old gentleman, and was so good as to in-
terest himself in my project and to promise help in the way of
a letter to all the government officers of the St. Lawrence dis-
trict. So all at once it was decided, with my master's approval,
that three of us should the next summer find some craft that
could be chartered for the voyage as cheaply as might be, —
for we had to pay our own charges.

The adventurers, consisting of Hyatt, Verrill, and myself,
managed through a good friend, a Captain Treat of Eastport, to
charter a little schooner of that port. We found a pretty-look-
ing little craft in the glisten of new paint; a skipper had been
found in a splendid giant, who bore the picturesque name of

140 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

Mariner Small — prophetically so dubbed in his christening, and,
despite his surname, one of the mightiest of men. He was an
oldish fellow, who had made his comfortable retiring fortune
on the far seas, where he won also fame as a navigator and for
divers other qualities. I fell in love with him at sight, and though
we had many bad quarter-hours together, he is still near my
heart. On shore I found him almost ridiculously urbane, a
mild-mannered, soft-voiced giant. It was told that he was a
deacon and uncommonly pious since he had given up the sea.
All this interested me vastly, for I thought I saw else in Mariner
Small. We learned that he was going with us for a little vaca-
tion and for our good company, to a corner of the seas — one
of the few — where he had not set keel. There was one able sea-
man, named Upton Treat, a good fellow of the seafaring class,
but of rather better standing than the most of those who go
before the mast, whom we found most helpful and companion-
able; and there was a cook, a chap known as George, to make
a fair number for a crew. The passengers were to act as hands
and were to make out the watches and at times — when the
need came — to keep the craft afloat by steady pumping.

As we did not know where else we might seek to go after
Anticosti in the four months we expected to be away, and hav-
ing some designs even on Greenland and Iceland, we provi-
sioned the craft largely, so that if seabound we could have man-
aged to feed for a year. Though we had to be economical, we
were well found in such matters as guns and ammunition, as
well as in enthusiasm — enough of that, indeed, to have dared
for the North Pole. Among our miscellaneous stores I had as a
private venture, on the recommendation of a friend who had
summered in Labrador, a gross of clay pipes and a keg of to-
bacco and also a lot of sugar, and remedies for scurvy, a disease
which, I was told — and truly enough — I should find rife
among the sailors we should encounter. We had no whiskey or
other spirits, but, oddly enough, my father had sent me a ten-
gallon keg of wine from the Kentucky vineyards, which we took

GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE EXPEDITION 141

along for possible festive occasions. One of my comrades, who
was full of chemical lore, contrived an expedient for preventing
the wine from turning to vinegar, which consisted in putting in
it some form of lime warranted not to affect the taste and to
keep it perfectly sweet. He probably made some mistake in the
kind or quantity of lime he used, for the result was to convert
what was before a very agreeable drink into a weak acid white-
wash, for which the only use was to dose the cook by means of
a funnel when it was decided that his cooking was altogether
too bad. The remark in his hearing that, " George would have
to have some more wine," would always better the diet for some
days.

We set forth on our journey, as will be seen by the date, after
the Civil War had begun. Hyatt and I had much debate con-
cerning the wisdom of our going, but we concluded that the
struggle would probably last for many years, and that we would
go through with our training and graduate before going to the
task of arms. Neither of us had the least hunger for the busi-
ness, which we foresaw would probably break up our careers.
My own commonwealth, Kentucky, had determined to remain
neutral in the struggle, and it was then believed that it would
be some years — if at all — before she would be involved in it.
At any rate, we determined to have a good time in the wilder-
ness and forget the discords which had made our days miser-
able. I remember being thankful as we sailed out of Eastport,
that we should hear no more of it for months to come.

The outset of our seagoing in the Bay of Fundy was tempest-
uous. For some days we had a wild, hard sea, which tried our
stomachs sorely, and, what was worse, proved our nice-looking
craft to be unseaworthy. We then heard from Skipper Small
that the craft was old and had been a bad sailer, so that the
owners had put her upon the stays, cut the hull in two, sepa-
rated the parts and put in a piece to increase her length by ten
feet. This had made her swift, but the job was ill done, with
the result that in a heavy sea the joints were strained open. We

142 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

had to pump continuously to stay afloat, and it was an old-
fashioned pump — one without a lever handle, so that you have
to stand over the pipe and take hold of a crosspiece. I remem-
ber the details of the business mighty well, for my back aches
again as it comes to my mind. Off Liverpool, Nova Scotia,
after a week of pumping, we found the water gaining on us; so
we ran into the port for repairs. On the way in we were hailed
by an officer of customs and bidden to lay to; but as the sea
was heavy and the situation bad, we kept on until we found a
friendly mud bank on which we ran. Swift after us came the
irate official, who boarded us. He was a self-important fellow,
and, despite our explanations, full of threats and abuse. He
was the first of the provincials who in their manner showed
their delight that the Union was breaking up, in the contumely
they poured upon its unhappy citizens. When the situation be-
came intolerable, I bethought me of the document which Lord
Head had sent me, — a most imposing charter-like affair, with
a huge seal and ribbons attached thereto, as I remember, from
the Admiralty, — which in effect placed all the officers of cus-
toms at our disposition. I see now the awestruck look of the
chap as he read it over. He wonderingly asked where the gen-
tlemen were who were named in the paper. When I told him
that he had been blackguarding them for half an hour his recon-
ciliation was harder to bear than his previous insolence.

After a week of delay for the needed oakum in our joints and
some bracing at the splices, we again set to sea to take another
whack of storm on our way to the Gut of Canso, the passage
into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. When the wind died out, we
rested "hawse hole and scupper hole" for two days, the first of
my several experiences in this tedious business. The monotony
was broken by an incident which made so strong an impression
that I feel it now. An ocean steamer passed near us, swaying in
the sea as if she would roll over; a sailor was working aloft; I
was watching him through a glass, for I felt his peril. Suddenly
he was thrown as a stone from a sling, striking the water far

'•'

A SUDDEN DEATH 143

from the ship. At once the ship was put about, stopped, and
boats by a marvel were lowered, but the man did not, so far as
I could see, come to the surface. We youngsters were eager to
get out a boat, but the skipper said "no," that the place was
about a mile away and the steamer's people would be there long
before us ; besides the chance of getting a boat away from our
dancing craft was small. He was properly careful of his men
— as he said he could n't go home unless he had us on deck.
After the first waiting for the sailor to make his appearance, the
steamer's whistle sounded, the boat's crew by a second marvel
went back to their davits, and she swung on her course. I have
seen much of sudden death, but this stays as the type of such
good ending — duty, up aloft, and then the deep sea.

We went into the Gut of Canso, to find it packed with a vast
huddle of fishing schooners, several hundred sail, partly from
Cape Ann and other parts of the New England shore, and partly
from the southern ports of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick,
all held by head winds and mad with the delay. Here again the
irritation between the Yankees and the provincials was bitter.
There were reports, probably all false, of outrages on ships done'
here and there by the Federal or British authorities. Almost
the worst of war is in the rumors it breeds. These stories, added
to the ancient rivalry of the fishermen, bred hatred, so that our
three days or so spent in this fleet was as in an ancient naval
battle. An exchange of marine courtesies, though the tempest
ran high, was commonly followed by the Gloucester men insist-
ing on closer acquaintance; they would take to their boats
and board the offender. I saw then what subsequent experience
has confirmed, that the Yankee when loosed from the bonds
of peace is about the most dangerous animal now on the
planet. Fortunately, as all about us soon learned that we were
not fishermen, we got out of the shindy except as spectators.
Fortunately, too, there came a sudden change of the wind from
northeast to southwest, followed at once by shouting, tugging
at windlasses, clanking of chains, and creaking of blocks as the

144 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

sails went up before the anchors were turned. The "Ameri-
cans," as the provincials then termed them, — Yankee was only
a term of contempt, — were the swifter to be under way. I ex-
pected to see a regular fight in the exit, but all else seemed to
be forgotten save the dead race for the fishing-grounds. It was
as silent as a vast regatta, with a marvellous skill in steering, so
as to have every bit of advantage, to blanket and keep from
being blanketed. In an hour or two after we had broken into
the open water of the Gulf, the thing had parted into two fleets,
those of the Cape Ann group and those of the Province ports,
with unbroken water between them, and by night they had the
round of sea between them. I have never seen such a striking
difference between the works of kindred men.

The difference between the New England and colonial ships
which I saw exhibited in the sailing fleets which were gathered
in the Gut of Canso and went forth to the Gulf interested me
greatly. I studied the shapes, the size, and the seamanship of
each without getting much light on the matter. It was then as
now easy to see the difference, as specimens of the two varieties
of boats lay near each other; it was indeed plain enough when
they were sailing miles apart; but I have never been able to
state the difference in a way that would enable a builder to
profit by the analysis. Taken separately, the forms, rims, and
sides of the hull, the spars and masts, the sails and the men, are
indistinguishable, but in the assemblage they are both as di-
verse as wild and tame beasts of the same species. While on the
Labrador shore, I met a Nova Scotia skipper who was also a
shipbuilder, and asked him why they did not build their boats
after the Cape Ann model. "We do," he said, "we have been
doing it for fifty years or more; what we build are exactly like
the Gloucester men — until the damned Yankees come again."
I came to the conclusion, which may be true, that the differ-
ence is due to the way in which the work is done. In the Pro-
vinces it was, and I believe is, the custom for the fishermen to
build their own vessels alongside of their houses, using their

BIRD ROCK 145

spare time in winter for this work. I have often seen the grow-
ing ships of perhaps sixty tons in their dooryards half a mile
from the water and a hundred feet above its level. When com-
pleted, they would be slid down movable ways to the destined
place. The New England craft were built in yards by men who
did nothing else, who were selected and trained for their work,
and who developed the qualities of artists, where only such
qualities can be developed, in schools shaped by approved mas-
ters. A high-grade ship is in its way the product of a fine art
and can only be made where traditions have been insensibly
gathered and transmitted by masters.

Our first goal in the St. Lawrence was the Elizabeth Islands,
where we were to see the Triassic sandstones of that basin.
There we spent a day or two. I recall the problem as to the
origin of the rocks in the interesting sections of those shores.
There I first felt that problem as a large matter. What most in-
terested me were the sea caves, especially those of Entry Island;
into one of these I paddled my boat until almost out of light of
day. I was familiar with caverns of the limestone type, such as
abound in Kentucky, and had explored them much; those
structures are far more varied than any shore caves cut by the
waves can be, but those sea caverns of Entry Island had a qual-
ity of majesty, a weirdness, I had never dreamed of, perhaps
because they combined the mysteries of the deeps, — the under
earth and the sea.

From Entry Island we bore away for Bird Rock, that wonder-
ful rookery of the St. Lawrence. We came to it in a fortunate
time, when the sea was smooth enough for landing. When so
far away that the lone isle was not visible, we noted that it was
coming nearer by the steady increase in the number of marine
birds — gannets, gulls, and sea-pigeons — which were feeding
on the waters, or in flight to and from their nesting-places. The
rock itself proved to be a little isle, perhaps two miles long, with
its cliffs rising a hundred feet or so above the water, made of
protruding horizontal layers of a hard Triassic rock with inter-

146 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

vening beds of shale, which had retreated under the action of
frost and rain. These shales made an admirable place for birds
to nest, and there they were by myriads, the din of their cries
and the vast sense of wingedness which seemed to be in the air
making another world of it all.

After rowing about the island to take in the scene, we landed.
Two of my companions set to work with their guns, while I un-
dertook to scale the cliffs and gather eggs, easily mounting from
shelf to shelf, admiring the vast congregation of sedate, bright-
eyed mothers perched in every place of vantage. I gained a
broad ledge, favored by the large gannets, whose eggs I wanted.
It was a rather clay-covered slope, wet with the rain that had
just fallen. As I advanced, the gannets would rise unwillingly
and whirl about me, screaming their rage as I gathered their
eggs in my basket. When I had made a good collection, my feet
slipped, and in an instant I was down on my back and gliding
towards the edge of the cliff. Neither heels nor fingers could be
planted deep enough to stop me, so I had to turn to clutch my
fisherman's knife. This brought me up, with nothing to spare
in the way of manoeuvring ground. Motion arrested, I managed
to dig the heels in, and then to cut places for hands so as slowly
to work to a place of safety. It must have been nigh half an hour
before I was well out of the fix. After the first moment, the
danger of going over the precipice was by, but there was an-
other nearly as serious from the attacks of the gannets. These
creatures seemed to recognize my helplessness, as they showed
by their vigorous attacks on me. I was several times struck by
their bills, fortunately not in the face, which I managed to pro-
tect by my knife, with which I struck several birds which came
at that part of me. At the end of the fight, I had had enough of
bird-nesting, which I have always looked upon as a mean busi-
ness. The gunners had a plenty of birds and a great lot of eggs
of the sea-pigeon; they had shot a large male gannet, which
seemed dead when thrown into the boat, but revived as we rowed
toward our ship, and was disposed to have vengeance for his

THE SKIPPER AND THE GULLS 147

wounds by attacking us. Since the sea was rising and the ship
drifting away, we had no time to kill him, so I offered him my
foot to bite ; he seized it and held so firmly as to pain me through
the thick leather until we came aboard.

At this stage of our expedition, having been for some time
without fresh meat, we learned to eat sea-fowl ; and we found
the sea-pigeon excellent eating. Gulls of the several kinds were
very palatable, if the precaution was taken to parboil them be-
fore they went into the stew-pot. Our skipper had the usual
horror of the real sailors for eating sea-fowl ; the sight of us when
thus engaged would drive him from the table to pace the deck,
where he relieved his mind by a volcanic burst of his compli-
cated and marvellous profanity before he came to the cabin
again. Though we admired the fellow, — he was indeed a noble
man, — after the manner of youths on a lark we were given to
tormenting him as well as the cook. One act of meanness comes
back to me. After we had been out a month or so, the skipper,
who had with disgust disdained as rations gulls and the like,
was lucky enough to shoot two black ducks. Over them he
gloated, saying that he would eat them all himself, — he was
capable of the feat, for his huge carcass had storage like a ship's
hold, — while we should make our meal on gulls. As the cook-
ing went on he presided over the galley, as if he saw the possi-
bilities of substitution ; he even saw his private victual dished
up and put on the table before him. But we had, by threatening
the cook with " more wine" and other inflictions, compelled him
to make up our mess in a similar dish so that the two looked
alike. Then at the last moment we contrived that the skipper
should take a look on deck while the dishes were changed. He
ate the gulls (and we the ducks) with many remarks on their
sorry quality and much abuse of our dirty habit and its inevit-
able consequences in the way of bad weather and shipwreck.
When we were sure that good digestion had sufficiently attended
on appetite to make the success complete, we told the skipper
the game we had played on him in order to clear off the score

148 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

we owed him for his criticism of our diet and other indignities.
He would have slain us, but that he was at heart a very good
man, though subject to magnificent rages, which were as often
against the order of nature as against man. He was built for
hard fighting, to command a fleet in battle, and was out of place
with his troublesome crew, and in the uncomfortable situation
where he was teased by the men he was supposed to command.

I am glad to say that the process of disciplining Skipper Small
seems on the whole to have been skilfully conducted by the
crew. We determined that we would promptly and in silence
obey every order he gave; we would as far as in us lay disregard
his rather rare outbreaks, taking them as we did the weather.
Only once did I reprove him for his wondrous profanity, which,
as I found out afterward, was famed the seas about. I was on
the middle watch with him one bad night when the weather was
most vexing. After a long whack at the earth and sky, he turned
the torrent on me. To give him a lesson, I woke up the cook and
told him to report to the skipper, who was at the wheel. When
he asked why I had done this, I told him that the cook was the
only person on the craft who by custom was expected to take
abuse, for he was the only hired man except the skipper. There
is a saying that "those who go down to the sea in schooners see
hell" ; that there is truth in the adage I can testify. It is evi-
dent that even a good high-grade captain can breed a lot of it.
I am glad to say that when we had been out a month or so our
troubles with Skipper Small were over. He was large of heart
and mind; he seemed to like our venturesome humor, and
became much interested in what we were about, and we fell
quite in love with his superb manliness. We taught him some-
thing of natural history, and he in turn taught me a good bit
of the sailor's arts, so that at the end of it I could hand, reef,
and steer as well, or make and work up observations — except
by the methods of "lunar intervals," which he did not know
how to use.

From Bird Rock, we made our way towards Anticosti, as

ARRIVAL AT ANTICOSTI 149

usual through hard weather. We came upon the island at the
east end, where we found a "one-sided harbor," which we were
told was safe even in the heaviest easterly gales, to which it
lay wide open. We were advised to trust it, for about the time
when we were scared to death we should find that it was safe.
This we had a quick chance to prove, for we were hardly an-
chored before the testing storm came. Fortunately we had good
ground tackle, three anchors, and chain enough for a ship of three
times the size. With them on a good bottom we rode on a moun-
tain of sea until it seemed that the craft must drag under or pull
her nose off. I remember wondering that a pint of water poured
out at six feet above the deck at the foremast would all be blown
over the stern. Just as the situation seemed about as bad as a
sea-storm can bring, the sea began to break on a bar outside of
us and almost in a moment we were in water so still that we
could easily launch a boat and go to the shore a cable's length
away. I have seen this beautiful process when a very slight in-
crease in the height of the waves would thus create calm on
other occasions, but never before or since when it brought so
sudden a reprieve from what seemed to be very imminent
danger.

CHAPTER XI

ANTICOSTI AND LABRADOR

THE island of Anticosti proved to be mightily interesting to us,
and as we spent the summer along its shores it merits a brief
general description. It is about one hundred and twenty miles
long, with a maximum width of about forty miles ; it has nearly
the land area of Connecticut. The whole of the field is composed
of strata of the Ordovician and Silurian age, practically alto-
gether of rather thin-bedded limestones or limy shales, which
lie in less disturbed altitudes than any equally extensive de-
posits of that age. They have not indeed yielded perceptibly
to compressive strains or been otherwise disturbed by organic
action since they were laid down. So far as I have been able to
find, there are no dykes on this area, and the trifling local dis-
colorations or departures from horizontality can be explained
by slight dips in the sea-bed on which they were formed, or by
the solution of the strata by the action of underground waters,
in some instances perhaps when the sea was lower than it is at
present. The surface of this field is singularly regular in con-
tour; along the south coast it is prevailingly low, none of the
cliffs rising above a few feet in height and much of the front
being marked by recent ice installations. From this face, the
land rises rather gradually at the rate of five to ten feet to the
mile to the northward, so that on the north shore the island is
continuously bordered by cliffs which have a height of from two
to three hundred feet.

The greater part of this surface of Anticosti is covered with
a dense, rather low forest of spruces and firs; we saw no trees
over sixty feet in height, though we did not succeed in pene-
trating more than three miles from the shore. Along the south
coast there is frequently a broad belt of swamps composed

FIRST IMPRESSION OF ANTICOSTI 151

mainly of sphagnum, which has evidently displaced and is still
destroying the forest-covered area. The whole surface shows a
system of low valleys with broad divides. The valleys have
evidently been in part filled with drift. This glacial coating is
not thick and is chiefly composed of the waste of the subjacent
rocks; though I saw some areas where the drift material was
mostly from the rocks on the mainland. There were no large
boulders such as I had been accustomed to find in New Eng-
land. As a whole, it was a region of good soil, so that I won-
dered that it was not peopled. When we saw the place there
were not a dozen habitations upon it, these being occupied by
the three lighthouse-keepers, one at each end and one at the cen-
tre of the south shore, with one or two houses at Ellis Bay near
the west end, where dwelt two lonely men who were in a small
way trading with the fishermen who resorted to that miserable
one-sided harbor. It was the loneliest land I had as yet seen,
the most of a wilderness; for though it lay on the path of two
hundred years of activity, — by it passed all the movements
of French and British to the river St. Lawrence, and thence to
the interior of the continent, — it seems never to have been the
seat of human endeavors. Save the lighthouses, set to warn
the seafarers of its dangerous coast, and the multitudinous
wrecks which showed the futility of these warnings, the place
was deprived of human interest; it appears, indeed, not to
have been tenanted by any tribe of Indians.

The wreckage on the southern shore of Anticosti was aston-
ishing in amount. There were places for miles in length where
fire would have run in the heaps from one to the other. This
was due to the fact that the number of castaway ships was
large, but more to their cargoes of lumber, which supplied a vast
quantity of debris. A foggy shore, together with the sudden
gales that visited it, made the island a very graveyard for sail-
ing vessels.

While the first impression of Anticosti was forbidding, we
learned to love it for the richness of its fossils. Probably no-

152 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

where else in the world is there a like length of coast where
the sea has done its work of dissolution on rocks so rich in the
remains of ancient life of the Silurian age. Something of the
plenty was due to the fact that only one collector had been
there before us, and though he had made a good bag, the field
was unexhausted, — we nowhere found a mark of his collecting.
We had trouble in getting to the shore because of the lack of
harbors. The only way was to take a chance of a wetting and
pounding by driving our light whale-boat right through the surf
and dragging it quickly out of the reach of the breakers. When
we had gathered our treasures, we watched for a chance, shoved
the boat through the breakers and jumped into it when we had
passed their line. This often limited our load and was some-
times a bit risky; but we became fairly skilful in the business:
moreover, we were of an age to be reckless. In such a life dan-
ger seems to be an insignificant matter.

Only once or twice so far as I can remember were we in
serious peril. At the west end of the island we anchored the
schooner without sounding to find the goodness of the ground
for anchoring, and four of us, including the skipper, went ashore
in search for fossils. Toward sundown we suddenly discovered
that the ship had dragged her anchor and was drifting off-shore
before a strong wind. When this was noticed, the party were
scattered along a mile of the cliff-front; so by the time we had
all got to the boat, the craft was three miles away and drifting
rapidly before the gale that had sprung up. Since there was no
one but the cook aboard, we started in chase. In a little while
we were in a heavy sea-way and with the night coming on, and
our goal, though nearer, growing dimmer and dimmer in the
fading light. Our boat took so much water from the splash of the
waves that it was all we could do to keep it bailed. To make
the matter worse, the cook, who had managed, by the exercise of
more energy than he expended in all his other days on the voy-
age, to get in his anchor, now hoisted sail to work his way back
to the shore; our only chance was to guess his tacks, for if we

IN SERIOUS PERIL 153

ran by him we were pretty surely lost : we could not recover the
shore against the heavy chop of sea, and the wide gulf was be-
fore us. Luckily, our skipper guessed right — he had the sea-
man's sense of situation — and we came near enough for his
mighty shout to reach the cook; the craft luffed up and after
much manoeuvring we managed to get aboard, all but the skip-
per pretty well worn out by the toil at the oars. He was of the
tireless kind, and, although sixty years of age, still a man of
marvellous endurance. We found that the cook, who was left on
watch, had turned in for a sleep, and that when he discovered
the craft adrift he had got up his anchor, — a good job for two
men, — hoisted jib and mainsail, and set out for the place where
he belonged. He did right, but his activity brought us into
grave peril.

For six weeks we amassed and stored fossils and what of liv-
ing things came to hand. The wealth to naturalists was mostly
in the ancient life. The shores were so wave-swept that there
was little life in the shallow waters; on the land, too, it was
scanty. Few birds nested near the shore, and when we tried to
penetrate inland, the thick, low scrub woods defeated us. We
found one or two nesting-places of the eider ducks, but they
were not plenty. We tried for the interior across the bogs. To
go with safety it was necessary to have an oar under each arm,
so that in case one broke through it would be possible to climb
out, for one often went up to the armpits in the cold swamp
water. So we gave up the attempt, and the interior remained to
us unknown, — no very tempting mystery, however, for look-
ing from the open sea the eye ranged far across it and showed
a dull monotonous expanse of northern woods.

There were no traces of deer, caribou, or moose; black bears,
however, seemed to be plenty. At one place near the centre of
the south shore we found the ruins of a large whale, which had
been wrecked like a ship. On this mass of flesh many bears had
been feeding, as was shown by their plentiful tracks. None of
them were in sight, but we could trail them inland on the paths

154 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

they had broken in their journeys to and fro from their lairs.
It was evident that they had fed on the mass of carrion for a
long time, and that it was their habit to come out at night and
return to their hiding-places in the day. So at evening we
brought from the ship, which lay in the offing, such guns as we
had, — two fowling-pieces, one a heavy duck gun, and a rifle, and
the three of us lay in wait. We knew that our station should
be down the wind from the heap of carrion, but the stench there
was intolerable; we therefore hid in a clump of beech about
sixty yards to windward, trusting that the bears would not be
able to note the little smell of man in the air full of other odor.
After we had endured mosquitoes for some hours, the long
northern twilight began to verge into night and we could hear
bears in plenty coming through the bushy upland and swamp
ground which lay behind the beach. We soon saw what seemed
to be a dozen standing on a low bluff beyond the dead whale,
when with the wind full of stench from it, they found suspicion
of danger. They were more than a hundred yards away, and
in the faint light impossible targets. The only thing to do was
to wait ; and wait we did, until at last one big fellow braved it
and came on for his supper. We agreed to close on him and at
the word to stop and fire. My comrades did as planned, but
failed to hit because there was no chance to aim in the dark-
ness. Being fairly well trained, I instinctively held until the
brute in his surprise lifted up his head, so that running near I
gave him an ounce ball and a lot of buckshot; this felled him.
Knowing from tradition that the proper thing was to cut his
throat, I set about the task, which proved difficult, for the neck
seemed to be made of hickory withes. While I was bunglingly
about the business, the brute recovered and managed in some
way not clear to me to roll me over and fall on top of me, so that
I was well rammed down upon the gruesome mass of whale. All
the while I was trying to get at his interior with my good knife,
but although in the fiction which makes up our tales of hunt-
ing this is always easily done, the actual doing is really hard.

AN UNPLEASANT ADVENTURE 155

Fortunately, the bear was not attending to me; I doubt, indeed,
if he knew what I was about. Though evidently hard hit, he
quickly began to scramble into the swamp behind the beach,
while I clung to the hair where his tail might have been if it
were in Bruin shape to have such. He quickly shook me off and
disappeared. We intended to track him down the next day;
but, as usual, there was an on-shore gale, and we had to tack
off the coast and did not find our way back. It required some
days and numerous applications of alcohol to clear away the
odor of the whale from my scalp.

In various places I have had contacts with black bears which
have taught me that they are very harmless beasts, much less
fearsome than the half-wild pigs one is apt to encounter in the
woods of our Southern States, and for risk not to be compared
to a little goring bull or to many cows when they have had their
calves. The grizzlies may be dangerous, but when I have en-
countered them they have always seemed perfectly willing to
share the world with me in a friendly way. They do not scuttle
as the black bear does, yet they evidently prefer their own so-
ciety and seek to withdraw from the presence of man. Except,
it may be, for the so-called man-eating tigers, I am inclined to
think that well-disposed people might come in contact with any
wild beasts with no more danger than they would be exposed
to in their own barnyards. To those who are of a mind to ap-
proach bears with murder in their hearts, I may give one bit of
advice, based on two bits of personal experience; it is, that it is
not worth while to hold on to the bear at his hinder end unless
you are in search of sensations. In an encounter years after that
just related I again tried the experiment, which continued for
about a quarter of a mile with much damage to my skin and
none to Bruin; he positively would not face about.

Another hunting incident of the Anticosti shore stays in my
mind so clearly that it troubles me as I begin to set it down.
Hyatt shot from the ship a female seal, of the species common
on our shores. The wounded creature was taken on deck and

156 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

lay there dying. Its eyes and its moans showed its agony; it
seemed to plead with us for help. I managed to give it the
coup de grace with a bullet through its head, but that face is
before me now, though it passed near half a hundred years ago.
Since that sad experience I have never killed a beast. Some of
my friends esteem this fanciful softness; it does not seem to me
so, for if it were fit, I would slay a man and not be troubled
about it further than by the regret that the conditions required
the action. It is the sudden and brutal assault of the hunter on
the unoffending creature which breeds this pain.

Although there were not in all a dozen people on the island,
they all curiously stand out in the shadowy field of memory;
perhaps because they were so few, and needed the little society
we could give them. The families were too far apart — about
sixty miles — for them to see each other, and so they lived quite
alone. Their situation was worse than usual, for the reason that
the supply ship had been wrecked the year before and they had
been near two years without a chance to replenish their stores.
They had enough of pork, beans, and flour, and of oil for their
lamps, but all else they lacked. At the eastern light the wife of
the keeper was low with consumption, — in that fearful business
with only her husband and a man helper. We proposed to take
her to the mainland, but there were no friends or kindred for
her to go to. We gave what we had of delicacies, especially white
sugar, which she curiously longed for, and also of the novels
and other light reading we had brought with us. She was a read-
ing woman of much quality, was greatly delighted with our little
gifts and contented with the expectation that she would die
the next winter. At the west-end light, the keeper had recently
lost his wife, whose grave was near the door. He bore his loss
with that grim simplicity which characterizes the seafarers who
live in the expectation of bad weather. He seemed to find some
comfort in firing his warning gun into the prevailing fog-bank
to tell ships that death lay that way. I admired the vigorous
way in which he would ram the charge and fire into the shadowy

A LIGHTHOUSE-KEEPER 157

mist ; and then for an interval of half an hour subside into medi-
tative silence. The process seemed greatly to relieve his sor-
rowful mind. This good man told me a little tale of the signal
gun at the light on Bad Rock. It ran that a few years before
the report came from passing ships that the light was not lit.
After some months a vessel was sent there to see what it meant.
They found the decayed bodies of the keeper and his assistant,
the only folk on the isle, lying beside the bursted gun.

The keeper at the central lighthouse was a very interesting
fellow. Of nigh half a hundred of his peculiar trade I have
known, all worth knowing, he was the most interesting. Like
the next in note, a certain Jack Peacock of a later stage in this
story, he was London born and bred, but above the working
grade ; in fact, he was an educated man who had books and had
ranged in them and outside of them pretty far. Moreover, after
the manner of the better variety of lighthouse-keepers, he was
a merry fellow. His first inquiry of me was for news concerning
the Franco-Italian-Austrian war of 1859, of which he had known
only the beginning. He listened to my account of the campaign
attentively, asked keen questions to bring out the value of the
famous " Quadrilateral/' seemed concerned that Venice had not
been given to Italy; all of which showed me that this strangely
secluded man had had a history. When I began to tell him of
the Civil War in "the States," he at once politely stopped me,
saying that for certain reasons he had been interested in the
war he had asked me about, but he desired to hear of no others.
He turned the conversation to the question of the food for his
cows, which he had brought upon the island and needed to pro-
vide with some kind of forage, as the hay imported with them
a year or so before was nearly gone.

This man's place was an admirable hermitage. There was a
large family, a servant or two, and a number of children; a
flower and kitchen garden, and over all a grace which told that
the man was not of the common lot. Among the children was
one, I think a little girl, who he said was a descendant of Thomas

158 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

Jefferson. I meant to have inquired further about the little one,
but the chance did not come. I tried to find the history of the
fellow from others, but learned nothing. He was neither leaky
nor apologetic. He took himself as he was, and in manner bade
others do so.

We anchored longest at Ellis Bay, at the west end of the
island ; for here there was the most of shelter, and we had sundry
interesting experiences with the fishermen who resorted to the
place for wood and water and overhauling of their craft. At the
end of a month we came to know these people well. They were
mostly from Cape Breton; for some reason we were out of the
path of the "Americans." Here we noted that two or three of
these vessels were following us in a persistent manner, always
keeping in sight of our own little craft to the neglect of their
business. Through the men on shore we found the meaning
of this espionage. It appeared that the story had got about
that we were on the track of buried treasure, and they took our
divagations as made to throw them off the track. From their
point of view the proof of our purpose was clear. We were not
fishing, nor trading, nor wrecking, and as we were apparently
sane, evidently not seafarers, and under a skipper who knew
what he was about, the inference was plain that we were after
something of value underground. Our search afoot of long
shores showed clearly that we were looking for the signs left
by Captain Kidd, who had been there as everywhere. "Logic
is logic, that's all I say," was the sum of their considerations.
Thus informed as to the state of mind of our companions of
many weeks, I went to the skipper of one of the craft and told
him what I had heard and what we were about. He evidently
disbelieved me, though he was decent about it; so I had him on
board and showed him what we were stowing away in the hold :
great slabs of limestone and barrels of bits of rock of queer
shapes. I tried to make him see what fossils meant to us, but
he at the end slipped quietly away, convinced, it was clear,
that he had escaped from a floating lunatic asylum.

CAPE BRETON FISHERMEN 159

At Ellis Bay, we had much contact with the Cape Breton
fishing crews. It was a fair shelter against the easterly gales
which seemed the standard weather of the region. These folk
interested me greatly. As compared with the New England
sailors, they were miserably poor in ship's outfit and all else of
theunessentials; at heart they were as sound a folk as I have
ever found, largely of the Highland Scotch stock, mingled with
the French of the Acadian colonies. They were essentially Celts,
and many of them spoke only Gaelic. Their innate courtesy,
and the fact that they did not "rub into " us the matter of the
war between the States — as the Nova-Scotians and the New-
Brunswickers were wont to do — helped to the friendliness we
soon reached. Our relations began with a Sunday afternoon
visit of a crew from a craft anchored near us. I opened to
them my bag of tobacco, holding the stuff then popular with
students. It did not contain much that was noxious, being
composed mainly, as I had found on careful examination, of
willow bark and various kinds of aromatic beans. The skipper
then produced from his pocket a cloth, which, being unrolled,
disclosed the remains of a dudeen with part of the stem about
an inch long. After a few whiffs, he passed it to the mate;
and thus it went the round of the party Indian-fashion. I did
not at once see the meaning of this passage of the pipe, but
found that it was the only one left in their ship. I asked them
how they liked my brand ; they said it was better than moss,
which they had been smoking for some months. Now was the
time to bring out our store of pipes and navy tobacco. Each
was given a pipe and a pound of the rank stuff, — few kings
have had a chance to bestow such largess. The dear fellows
would not take more than a pound apiece even when pressed
to do so. They said that, mixed with moss, it would serve until
they were home again.

At Anticosti, and afterward at Mingan on the Labrador shore,
I saw for the first time scurvy, that ancient woe of the seas and
of the lands as well. Nearly every crew had cases of it, and in

160 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

some of them all of the men were thus affected. They seemed
to regard the woe as in the course of nature — to be borne as all
else of their hard lives must be borne. We had a lot of anti-
scorbutics laid in for such use, which proved helpful. I knew
little about it, yet I knew that the great need was of a vegetable
diet. So I persuaded them to eat the leaves of the Rumex Ace-
tosella, which for a long season are plentiful in all this part of
the world. My patients, as I saw them from time to time in the
summer, seemed to prosper. They were grateful and offered
payment in fish, their only store. In fact, I gained by my
medical service, which was kept well within narrow limits, a
curious place with these people, who were in need of such help.
From Anticosti we went to the Hudson's Bay Station of Min-
gan and the neighboring part of Labrador, where we spent a
week or so examining the interesting geology of the coast, and
watching the Indians, who in considerable numbers had come
in for their annual trading. They came out of the wilderness,
through its tangle of waterways, with great bundles of furs, and,
in exchange, took back their trifling return of guns, ammuni-
tion, tea, etc. It was a hard bargaining they had to do with
the officers of the factory. I saw, for instance, a razeed flintlock
musket, dear at two dollars, bartered for a lot of furs which
would certainly have sold for a hundred in Boston. The head
factor, who received us very kindly when our official letter was
shown, was, as seemed to be the rule in those days in the great
company, a Scotchman, as were his helpers. Apparently he
had the natives in perfect control, which was kindly but of an
inevitable quality. They submitted to him as well-trained
children to a father. He spoke their language with fluency,
settled their quarrels, cared for their maladies, was a kind of
god to them. He made one insistent request of us, — that we
should not trade with his people; but if we desired to bargain
for anything, he would manage the trade for us. This, he said,
was the one rule to which the officer of the company had to
subject his guests. It was plain enough that the moderate

THE PRINCE OF WALES AT MINGAN 161

profits of the company depended on keeping out competitors.
It was the one instance I have ever seen where a monopoly
was altogether defensible, indeed commendable, for these
admirably administered trading-posts have been a vast blessing
to the savages of the North. They have kept a part of the abo-
rigines from the ruin which has elsewhere overtaken their kind.
I have since seen something of the management of the same
quality of aborigines in the western part of the United States;
the difference between the two systems is all there can be in
human affairs.

While we were at Mingan, the then Prince of Wales came
there for salmon-fishing in the river of the name. One day our
friend the factor said that he would be glad to take me to the
place where His Royal Highness was having his sport and pre-
sent me to him. I asked him if the prince had expressed a wish
to see us. Finding that he had not done so, — probably he did
not know we were on the planet, — I told our good friend that
His Highness was doubtless glad to get out of the tiresome
business of presentations, and that I had not the heart to in-
trude upon his solitude; so I lost the chance to see the youth
who is now king.

At Mingan, I found that my reputation as a medical man had
preceded me, borne by some of the crews we knew, so I was
again in practice. I was glad to help as far as my limited know-
ledge went, and glad when the training my father had given
me from childhood could be of use. Most of the cases were of
a simple nature, nearly all from bad food, taking the shape of
scurvy, or they were sprains, such as simple bandaging would
help. In a small way I helped some of the sufferers, which gave
me much pleasure; but one day a married man came to me,
saying that his wife was shortly to lie in, and that he bespoke
my services. I told him that we had need of going straightway
to Gaspe in New Brunswick. My medical practice evidently
was getting me into deep water.

At Gaspe*, we were, after some three months beyond its

162 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

bounds, again in civilization. There we found a pretty village
with stores, and nice families of refined people. One household
I remember where there was much music. Above all, we found
a chance to buy sugar, which we had lacked for several weeks,
having given away our store to the needy people at the Anticosti
lighthouse. Since our keg of molasses had been in some way
lost, probably washed overboard, as were the most of our pro-
visions at one time or another in our endless threshings by the
seas, we had gone without sweetening for a long time. On the
general theory that we were hardy fellows well returned to
the savage state, we thought that we did not need that grace to
our food. But the hunger for it was much worse than that for
tobacco, which was also lacking, — even the keg of " nigger
head" was empty. It was evident that the hunger was not due
to mere habit, but was physiological in its intensity. When
we came by sugar we at once consumed about half a pound
apiece of it, and for a month we were hungry for it.

The Gasp£ district proved an interesting geological field,
rich especially in the deposits of the Oriskany period, which
abounded in fossils. Nowhere else do the rocks of that time
show the seas to have been so thronged with brachiopods.
Moreover, here for the first time we found the Paleozoic strata
affected by mountain-building stresses. In this field we have
the finish of the work done through the ages in building the
various mountain-ranges of the Appalachian system. What is
left of these final ridges consists of elevations having no great
height, nor is the distended terrane of much width. As before
noted, the strata on Anticosti, which is nearly in the line of
the Notre Dame Mountains, are singularly undisturbed, nor
are there any signs of a continuation of this line of disloca-
tions on the Labrador shore. Therefore I came to the conclu-
sion that the great eastern system of North America here
found its end.

I made one or two short excursions into the interior of the
Gasp£ peninsula, seeking to get further information of its struct-

BACK TO BOSTON AND EASTPORT 163

ure ; but the traversable ways were few. At one point not many
miles from the ship was an exposure of the Oriskany section,
where we obtained a great quantity of fossils. I managed to
get a horse and wagon near the place and thus to satisfy the
natural greed for quantity. We brought along about a thou-
sand pounds of these treasures.

At Mingan we had heard from some Canadians rumors of a
great battle between the Union and Confederate troops near
Washington, but it seemed probable that it was no more than
rumor; at Gaspe", however, where we arrived early in September,
we learned about the battle of Bull Run and saw clearly that the
two sections of the country were in the clutch. To me the sit-
uation was somewhat less exciting than to the others, for I was
sure that my own state would cling to its neutrality, a course
of action which I knew had been well determined on and which
I individually meant to follow so long as the commonwealth did.
But Hyatt, who was a Marylander, felt that the combat was
near his doors. The others of the party were likewise impatient
of the wilderness. So a month sooner than we had reckoned
for the earliest possible start on the return, we tugged our an-
chor for the last time in the St. Lawrence and set out for home.
For the first time in three months the winds favored us, and
we had a swift straightaway run through the Northumberland
Channel, close to the beautiful shores of Prince Edward Island,
thence again through the Strait of Canso, now unpeopled of
ships, and thence to Boston to discharge our cargo, somfc ten
tons of fossils and much of pickled specimens. As sailors were
not to be had because of the government demand for them on
the improvised war fleet, I helped work the ship back to East-
port to settle accounts. I there found Stimpson, who showed
his merry humor in the meeting. The tide was low when we
laid the craft to the wharf, and it was near dark. Learning of
our arrival, he stood above us, asked who we were, and was
given other names than our own, with a yarn of our having
been left behind in the wilderness. He slid down the stays and

164 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

talked with us some time before he found out the deception.
We had so changed, he said, that he could hardly recognize us.
We had been through a rough changing experience. I remember
that I had worn no hat for two months and found it agreeable
to trust for protection to my shock of hair. Our bibulous friend
called for something to drink by way of celebration. We then
remembered that we had a dozen bottles of old Jamaica rum
which had been presented to us at Liverpool, Nova Scotia, and
which we intended to give to Skipper Small. Stimpson found
it so good that he declared people who would carry such a
potable for three months without touching it had no real title
to it. Suiting the action to the word, he pocketed two bottles,
climbed up the stays, and went away to his den with it ; returned
to repeat the process, and in six journeys lightened us of the lot.
When begged that he would leave at least one bottle he seemed
indignant at the suggestion.

On looking back over the experiences of the Labrador expe-
dition, I now see that it was the most profitable journey I have
ever made. In after years, Hyatt, who was a yachtsman, said
that as we took it, it was an exceedingly dangerous expedition,
and that we ought not to have come back at all. It is true the
craft was unsea worthy ; many times we had to climb under the
hull when we had allowed the ship to ground with the falling
tide, and calk the seams as best we could. Working along the
harborless coast of Anticosti, we several times had a hard fight
for our offing when a sudden on-shore gale came up, — and
they would come out of a clear sky. But we had a good leader,
who, while he was always croaking of dangers to come, was no
croaker when they were on us, but a great, strong man, and we
ourselves seemed to have no sense of danger.

As all those who have made hard campaigns know, discom-
fort, such as we became accustomed to, much lessens the love
of life. In fact, that fancy for continuous existence is in some
measure the product of ease and comfort, while what we call
bravery is largely but merely a hard-minded state which suffer-

THE VALUE OF THE COMMON MAN 165

ing induces even where men are not clearly conscious that they
are in torment.

>*The most valuable results I had from my three months of
adventure in the St. Lawrence was, in the first place, a bettered
sense of what the world was in its larger aspects. It is one
thing to behold the sea from the shore and quite another to
battle with it for your desires, even for your life. From the
rude life I had on that journey there came to me a sense of the
actuality of the earth which has served me all my days; near
to this sense of primeval earth is the sense of primitive or, at
least, uncomplicated men, such as I came in contact with among
our fellow seafarers/ The unchangeableness of the great water
extends to those whose lives are shaped by their dealings with
it. Among the provincial sailors I was with the companions of
Ulysses. They would have mingled well with the crews of the
ships that bore the Greeks to Troy, for they had like souls—
with the same valor, the same simple faiths and fears. These
men taught me much of human nature. I found in them the
value of the common man as I probably should have found it
nowhere else ; for it is so well hidden in our more organized so-
cieties that many persons far more discerning than myself fail
for all their lives to see the meaning of ordinary life, and so fail
to get the most important teaching the world has to give. In
a way, I had been prepared for this coming revelation by my
contact with the frontier type of man in Kentucky. But at his
best, the man of the forests and plains cannot compare with the
seaman in the even, rounded culture of human quality. As I
had known him in Kentucky, he was a fine fellow of the con-
quering type. He had beaten his brute and human enemies
and subjugated the wilderness ; but he had never well learned
what it was to follow a leader, to put his life in his chief's
hands in a ceaseless war with a mastering deep. I count those
brave, stern faces I met in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as my best
teachers.
Here let me turn aside for a word concerning the grim aspect

166 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

of our so-called education, which makes it well-nigh impossible
for our youth of the higher classes to have any intimate con-
tacts with men who may teach him what is the real nature of
his kind. He sees those only who are so formalized by training
and the uses of society that they show him a work of art in
human shape. He thus has to deal with his fellows in terms
which are not those of real human nature, and thereby much
of his own is never awakened. He may live through long fair-
appearing years, yet fail to have the experiences necessary to
humanize him fully. I have known many an ignorant sailor
or backwoodsman who, because he had been brought into sym-
pathetic contact with the primitive qualities of his kind, was
humanely a better educated man than those who pride them-
selves on their culture. The gravest problem of civilization is
in my opinion how we are to teach human quality in a system
which tends ever more and more to hide it.
/"As for the scientific results of the Anticosti expedition, they
were to me of much and enduring value. In the first place, I
saw then — and the impression has stayed with me — the great
interest which relates to the contact of sea and land. Some-
thing of this I had gained in tramping the shores of Massachu-
setts, but this journey gave me a sense of its range and scope
I could not otherwise have gained. You do not gain this by
mere travel; you may sail along thousands of miles of shore
without winning more than faint impressions of what is going
on there, but if you have to fight with the surf and in-shore
currents, study harborages for their value as shelters, and learn
by experience what a lee shore means, you become curiously
well acquainted with the facts — you feel and do not merely
see them. With this personal sense of the shores came the
perception that each feature — not only the details of form,
but the large elements of the geography as well — not only
had a history, but was in some way a record of it. I believe
that this sense of the chronicle in things, though in some meas-
ure established in my mind as a thesis, first came to me as a

RESULTS OF THE EXPEDITION 167

real feature during this journey. I remember being much inter-
ested in the problem of how the island of Anticosti, with its per-
fectly undisturbed strata, could have obtained its salience. The
same question was asked me by the other islands and capes of
the Gulf district. I came then to the hypothesis that the whole
region had been recently much higher than at present, and had
remained so long enough for broad valleys to be formed, and
that these islands were the higher part of the divides between
them. I recall trying from the charts to construct a plan of the
ancient drainage, by extending the main St. Lawrence valley
out to the sea, platting in tributary vales. In this scheme the
peculiar channel of the Strait of Canso puzzled me much; I had
to account for it, as for certain other features which did not
accord with the hypothesis, by the supposition that glacial
action had done much to change the shape of the stream to-
pography formed before the last ice came. These speculations,
fairly true, show that for a youth of twenty, in that state of
geology, I reacted well on the things which came before me. /
I found the fossils of Anticosti very fascinating; some of
them showed themselves at a glance to be closely related to
those of the Cincinnati horizon with which I was familiar, yet
there were many forms entirely new to me, and some with
which I was familiar had a changed aspect. Those gigantic
fossil sponges found in the deposits at about the level of the
vitric shale at Brating Point, forming fluted columns sometimes
eight inches in diameter and six or eight feet in length, puzzled
me much. Hyatt, even then concerned with the nautiloid
cephalopods, judged them to be akin to the lower known forms
of this group, though he afterwards abandoned that view, even
before James Hall determined their affinities. These archi-
tecturally noble structures were then deemed peculiar to this
field; but about fifteen years thereafter I found them in an-
other specific form of somewhat lesser size in Nelson County,
Kentucky, at about the same horizon. Certain of the peculiari-
ties of the Anticosti species of fossils as compared with those

168 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

found in the southern part of the Ohio valley attracted my
attention. Thus at a glance it was evident that the northern
forms of the lynx was far less varied than those of Kentucky.
The same decrease in local variation appeared in all the other
species occurring in the northern locality as I in memory com-
pared them with the more southern kindred. I still think that
this difference was well observed, and that it was due to the
colder climate of the more boreal station. I have since noted
in very many species in diverse groups, as for instance in the
Virginia oyster, that the range in the variation of the form
diminishes as the temperature of the water in which they dwell
becomes lower. Something of the same nature is observable
in many species of plants. It is likely to prove somewhat general
in organic forms.

Probably the largest profit I found in the voyage about the
shores of the St. Lawrence, came to me from the discomfort
and the danger there encountered. Our conditions were in
both these regards rather worse than those of the common
fisherman ; for in addition to the labor and trials of those who
go down to the sea for fish, we had to cleave to lee shores and
to fight our way through the surf to study the land. It was
very hard work in fairly hard danger. We did not see it at the
time, but I can recall that it made a curiously strong impression
on our skipper and on the sailors we met. We had among them
the reputation of being dare-devils. All this was well for us,
for the best you can do for a boy is to expose him to hardships
which bring him nigh to death. Being by two or three years
the youngest of the party, and moreover rather delicate, I
wonder that I did not suffer illness, through exposure where
we were not dry for weeks at a time, when we were badly and
irregularly fed, scaly and bruised all over from our hard knocks,
with our legs from the knees down blue from the whacks in
tugging at the old-fashioned windlass to get up the anchor, or
knocked about in our surf work. Moreover, I was sea-sick in
any storm, though I managed to keep up sailor's duty; I did

DISCOMFORT AND DANGER 169

not lose a watch. That this was trying, a little incident well
shows. At the end of a hard "trick," I started for my bunk,
but in my weariness sat on the edge of a boat which was lashed
on deck and partly filled by the boarding seas; I slipped into
the water and was found there by the skipper sound asleep —
and was none the worse for it. There were weeks at a time when
we worked as men do who are fighting for life; the curious thing
is we did not notice it until long afterward.

CHAPTER XII

THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR

WHEN we returned to Cambridge we encountered a curious
sense of change which had taken place in our three months of
absence. When we left the feeling was general that the outbreak
of the South was a mere insurrection which would be quieted
by some small show of power on the part of the North, or, if it
did not quickly subside, that there would be a spontaneous
movement by the slaves for freedom, which would put an end
to the revolt by giving their masters business enough to attend
to at home. I knew better, for I had a nearer sense of the mo-
tives of the Southern people and of the state of mind of the
slaves; though I did not think that the rebellion would develop
power so rapidly, I fully expected the war to last for many
years. To my friends in Cambridge the episode of Bull Run,
and the evidence that the Confederates were indeed in earnest,
was a surprise; it had brought out the dour element of the New-
Englander to such an extent that the look of the people on the
street had visibly changed.

I found my master Agassiz greatly disturbed ; all along he had
taken the war as an end to his hopes. I recall how in that mis-
erable time of the bombardment of Sumter, when we South-
erners hung about the newspaper and telegraph offices all
night watching for news, I found him in the gray dawn walking
in Divinity Avenue weeping, almost raving in his misery. I
remember how he cried, "They will Mexicanize the country,"
and my saying to him that we were a people who would do a
lot of fighting, but come out of it all in the English way, with
order and decency in the end. The fact that in a few weeks
after Sumter the North settled down to the business of prepara-
tion gave Agassiz courage; but with the certainty of a long grap-

KENTUCKY IN 1861 171

pie which was on us in September, 1861, he again began to lose
heart. The fact is, he did not see, he could not be expected to
understand, the curious nature of our people. He could not
conceive that the country was undergoing a process of growth
of which those years of misery were but the pains.

After the collections made on the Anticosti expedition had
been properly stored in the Museum I went to Kentucky for a
look over the situation, visiting Frankfort and Lexington for a
talk with my friends of both sides. I found that the plan of the
Union men of my stripe, those who held for State Rights under
the Federal bond, had been skilfully carried out, and that the
commonwealth seemed tolerably sure of its neutral station for
some months to come. There were serious features in the
situation. The people were evidently in a process of division,
in which the majority was drifting toward what was called the
Union side, while a large minority, — we guessed at about two-
fifths, — led by the example of Breckinridge, Buckner, Roger
Hanson, and a host of the able, high-placed men who had already
entered the Confederate army, were leaning more and more
toward rebellion. The governor was at heart in sympathy with
the seceding states, but in their interest he held to his place. So
far as he could, he tried to do his duty at once by his office and
the law. The Unionists now controlled the Legislature in both
houses by an overwhelming majority. All the measures looking
toward mutual cooperation with the Union forces were promptly
vetoed and as promptly passed over the vetoes. When they thus
became laws, the governor would provide for their execution,
or rather non-execution, by putting them into the hands of
Confederate sympathizers. It was a well-played game on both
sides, but our side stood to win; we had, indeed, the cards in
hand that ensured success; barring folly, the end was certain.

My admiration for the way in which the anti-Secessionists of
Kentucky manoeuvred to prevent a sympathetic stampede of
the commonwealth into the Confederacy, then great, has
grown with time and the wider knowledge of the ways of men.

172 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

The man I trusted most for guidance, my neighbor and near
friend, John W. Finnell, was then adjutant-general of the com-
monwealth and effectively in lead of the manoeuvring. He had
remarkable ability in judging and guiding action, and to him
more than to any other one among a host of real statesmen who
have shaped the destinies of the country, the preservation of
Kentucky to the Union, and the eventual success of the North,
was due. I shall have more to say of him hereafter. I need
here but note the state of affairs as they were in the autumn
of 1861, as set before me by Finnell and by an old family friend,
also one of the masters of fate, James F. Robinson, of whom
there is also much to be told further on in my story.

The plan of those who at this time had control of the Leg-
islature of Kentucky, and thus of its destiny, was, in brief, that
of men who knew how to wait. They recognized that the seces-
sion of Virginia, Tennessee, and probably of North Carolina,
was due to an excess of sympathetic enthusiasm, and that at all
costs, even to the point of seeming cowardice, they must en-
force waiting. At this stage it was evident that the attitude of
neutrality, already little more than a farce, could not be main-
tained for many months to come. It was believed that the
Confederate government would soon, and from their point of
view, very properly, try to force action favorable to their cause
by an invasion of the commonwealth. The aim of our leaders
was to force such action under conditions which would lead the
wavering people to regard the invaders as enemies. It was also
seen to be good policy to allow the sympathizers with the re-
bellion to betake themselves to the Secession standards in the
several recruiting camps which had been established in Ten-
nessee and Virginia for their reception. Buckner, and many
other officers of the state guard, a force organized to preserve
the neutral position of Kentucky, had already gone to those
camps, taking with them a large part of that force. This ex-
odus, while it grimly lessened the fighting power of the com-
monwealth, made the end surer.

A DIVIDED PEOPLE 173

I recall seeing in this time the parties of recruits going their
several ways to their appointed places in the opposing armies,
the Unionists to Camp Dick Robinson or other recruiting points
in the state, and the Confederates to places beyond its lines,
where the most of them were to leave their bones. In one in-
stance I saw groups of these parting men pass on the way with
salute and courtesy; we had got by the first fury of the debate,
that of hot words, and were making ready for the tussle which
both sides knew would be hard. It was evident that the Con-
federacy was to have what seemed to be — and indeed was —
the flower of our youth and manhood ; nearly all the young men
who by their qualities seemed to be the natural leaders of their
generation, cast in their lot with the South. There remained
a strong body of the middle-aged and the old, the abler of the
generations that were passing and the youths of the plainer sort,
more numerous than we then judged them to be, whose reason
discounted their sympathies ; for it is to be confessed that all
of us were in a sense sympathizers with the South in our hearts
- it was our heads that kept us in the Union. In that time it
was the presumption, the fatal presumption, of Breckinridge
and his advisers that this social sympathy would force all of us
who were well-born to cast aside our rational part and to join
with them. Thus while I was known as a Unionist of the States'-
Rights group, I found, from a friend who had gone South and
was captured in 1862, that a place had been long kept for me
on the staff of a certain Confederate general, and there was
surprise that I had not turned up there. At the moment, this
did not seem to me strange, though it gave me a peculiar kind
of grief to think that I was parted from my friends. Nearly all
those friends of my youth were then under the Southern flag,
and I felt curiously lonely in being parted from them. So far
as I can remember of the some score with whom I had been in
intimate association only Foley, John Mason Brown, and James
Jackson were on the Union side.

My survey of the situation in Kentucky led me to feel that I

174 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

had better "stick it out" in Cambridge, and finish my work for
the degree, or rather for the training I was seeking. There evi-
dently would be time enough for the small part I was likely to
play in the great contest. My ambition extended no farther
than to a place in the ranks of the troops of my own common-
wealth and a small share in the task of keeping States' Rights
safe in the only place for their safety — the Federal Union.
It was urged on me that I should go into the regular forces of
the government, but this meant professional soldiery, for which
I had no inclination whatever. The first plan harmonized
best with my philosophy of life, which, though it may have
been rather callow, was mightily helpful to me in that soul-
trying time, so I returned to Cambridge and set about my task
of finishing up the work on which I was engaged.

It is here well to say that in my spare time from 1859 to 1862
I had done what I could to fit myself for the duties of a soldier.
As before noted, I had been brought up at a military post and
from before memory begins was familiar with the life. I knew,
as a lad knows men, about all the officers of the regular army
who came to prominence on either side, — Lee, Grant, Sheri-
dan, Albert Sydney Johnston, and many others of the great
list. All the usages and customs of military life were tolerably
familiar to me, as was also the shape of arms. In my child-
hood I had been in an infantile way war-mad — and had re-
covered from it. When I went to Harvard, I felt it proper to
make a nearer, man's acquaintance with military duty; so I
joined a "drill club," and became familiar with the elements
of infantry tactics; I worked over Hardee, so that I could man-
age a battalion at short notice, and I read Jomini, and found
him vastly interesting. Most important of all was a training
which lasted for three years at Fort Independence in Boston
Harbor. At this post was an intimate friend, then a lieutenant
of artillery, who had married a cousin of mine. He was in com-
mand of a company and under a Major Arnold, an able officer
who had been in the Mexican War. At this time, as during a

AT FORT INDEPENDENCE 175

part of the three years in question, General Rodman was ex-
perimenting with great guns at that station. I used to go to
the fort on Friday afternoons and to bide there through Satur-
day, working as a soldier or as a clerk, doing the diverse duties,
including those of inspection and reports. In this way, by giv-
ing perhaps one hundred days to the task, I became tolerably
well-instructed in the principles and practice of artillery work.
There was much exercise in sighting guns and a fair amount in
target practice, where I was allowed to "lay" the larger pieces,
criticising the pointing of the men before they were fired, so
that with my previous practice with the rifle, I could count
myself fairly well-trained in the art of the gunner. All this left
me, of course, below the station of the professional soldier, but
it made me distinctly more competent than the novice or even
most of the young men who as volunteers went into the business.
I was particularly interested in General Rodman's experi-
ments on the pressure of gunpowder when fired. For this in-
quiry he had bored cylinders in the walls of his pieces, as I
remember them, up to ten inches in diameter; each of these
cylinders was fitted with a piston having a ridge-shaped head,
which rested on a plate of soft composition metal. When the
charge was fired, these cylinder-heads indented the plates in
proportion to the pressure which they had received. I was
allowed to take some share in these testings, which were most
carefully done, and obtained through this chance a sense of
accurate methods which helped me greatly. In each series of
tests the gun was fired with increasing charges until it was
burst ; then the fragments were studied to determine the char-
acter of the metal and the seat of the rupture. So, too, after
each discharge the interior of the bore was examined with the
speculum, to ascertain the process of developing the incipient
cracks which form long before the body of the metal gives way.
The experience thus gained I found very useful in the study of
dredging machinery, such as forty years afterwards I had
to deal with in Montana. Rodman and his helpers had the

176 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

strength-giving quality of the military engineers of that day;
I can say of them as well that they knew how to interpret
nature.

My friend, then Lieutenant Thompson, was some ten years
my senior, and we were very near to one another. He was a
collateral of Benjamin Thompson, and had a curious likeness to
him in face and character. He was an able man in his profes-
sion, a hard disciplinarian, iron-willed, though of a very mild
manner. He was for the most of the time really commandant
of the fort, which, as I recall, had a garrison of two companies,
composed of men of a more mutinous quality than I had been ac-
customed to see in the old army. His favorite punishment was
"stringing up by the thumbs," and the calm, philosophic way
in which he would walk around the wights thus suspended,
commenting the while on their state of torment, extorted my
admiration, and showed me more clearly than I had before
seen how hard are the ways by which the common brutal man
is broken to the soldier's trade. He was never cruel in this
work, merely obdurately effective. I have never seen a higher
order of care than he devoted to the inspection of his men and
all that related to their well-being.

In 1862 I chanced to serve for a time under Thompson, then
a major, in charge of an artillery camp of a dozen batteries.
They were a bad lot, not yet well broken to harness. The way in
which he battered them into shape fills me with admiration to
this day. He had a capacity for objurgation which was in a way
unique; unlike the one other great master of the infernal art,
he made no use of the accepted classic phrases, but had in-
vented what may be called an anecdotical method altogether
his own, in which the blister, constructed in short descriptive
phrases, was calculated to remove the hide of the toughest.
His applications were punctuated by the grimmest laugh I
have ever heard, a strange hollow cackle with no trace of mirth
in it. I said to a big limberer of a battery I knew, who had just
been excoriated, "Well, , what do you think of that?" Pale-

A DISCIPLINARIAN 177

faced and shrunken as by fear, he said tremblingly, "That is
Satan ; that is Satan." It was at least the best semblance of him
I have ever seen. At this time I served for a period with Major
Thompson in inspecting fortifications. One day we examined
a considerable set of works commanded by a volunteer colonel.
In his ignorance of his duty this officer permitted the inspection
to be made in great detail, without having required of us any
evidence of our authority. He had no proof save our uniforms
as to our right to make it; for all the fellow knew, we might
have been Confederate spies — and much such work was done
by chaps who had a mind to take the risk. By the bland look
of his face and his soft voice, I saw that my chief took in the
situation, and meant that it should go hard with the unhappy
colonel. We had given him the parting salute and were riding
away before it got through his dull wits that he had made a
fool of himself. When we were perhaps a hundred yards away,
he shouted to us to halt. Major Thompson affected not to hear
him and it was not my part to interfere. The troubled colonel
then called on his guard to fire on us. As they missed, — I
doubt if they intended to hit, — we went on at a brisker pace;
then more shots from other guards kicked up the dust about us.
By this time we were on the run and nearing an outpost where
a dozen men, taking in the situation, were making ready. I
was now riding by him, when I too took in the situation and
said that I did not mean to be shot to gratify his fury and
reined up, as he did shortly with a word of reproach for my not
helping him to "break" that pretence of a soldier. He left it
to me to take the orders back to the commander of the works.
Major Thompson had won his promotion at Malvern Hill,
where with his battery he had broken the Confederate assault.
I was told by one of his subordinates that as the charge came
on supported by a heavy artillery fire, Thompson was standing
by the side of a brick building watching the advance with his
field-glasses and conning the fire of his gunners. A shell shook
the building and in the dust and smoke he was lost to view;

178 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

when the cloud cleared away his feet were where they had been
before; he had just finished wiping the dust from the lenses and
was lifting the glasses to look again. I asked him as to the effect
of double canister at close quarters. He said : " It seemed as if
the air was full of old clothes." This man has ever been to me
the true type of the soldier.

CHAPTER XIII

MY LAST YEAE AT HARVARD

THUS far, I have said little of my life as a closet student, so
that the effect of this writing may be to give the impression
that my days were spent in divagations. I find no students in
this day who work at anything like the rate the better part of
Agassiz's following did in that time. It was my custom to get
to my work by eight in the morning, and to keep at it until one
o'clock; we then had dinner, and expected to be again at our
desks by half -past two, working there usually until dark, or at
least until five o'clock. We then went to the gymnasium or had
boxing-matches, as we fancied, for half an hour. At six we
supped, and then got to work in our rooms. We managed to
get about seventy hours a week of pretty solid business. Once
a week, or oftener, we had our club-meetings, and after them
— they usually ended about midnight — we had dance-music
from an old piano in our common room and a Virginia reel with
shouts to wake the dead. These midnight uproars sometimes
brought us near to trouble. There was no proctor in our build-
ing, for we ranked as graduates, but across the way, in Divinity
Hall, proctored Mr. Sibley, the Librarian of the College, the most
proper and irascible of good fellows. He often reported us for
disorder, but fortunately there dwelt in a cottage much nearer a
dear old gentleman, a Mr. Charles Sanders, who happily slept
marvellously well and who, moreover, had not forgotten what it
was to be a boy. He was always ready to testify that we were
the best-behaved lot of youngsters that ever were in college.
As the College had expectations from the old man, in part real-
ized by the bequest which built the theatre, his evidence had
full weight. Besides, we managed to work up the theory that
Sibley was subjected to nightmares combined with somnam-

180 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

bulism, and that the rackets he heard were really of his own
making and by delusion referred to his neighbors.

Our routine work in our several subjects consisted primarily
in comparing a succession of species so as to obtain a general
idea of the animal kingdom; this comparison was applied first
to their general morphology, as seen from the outside, and then
by dissection to their internal parts. As a guide to this we took
Cuvier's " Le Regne Animal," the idea being to obtain some-
thing like the general understanding of that master as to the
range of forms. In this task I made a tolerably near acquaint-
ance with perhaps two hundred species, and compared them, as
far as convenient, with their kindred as shown by specimen
plates and descriptions. This work was necessarily crude, but
it was enlarging, because we followed the changes of shape and
structure, and came to have a general understanding of animals
which students rarely attain in the modern method of intense
study. As I was intending to ask for my degree in geology it
was my further task to trace back the history of the living
groups through the geological successions, and to acquire a
knowledge .as to the several horizons as well as the distribution
of their strata over the earth's surface. I had also to get up the
history of geology, using D'Archiac's work as a foundation and
to trace out the development of the several important geolo-
gical hypotheses, and also to acquaint myself with mineralogy
and crystallography, using Brandont's work as a basis, and
helping myself from the good teaching of Professor J. P. Cooke.

Besides the general knowledge of our subjects which Agassiz
required, we were expected to obtain a rather specialized ac-
quaintance with some considerable group of animals. The
group assigned to me was the Brachiopoda, which had inter-
ested me from childhood — almost from infancy. This order I
came in the course of three years to know pretty well. At the
end of my task I had personally examined specimens of more
than three fourths of the described species, and had read prac-
tically all the literature on the subject. I believe that I could

THESIS ON THE BRACHIOPODA 181

have given a fair account of at least ninety-five per cent of the
species which had been described, and tabulated the synonymy
reasonably well. I dissected representations of recent species,
and did like work with some twenty species of fossil forms, by
slicing specimens on the lathe and treating with acids.

My thesis was concerning the Brachiopoda in general, with a
special study of the bilaterality of the group. It was an argu-
ment against the Darwinian hypothesis based on the develop-
ment of the second series, in which I endeavored in the first
place to show that several of the series develop at great organic
cost and in a well-ordered succession of changes, features which
not only cannot have any utility, but which are apparently
disadvantageous, as for instance the proboscis — like exten-
sions of the margins of the shells in Producta, the exogenation
of the mixed folds in Orthis biloba, the ridges and knees of
Leptina, etc. Then I discussed the development of the lateral
symmetry particularly in the spirifers and Rhynchonella, en-
deavoring to show that the lateral balance of the calcified fur-
rows of the so-called arms could not have been brought about
by selection, but must have been the result of some other sym-
metry-determining influence. Incidentally, I tried to prove
that the longitudinal axis of the brachiopod did not lie in the
plane of function of the valves, but extended from the centre
of one to the centre of the other, at right angles to both. I have
not seen this thesis since it was delivered to the examiners, but
as I recall it, it was a worthy piece of work, creditable to the
teaching I had received. It contained some points which
pleased Agassiz greatly, especially the study of symmetries.
He did not like my treatment of the Darwinian hypothesis, for
I did not scout it, but claimed that, while its general value was
uncertain, it clearly could not account for a considerable array
of facts, — natural selection in a word could not explain the
development of the group ; there was a suspicion of heresy in
the way the matter was treated.

That work such as I did in the Museum could be done at all,

182 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

was due to the marvellously swift way in which Agassiz accu-
mulated collections and books in the establishment. He was
blamed for his extravagance in these purchases, but it was a
wise policy. He bought the cabinets or libraries of several
workers, of which the most important were those of D. S. Brown.
His own library was rich, and there were many valuable things
in the College Library and that of the Boston Society of Natural
History. Brown's cabinet and collections brought from Cam-
peche by Lyell and others gave me larger resources to draw
upon than most workers have had, and, what was most import-
ant, I used them as freely as I could have done had they been
my own. In fact, I unpacked and arranged nearly all the fos-
sils which came to the Museum while I was rated as a student.
I was in effect curator of these stores. So, too, with books, — we
rummaged them freely, and thereby got the habit of using
them as helpers.

In our evenings it was a habit once a week to meet there
together, to take up some book outside of our main pursuit.
One would read and two take notes; at the next meeting, we
drew straws to determine who should give a summary of the
last week's reading. If in the opinion of the majority his task
was not well done, the delinquent was subject to a curious
fine, in that he was required to look up some subject in the
library and report upon it. In this way, we read in the course
of three years several important works. Of these I recall J. S.
Mill's "Logic," his "Political Economy," and Lyell's "Prin-
ciples of Geology." Of amusement we had not much, save the
one hour of frolic before bed at midnight. Now and then we
went to hear music. When I came to Cambridge I had a passion
for the theatre ; my father, being a wise man, told me to go as
often as I desired to, with the result that I went about every
night for a month, and afterward rarely, almost never, except
to see one of four actors, — Edwin Booth, E. L. Davenport, Sal-
vini, and Charlotte Cushman. Except with such actors on the
stage, the theatres bored me insufferably then and ever since.

THE STUDENTS' AMUSEMENTS 183

A few years ago I was taken by a friend to a rather famous play,
but had to leave in the middle of the performance and wait in
the railway station for an hour for the going of my train. To
operas I went for the music, generally choosing a place where
I could comfortably avoid seeing the actors.

It was our custom in going to the theatre or opera to make
up a gang of a dozen or more, march to the Boston Theatre,
and go to the uppermost part of the gallery, which was then
called in students' phrase "Olympus." Sometimes we had
trouble with its denizens, for the ancient hatred between town
and gown had not been forgotten. Once or twice there was
fighting, but several of our side were good at it, so we were
never driven out. After the performance, which on theatre
nights cost twenty-five cents, and on those of opera fifty, we
had a bit of supper at Brigham's oyster-shop, and then tramped
home singing. Only once do I recall any trouble with the police,
and that was not provoked by us. A silly "peeler" ordered us
to stop singing and made a vain effort to enforce his order, a
performance which led to his considerable discomfort.

Once or twice a year our gang used to go fishing. A schooner
was chartered, and we sailed to some ground outside the Har-
bor, caught what fish happened on our hooks, and had them
cooked on the shore, sometimes at some inn and sometimes in
a rough way by ourselves. I distinctly recall only the last of
these rather tedious outings, in the spring of 1861, and that
because of a fatiguing incident. Our party was large, some
fifty or more. When we rendezvoused at the wharf where the
schooner lay, the tide was low and the craft aground with two
hours to wait for it to float. As it was about two o'clock in the
night and very chill, it was proposed that we march through
the streets to keep warm, and for the fun of it we agreed to
answer no questions the police would put to us, but to keep
perfectly mum, even if we had to tussle with them to do it with-
out a word. Setting out, we marched in good order; we had
been in a drill club for two years or so, so we marched well.

184 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

Presently we were accosted, but without seeming to hear the
question. Soon there were a dozen of the guardians marching
beside us full of wonder and of doubt what to do. We were in
no wise disturbing the peace; their only evident part, therefore,
was to join the procession. At the end of the five-mile tramp
we came back to the ship to find it afloat. Our spokesman then
thanked the officers for their services as escort, and hoped they
felt better for the much-needed exercise we had afforded them.

There was very little "larking" among our lot; practical
jokes were voted stupid, and only one such stays by me. There
was a half-crazy impostor who used to bother us with his
speeches and his solicitations to buy a copy of his poem on
Bunker Hill. You had to buy the poem, for the alternative was
to kill him and leave town. Threats, duckings, moderate drub-
bings had no effect whatever. Finally, we had our revenge by
persuading the fellow that there was to be a great meeting after
midnight in front of the old State House in Boston to hear him
speak. A small, silent audience was provided, and also a ladder;
he was taken to the place in a carriage and swiftly urged up the
ladder and placed in the balcony about twenty feet from the
ground. The multitude then departed, taking the ladder with
them. It was so quickly done that there were no police to inter-
fere. Their wonder was great when they found the wight in his
rostrum bawling to an imaginary throng. Save in one instance,
among the students with whom I had any intimate association
in that day there was no vice. There were several of whom I
became by one chance and another caretaker who were rake-
hells, but so far as I recall, they were all College or Law School
men. Our general decency was, I think, due in large measure
to the fact that we worked hard and that the fellows who did
not do so were quickly elided. Something may be attributed
to the fact that we were not watched by proctors or forced to
do anything. We thus came to rule ourselves and to look after
one another ; it was a little brotherhood well knit together.

I had much diversion from a small collection of living animals

A COLLECTION OF LIVE ANIMALS 185

which I gathered in a fenced area of about half an acre behind
our club-house : a hedgehog, a porcupine, a weasel, turtles, and,
above all, serpents, — all the local species, including rattle-
snakes from Mount Tom, and a few foreign forms. One notable
accession was a boa-constrictor of small size, about ten feet long.
This collection gave me great pleasure, but some care and ex-
pense. It was much resorted to by visitors, being unhappily
the only open-air free show of animals ever existing about Bos-
ton. On Sunday afternoons there would be a throng of inter-
ested people to see the little exhibition. It found an odd finish
through the horror inspired by the serpents. A rumor got out
that a python thirty feet in length had escaped from the col-
lection and was winding up and down of nights, seeking whom
it should devour. Fancy located it for a time under a cellar-
less schoolhouse in Somerville, a neighboring town. I was ad-
vised by the chief of police that I had better allay the excite-
ment by making an end of my amusement. So the harmless
creatures went into safe-keeping in alcohol.

That there was no danger from the escape of the captives is
shown by the fact that but one of them got out of bounds in the
two years they were kept. One night when I made the round
of the cages, a hedgehog was missing. There was a tracking
snow on the ground ; so a dozen of us started with lanterns to
run it down, and at the end of our run we recaptured it. Years
afterward, my colleague the venerated Professor Henry W.
Torrey used often to tell me of his sore experience with a gang
of ruffians who at midnight came over his back fence and with
torches searched his premises through and went on. It was
evidently a painful episode in his quiet academic life, one that
showed the latent iniquity of human society; the memory of it
stayed by him until his death some thirty years later. The profit
I have had from my little experiments with captive animals,
and a lifelong close connection with our barnyard creatures,
has shown me that one cannot be a real biologist without such
opportunities. It is possible for a student to gain a vast amount

186 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

of detailed knowledge of forms by closet methods, but this
learning may and generally does leave out the essence of the
creatures it relates to, which is the soul that has shaped and
been shaped by their structure. The naturalist needs both of
these modes of contact with his data, but if it be but one it had
best be that which does not relate to anatomical features alone.
Thus in the case of Alfred Russel Wallace, who seems never
to have dissected anything, to have indeed a horror of such
work, he made himself a naturalist of most excellent quality,
indeed of rare discernment, by attending solely to the external
shapes and habits of living things.

It may interest some of my readers to know something of my
expenditures during my undergraduate days; this story may
be shortly told. When I came to Cambridge I was allowed from
my family out of money coming from my grandfather, Richard
Southgate, the excessively large sum of fifteen hundred dollars a
year; equivalent on the basis of the existing college ideals to
about five thousand dollars. I managed to get rid of this money
each year without what would be called extravagance, yet
with no fit care to the budget. Some of it went for books, much
for subscriptions for various, not unreasonable but unnecessary,
associated purposes of my mates. Some of it in loans to my
mates which were never repaid, mainly because the coming on
of the war broke up their plans. I don't recall having wasted
any part of my substance, but I had the notion that it did not
befit a gentleman to be very careful of his pocket. When the
war came on I had to take in sail, for the sources of means of my
family were reduced and in danger of being cut off altogether.
Though I had a few thousand dollars in banks in Boston and
Cambridge, it seemed fit to keep this fund as a protection for
those who would be helpless in 'case Kentucky should be swept
into the ruin the South in my opinion had to face. In the last
year of my residence I spent less than one hundred and fifty
dollars, earned my room-rent and tuition by work in the Mu-
seum, and wore my old clothes. The club table in Zoological

THE YOUNG JOHN FISEE 187

Hall was abandoned; there were too few left to keep it up.
For a while we followed the plan of getting a dinner at a board-
ing-house kept by a motherly old woman, a Miss McGee. It
stood on the site now occupied by St. John's Chapel on Brattle
Street. To it most of Agassiz's pupils resorted, as did some of
his assistants.

I think it was at this time, in the autumn of 1861, that for a
while I took my dinner at the Brattle House, then a forlorn
kind of hotel where a few students went; afterward it was the
University Press ; like many another edifice of that time, it has
vanished. At my table there was only one other person, a shy
fellow of about my age with whom I tried in vain to make
effective acquaintance. I took a fancy to him as I thought he
did to me, but his diffidence was a bar. I learned that his name
was Green, and that he came from New York way. I was piqued
by my unaccustomed failure to get on with a chap I fancied,
but I soon forgot all about him. Twenty years after when at
a club dinner I was holding forth on the evils of self -conscious-
ness, I described my experience with Green, presenting him
as a gangling, red-headed, freckle-faced, goggle-eyed chap, who
blushed whenever he was spoken to, who had probably been
shamed out of activities through his preposterous sense of him-
self. Then John Fiske, who had been leaning across the table
evidently admiring the droll picture of the vaunted Green, said,
" Why, that was me ! " Then it came out, what I had not before
known, that for family reasons he had changed his name, and
with it, it seemed, his very nature; for I could not find save in
his intelligence a trace of Green in Fiske. I saw many wonderful
changes in my friends who went into the Civil War, swiftly
evolved in the intense environment to which they were sub-
jected, but none equal to that which had transmuted the soft and
callow youth to my solid and permanently substantial friend.

After a time, we Southerners, half a dozen in number, found
that we could save still further by cooking all our meals in our
rooms, and for some months we followed this plan. The result

188 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

was that we were underfed, and suffered from it; as is shown
by the fact that we got into the habit of taking a whiskey toddy
before going to bed. It was, indeed, the only time in my life
that I have felt the need of that whip. The hardest kind of work
in the open air, when bacon and beans and the like were at hand,
has never led me to feel the need of alcohol. This period of im-
perfect nutrition, combined with arduous study and with the
exhaustion due to the Anticosti expedition, which came just
before it, brought me lower in health than I had been since my
childhood. I suffered very severely from indigestion, especially
from the effect of the malady on the heart, in the shape of inter-
missions and irregularities, which often made it necessary for
me to sit the night out in a chair; all this coming at a time of
much worry on account of the war and because of my prepara-
tion for the examination for my degree. Except for an essen-
tial toughness which has stood me in good stead, I should
certainly have broken my health in a permanent way by this
combination of scanty diet and hard labor.

I had not much help from Agassiz in these last months of my
preparation. He had admitted me to candidacy after going
over with me what I had done, and he stated that he expected
me to pass a good examination. He gave me an odd bit of
warning, which was that Benjamin Peirce would probably
subject me to a searching test, for the reason that they had
recently once again quarrelled, Peirce questioning the character
of the instruction which Agassiz gave his students as lacking
in thoroughness; the truth being that Agassiz was the worst
instructor I have ever known, but in diverse ways the greatest
educator. These two able men were off and on the nearest of
friends and the bitterest of foes; just then they were at enmity;
so I had to look out for myself, for I was likely to be seized on
as a horrid example of Agassiz's looseness of method of teach-
ing. All I did to prepare for defence was to look up with care
the little of geology which had at that time been subjected to
mathematical treatment. I reckoned that the burthen of the

AGASSIZ'S METHOD OF TEACHING 189

trial, if it came, would have to be on Elie de Beaumont's " Sys-
teme des Montagnes," a work I had already read attentively
and abstracted, so that I knew it fairly well ; but I went over it
again and therefore I knew it in a way that would have made it
possible to reproduce it almost verbatim; given to much train-
ing in committing to memory I could do a work of that kind
passing well.

It is to be noted that in the four years I was with Agassiz, I
had no kind of examination, save what he gave when he ques-
tioned and in some measure tested my training. For the rest
there was nothing but criticisms of my work and discussions,
endless discussions. These gave him all he cared to have as to
the progress I had made. Now and then he questioned me hard.
I recall by chance how he tested my knowledge of a book which
I had been using in the identification of some mollusca; he
sought to find how far I had compassed the work or had merely
used it in a perfunctory way. He had helped me to know the
difference between knowledge and ignorance and to measure
my accomplishments as I went along without any kind of
routine tests.

Because I needed to be away to my own parts of the country,
the examinations were given me at an earlier date than was
then the custom, I believe in May. My thesis was delivered
a month earlier and approved by Jeffries Wyman as sufficient.
This was told me before the time of the formal examination.
Since this inquiry was interesting, as a type of the method
used at that time in testing candidates, I will give an account
of it. I had made no formal preparation for the questioning
I was to meet, except to go to the shore and live out of doors
for some days, putting the whole matter out of my mind, en-
deavoring to get into the admirable state of the little darkey
who, when reproved for not caring, answered, " I doan keer, an'
I doan keer if I doan keer"; with the result that when I faced
my judges, it was with a sense of rather amused indifference,
which I have experienced in the presence of other forms of

190 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

danger. It was indeed an august bench, for besides Agassiz
there were Wyman, Asa Gray, Peirce, Cooke, Levering, and
Horsford, as well as the then President of the University, Fel-
ton. I was placed in a seat upon the platform, which I had to
occupy, when not at the blackboard, for nearly five hours with
an intermission for refreshments. The performance was begun
by my master, — who seemed more deeply interested in it than
I felt myself to be, — with questions as to my studies. He very
dexterously drew out samples of my little learning, and engaged
me in disputations which would be likely to make a good im-
pression. The dexterity of this performance took away any
trace of embarrassment which the situation enforced on me.
Then he made me defend my thesis with a pretty severe ques-
tioning, which, as I was now wound up, I did in good fashion.
He pressed me hard on some rather recondite matters, as, for
instance, in the work of Karl Ernst von Baer, Oken, etc., but
he probably knew that my reading made it pretty safe to do so.
I have never ceased to admire the way in which, while seeming
to put me under the harrow, he was really exhibiting my paces.
This part of ,the business kept me active for more than two
hours, for the questions came swiftly.

After Agassiz handed me over to the others, there was ques-
tioning by Wyman, also most kindly but rather more searching.
Gray too was most fair. Lovering's questions were evidently
intended to find whether I knew something in mere outline of
other subjects than biology. Cooke took me on a hard road in
mineralogy, made the easier by my prompt "don't know,"
when I was not clear in my mind about the answer. In fact,
up to the point I had scored in the game, because I never hesi-
tated to confess the full measure of my ignorance. I took pains
to have no penumbra between my light and my darkness. At
the end of the second sitting came my turn with Benjamin
Peirce. To my satisfaction, he shortly turned his questioning
to the process of mountain-building. He produced from his
pockets the three volumes of De Beaumont's "Systeme des

EXAMINATION ON THE THESIS 191

Montagnes" and asked me to put the thirty or so questions on
the board and from them to construct the "Resume" Penta-
gonal." The task took considerable time, but I had visualized
it well, and set down the matter accurately. Then, still following
the book, he asked me to criticise the work as a whole. Fortu-
nately I had recently studied the essays of William Hopkins
of Cambridge University, in which there is an effectively dis-
tinctive study of the mean, showing that, taking account of the
departures of the general mountain axis from the lines described
by the several great centres of comparison set up by De Beau-
mont, the correspondences of the position of these axes with
these circles was no nearer than chance would bring about; in
a word, that there was really no more mathematical order in
the alignment of these features than would be found in straws
thrown haphazard on a table. It happened that Peirce did not
know of Hopkins's work on this subject, and though I gave
the author full credit for the criticism, the sufficiency of it was
impressive, and finished my examination, — save that at the
end he asked me a question. I have forgotten what it was, but
it appeared to me unfair. I said that I could give no answer,
and asked him what the answer should be. We had a sharp
colloquy, which ended in his good-natured acknowledgment
that he had put the question to see what I would do with it.

I never shall forget the look of pleasure on my master's
expressive face as he watched the progress of this part of my
examination, which I knew was well done, for I was in an excel-
lent state of tension for the work and felt myself in perfect com-
mand of it. He had evidently been in some anxiety as to my
ability to face the questioning I should be subjected to by his
colleague. I had myself no serious doubts as to my ability to
meet the trial, though the purely nervous anxiety before it began
was a sore infliction. I won my degree summa cum laude by the
unanimous vote of my judges and that without much debate, as
I was told. I was asked to wait a moment and in a minute or
two the good news came to me, Benjamin Peirce being the first

192 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

to congratulate me. My wrestle with the De Beaumont hypo-
thesis evidently made an impression on him, in one way for me
unhappy, for it gave him the erroneous notion that I was com-
petent in mathematics, and led him, when we became colleagues,
to submit many a problem to me which I could not understand
for lack of adequate training, and to regard my plea of ignorance
on such matters as mere make-believe.

Although I had a sense of ease in the six or seven hours of
trial before my judges, it evidently was a severe ordeal. As in
other instances when I have been put to proof, there came a
reaction with great depression so that I could not sleep. Almost
extravagantly self-possessed while under the excitement, I
remember sitting in my room and shaking for an hour after-
wards and winding up with a brisk fever. Rather than go to
Kentucky to seek service in that condition, I took a train,
alone, for the White Mountains, stayed a day or two at a curious
hostel known as "Dolly Copp's" near the Glen House, and then
walked over Mount Washington to the Crawford House. Three
days having given me my breath and sense of balance I returned
to Cambridge, to pack my effects and prepare for the next chap-
ter of experiences. The delight I had in the solitude was the
keener for the reason that I knew that what was to come would
be quite other than this peace of the great hills.

When I arrived in Cambridge the news from my people was
such as to make it plain not only that the neutrality of my
commonwealth was broken, — that had been decided some time
before, — but that the chance was that the fighting line would
soon swing up to the Ohio. I therefore made haste with my
preparations, packing my satchel and turning the key in my
door with all my effects within. I was promised that I should
hold my quarters if I lived, until I could return to care for my
property. But in a few months there came a rumor that I was
dead, and when I did return I found that my affairs had been
summarily dealt with, so that little remained to me of my goods
and chattels save a bath-tub and the frame of a bed.

CHAPTER XIV

CAMBRIDGE AND BOSTON CELEBRITIES

As in this record I now end with my life as a bachelor student
in Cambridge, it is fit to finish the story of that period with
some account of the people other than fellow students or teach-
ers with whom I had been in contact during the years I had
spent there. Not many houses were open to me in Cambridge
or Boston, for I had little time and not much inclination for
society, yet these few houses were much to me and the memories
of them are dear. First to be named of them was that of Mr.
George Ticknor. As soon as the lists of students were presented
which bore my name, I had a message from him through my
master, saying that if I were a kinsman of Mr. William Shaler,
sometime consul at Algiers, he would be glad to see me. I made
haste to do his bidding, and found my way to what was in its
time perhaps the stateliest mansion in Boston, at the corner
of Park and Beacon streets, where its windows looked down
the mall which leads to the foot of Beacon Hill. Mr. Ticknor
received me in a way that made me feel that I had known him
all my life. This impression was probably due to certain like-
ness in his manner to my grandfather, Richard Southgate. He
sought to find in my appearance traits which recalled my
father's uncle. On my first visit, which stays very clearly in
mind, I met his wife, who made an immense impression on me;
for splendor of carriage and dignity of manner, she was to be
compared with my great-aunt, Abigail Stilwell. They were both
dames of a vanished age. That this was no mere boy's impres-
sion, but well judged, is shown by the fact that years afterward
I went to the house with Professor Bonamy Price of Oxford,
who was accustomed to august personages; as we came away,

194 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

he said that he was convinced that there was no such stateliness
in his country.

I was at once made so far welcome in Mr. Ticknor's house that
it required restraint not to haunt it. I never went through its
door, taking the welcome look of the admirable English servant
who attended it, without feeling strangely at home. It was my
good fortune to be bidden there to dinner often when I was the
only one from without the household, and afterward to have a
talk with Mr. Ticknor. He was the most charming combination
of learning, shrewdness, and simplicity I have ever known. In
certain ways his thought ranged far. He had, for instance, a
very deep insight into the fit conditions of a university, and
from his criticisms of the conditions at Harvard, and his sug-
gestions of betterment, my attention was drawn to academic
matters. He had studied the system of the University of Vir-
ginia, had seen it under the guidance of its founder Jefferson,
whom he had known. He was the first to give me an idea of
what academic freedom meant. In his advocacy of the elective
system, — in the better sense of that term, — his belief in the
fitness of allowing a youth to choose his purpose, he was the
pioneer in New England. All of us who have furthered that
purpose have been his followers.

My enthusiastic admiration for my master Agassiz, as well
as my criticisms of him, which he very cleverly and to my
shame brought out, was one of the bonds of this singular friend-
ship between a man already old (he must have been sixty-five,1
when I first met him) and a young student. It was partly
based on this good common ground of interest in a greatness
which appealed to both of us. He saw in Agassiz the majesty
of his personality and was great enough to appreciate it as no
common mind could. He would often say that he did not have
the least idea what the master was about, but that he was
great — and that was enough.

Another bond that drew and held me to Mr. Ticknor was his

i Ticknor was born in 1791. — Er>.

BOSTON AND THE SOUTH 195

sympathetic understanding of the Southern people. At that
time, to most of the folk of culture about Boston, the name of
Southerner was anathema. This was in a way natural. The
dastardly assault on Sumner, which was as much execrated in
Kentucky as in Massachusetts, was taken to be a typical sample
of the slaveholders' manners. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was still
making an atmosphere of hatred ; Lowell and Whittier were also
contributing to it. I was accustomed to hear hard things of my
people, or to have them stopped in mid-saying because they
caught my ear. There was ever the sense that I was in a hostile
country, where toleration was a matter of courtesy and not of
right. It must be said that the manners of the Southern stu-
dents were sometimes of a nature to be exasperating to those
from the North. I myself shared the motives of both sections,
but so much of me as was Southern evidently grated on the
feelings of associates whom I liked and respected. Thus, shortly
after I came to be with Agassiz, a fellow student from Salem,
a good fellow from the middle-class folk, stopped me on the
street when I was carrying a large bundle and asked me a
question as to something I had done or left undone, and when
I made my answer, said, "You are a liar"; whereupon I put
aside my load and knocked him down. As he got up, apparently
unruffled, he remarked, "What did you do that for?" It puz-
zled me much to find that my conduct was generally reprobated.
The division between the students from the South and those
from the North had been made the more evident by the John
Brown raid, which greatly moved the Boston community. At
the moment it seemed likely that it would lead to a servile war
in Virginia, which would spread to other parts of the slave-
holding section. It was the natural conclusion that this was a
part of an extended conspiracy for raising the negroes in arms.
I have forgotten the details of the business, but there was an
agreement among the Southern students to offer our services
to our several states in case there was need of help. It is in my
memory that a list of names was prepared and the offer of this

196 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

help sent to the executives of our commonwealths. As I was
not in control of the movement I cannot be sure that the offer
was formally made, but I believe that it was so made. The
rumor of it made a certain sensation at the time, and seemed
to add to the sense of the iniquity of the group to which I be-
longed. My position in respect to slaveholding was not regarded
as reasonable by my Northern schoolmates, except by Emerson.
I was opposed to — I may say that I exceedingly disliked — the
system ; but I did not deem it iniquitous, but mainly an ancient
unhappiness, which had been imposed upon my people, and
that, so far as ancestors could be held responsible, the Northern
folk were as much to blame for it as the Southern. I was ready
to consider any natural project that could be contrived for get-
ting rid of it. I spent a good deal of debating time in figuring
that the Liberian or other colonization scheme might bring a
solution ; but when there was any talk of servile war as a remedy,
I was ready for battle.

In my perplexities, I talked much with Mr. Ticknor. Though
by nature guarded in his speech, I found that he was rather
more of a Southern sympathizer than I was myself. He was
not in favor of slavery as an institution, but accepted it as an
existing and inevitable fact, with the belief that any project
for getting rid of it was impracticable and certain to bring even
worse than its presence on the country. He put aside all colo-
nization schemes as impracticable, for the reason that they
would leave the South without a laboring class; and that fur-
ther we had no right to drive the negroes back to Africa, any
more than they would, if in the ascendant, have a right to expel
us to Europe. Moreover, he liked, as I did not altogether, the
tone of the Southerners. It may have been that his studies of
Spanish history and literature had developed in him a fancy
for the mediaeval type of man and society: he himself was
clearly of that fashion. It was natural, therefore, that I went
to him for comfort, when, as often in those days, I sorely
needed it.

GEORGE TICKNOR 197

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Mr. Ticknor was regarded
as a Secessionist, and at the time when Seward was "ringing
his battle bell," there was talk of imprisoning him in Fort
Warren, where a number of men of distinction from the South-
ern states had been confined. When the sturdy Governor An-
drew, the truest of Union men, let Seward understand that
there were still men in Massachusetts and that his emissaries
would in case of need find why they were not wanted, I, with
some others, supposed that he referred perhaps t£ Ticknor and
a small group who were known to sympathize with him, includ-
ing Mr. George S. Hillard. In fact, Mr. Ticknor was not a Se-
cessionist, nor even a Confederate sympathizer. He was, indeed,
a Unionist, but he did not believe it right or wise to seek the
welfare of the Federal land at the cost of Civil War. This state
of mind was a judgment with no trace of passion in it. When
he learned that I purposed entering the Federal army, he en-
couraged me to do so, on the ground that a man ought in such
trials to trust to himself.

Although I had known many Europeans and not a few per- \
sons who had travelled in the old world, Mr. Ticknor was the
first American who had effectively appropriated its quality.
Although I did not think about it at the time, I believe that it
was the feeling that he was one of my own stock who had made
other lands contribute to his enlargement that most attracted
me. I delighted to hear him talk of the able men he had known
- he had the best of all talents, that of knowing men. He had
such a pleasure in this knowledge that many provincial folk
of Boston thought him a worshipper of famous people, and after
the fashion of the cheaper sort they called him a snob. In
truth, he was what the provincial always finds it difficult to
understand — a man who was a real discerner of man. The fact
that he was willing to give much time to a rather raw lad,
because he saw that the lad found pleasure and profit in his
conversation, reveals the true-hearted gentleman he was.

Mr. Ticknor had a perfectly natural pleasure in his wide

198 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

range of friendships, a most human pleasure. He gave me the
letters of a number of his European correspondents to read.
They showed by their tone that many discerning people took
him at the large value which I from the first assigned to him.
I most distinctly remember the letters he had from King John
of Saxony, a cultivated man, and a very interesting correspond-
ent. He was evidently much attracted to Mr. Ticknor; the
relation was one based on the mutual esteem of two cultivated
gentlemen. As I recall it, they were equally interested in Dante.
In this connection, here is a bit of advice Mr. Ticknor gave me.
It was that if I should become a correspondent of a sovereign,
I must take care not to answer letters at once; unless they con-
tained some specific request, it was well to wait some months
before writing again, for a man of such station could not by the
usages that controlled him leave a communication unanswered.
He said assuringly that promptitude in answering letters and a
memory for faces were the virtues of a king.

Next after two houses of my earlier life in Kentucky, that of
the Ticknors gave me more than any other than my own.
There was. a beautiful view from the library windows; from
them you looked down the charming Beacon Street mall of the
Common. But from them, I now perceive, I gained a wider,
nobler look on life. To this day, though that mansion has fallen
from its high estate and is a place of offices, it remains sacred.
I pass it often and in many moods, but never without reverence
and a sense of gratitude for what came to me within its walls.

One day, early in our acquaintance, — I may indeed call it
friendship, — Mr. Ticknor said to me that he was glad to have
me in his house, but that I ought to know that being thus an
intimate there brought certain disabilities. He went on to say
that my frequent presence there would lead to my being
excluded from the society of a certain group of people whose
acquaintance would probably be of more value to me than his
own ; that I should find my way to the homes of the Lawrences,
to those of Mr. George Hillard and Judge Parker and Professor

LONGFELLOW AND LOWELL 199

Parsons of Cambridge, but that I should not enter those of the
Lowells or the Quincys or that of Mr. Longfellow. At the time,
this seemed to me the whimsy of the dear man's overmuch con-
sideration of me, and a perhaps excessive valuation of social
relations. But time proved that his reckoning was singularly
correct. I quickly took my way to the houses where he said I
should be welcomed, and there made valued friends, but I
never was invited to any of the other houses where he told me
I would find myself tabooed.

I came to know Longfellow on the street, and had many
pleasant exchanges with him in our meetings; he would some-
times turn and walk with me, or bid me to go with him. We
often met in the houses of mutual friends, but he never bade
me to his own. In the same way I met Lowell, even more in-
teresting. He seemed to fancy talking with me in a fine swap-
ping of yarns and exchanging of judgments, and I always found
myself at my best with him. Several times he told me that we
were distantly kinsmen, as I remember it, through the marriage
of an Elizabeth Shaler of Connecticut with an ancestor of his,
Thomas Russell, of Charlestown. He said that this accounted for
the fact that his own father and William Shaler, my great-uncle,
were so curiously alike that they were gravely inconvenienced
by the mistakes it caused. In the College faculty, he was given
to seeking me for "a whack" of anecdote, and more than once
he walked with me to my door but never entered it, nor was I
ever in his house — and this at a time when I was in near rela-
tion with all the other folk of Cambridge who were of the College
circle. Considering that I had been in the Union army, it is
hard to believe that the fact that I belonged to a slaveholding
family and did not regard holding slaves as infamous should
have been lifelong barriers to natural relations; yet the evi-
dence is that Mr. Ticknor was right; he had a marvellously
keen sense of human quality.

Another home where I gladly went and often, was that of my
father's classmate Mr. Epes Sargent Dixwell, then the master of

200 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

a famous boys' school in Boston, whence for many years came
to Harvard a train of youths who had been well placed in the
way of scholarship and imbued with the manly simplicity of his
admirable nature. Like others who live with you.th, Mr. Dix-
well to the end of his life kept a large share of it in his soul. He
and his agreeable household gave me refuge in the time when I
found myself a stranger in a strange land ; for at the outset New
England was very foreign to me, and this though I could not
discern in what the difference consisted. It was nowhere in the
essentials, for at the firesides and the tables of those who were
so good as to make me welcome I found always my own people,
so like that I puzzled my wits to see what was the matter, and
I hardly know to this day more of it than I did then; yet there
is the intangible something that does not — did not then and
even now does not — fit me, as does the social envelope I have
found in England. I am inclined to think it is a secondary
effect of Puritanism, which offsets the method of contact of man
with man. Some slight, but yet important peculiarity in the
way people look at or greet you or pass you on the street with
no sense of your existence — matters of no weight, save for the
fact that primitive-minded folk are as blindly sensitive as are
dogs and other animals to the manners of folk about them. I
am the more inclined thus to explain my salient, silly sense of
isolation in the old days, and the remnant of it at the end of half
a century of residence in New England, from some experience
with folk of Quaker stock. There are to my mind no more
estimable people in the world than those that owe their nurture
to that sect. Among them I have found dear friends, but there
is here too, though with a distinction I cannot grasp, the same
sense of ill adjustment. This is but one of the many things that
go to show that we feel many points in our contacts with our
fellows which we do not and cannot cognize.

Mr. Ticknor's house and that of Mr. Dixwell were the only
homes to which I was accustomed to resort. To Agassiz's, in
my school days, I never went save on an errand ; the reason for

HOSPITALITY NORTH AND SOUTH 201

this, which he delicately conveyed to me, — he was a master
in such art, — was that he could not take in any one of his pupils
without taking all, and as he had grown daughters, it would not
be fit that all the somewhat motley throng should be thus ad-
mitted. That was indeed evident. Once at Nahant, while I was
wandering alone on the shore, he discovered me and led me
forthwith to his summer home, taking pains by his manner to
show that he was glad thus to be hospitable when it could come
in the way of an accident.

It was my custom to walk much in the country about Boston,
usually alone, and across lots. On Sundays, except when hard
pressed for time, I usually set out in the early morning and
came back at dark. At first, I tried to make friends with the *
country folk as I would have done at home with the certainty
of a welcome and a meal, with no gratuity therefor save my
courtesy. I found at once that this did not fit the time and
place. I never gained an entrance to a house or to the acquaint-
ance of a person, though I thought I was rather apt in dealing
with my fellows. At the time I did not see what afterward was
clear enough, — that this lack of hospitality was due to the
fact that a great town was near by, and that here as elsewhere,
even in the South, it had made an end of hospitality to the
neighbor. In the other country districts of New England, I
have observed no notable difference in this regard as compared
with the Southern country, except that the stages of approach
are more slowly made; there being in the North no accepted
tradition that the stranger at the gate has of right a welcome.
There is no difference in the human nature involved in the
action ; for that matter I have found, the world about, hospi-
tality to be a characteristic of the genus Homo, having as good
a categoric value as the naked hide or the withered ears.

These walks alone or with a companion, commonly Emerson
or Hyatt, gave me a host of small adventures with people and
things that were dear to me and helped much in my growth.
At first, and until I began to get the gauge of the New-Eng- ^

202 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

lander, I felt as if I were in an enemy's country and had to go
carefully. This was in part because my wanderings were usually
on Sunday with a deep net, a fisherman's basket, and a botanical
box that showed that I was on some kind of diversion. On al-
most the first of my rambles, in what is now called the Middlesex
Fells, I encountered on a wood road a sturdy deacon, who asked
the business which took me abroad on the Sabbath. On being
told I was going to church, he asked where, and when I replied
that it was under the great roof of the sky where I was sure of
the Lord's presence, he became angry and undertook to arrest
me. Not until I convinced him that his Sunday clothes would
soon be in the roadside ditch, did he give over this notion. I
tried to make the fuming heathen see that he was the Sabbath-
breaker; asked him to sit down and talk the matter out; but
after the manner of his kind, he was not open to argument and
went his way promising me, from the distance, full share of
affliction in this world and the next. This deacon long stayed
with me for a fair sample of the Puritan, and helped greatly to
intensify my dislike, I may say my abhorrence, of Christianity.
It was years after, before I came to see that he and his like
belong to a group marvellously escaped from the influence of
Jesus, by holding to the primitive brutal motives of man which
it was the place of the Master to destroy. The fact that I could
not get a "whack" with any I encountered on my walks, except
with the evident pagans, did much to hinder my understanding
of what religion means.

In my student days and long afterward, in Somerville, near
the Mystic River, there stood the ruined masonry of a Roman
Catholic convent, which had been burned by a Protestant mob
in the early part of the last century, the provocation being, as
I have understood, the idle rumor that a girl was imprisoned
there. Although I was brought up in the English Church, it
was in a tolerant atmosphere, where the Romanists were looked
upon good-naturedly, as people who were not so very far off
from ourselves. My grandfather Southgate, as before noted,

WINNING A WAGER 203

was quite intimate with two of their bishops; he commended
to me the prelates of this faith as gentlemen and excellent com-
pany. Moreover, Kentucky has always had a large colony of
English Catholics, — some of them were near friends in my boy-
hood, — and I have always felt what seems to be an instinctive,
affectionate reverence for nuns. From my earliest memory the
sight of them has ever awakened a movement of the spirit
which no religious ceremonies can bring about in me. There-
fore, the spectacle of this wreck of the Charlestown nunnery
helped to intensify my dislike of the Puritan motive. This was
in the days when the Know-Nothing party was strong — when,
probably for the last time, our race was to be revisited by the
fanatical motives of the Tudor and Stuart period ; so that these
ruins served as an effective monument of an ancient iniquity.
They were doubtless kept there by the church authorities for
that purpose.

In winning a wager with some of my fellow students, I had a
better view of these ruins, one that made a great impression on
my mind, for they were the first of such moss-grown walls I
ever saw. The place was well fenced in, and there were guards
and dogs by day and night to keep people away. Therefore, of
course, it was most desirable for a student to have a brick from
the old walls on his mantelpiece, and there were many midnight
raids to secure such trophies, — mostly failures, for the watch
was good and the dogs insistent in their duties. I was asked to
join in one of these ventures, but declined. Being guyed at, I
wagered a dinner for the lot that I could go on a Sunday morn-
ing to the gate, and without asking leave of any one and with-
out any violence, proceed to the ruin and bring away a choice
brick. It was agreed, and a committee was sent to view the
proceedings. I found the guard with his dogs, got into palaver
with him; we walked together to the site of the burnt house; I
chose and pocketed my specimen; he accompanied me to the
gate, both of us having had an agreeable half-hour of frolic
together. He knew well the game I was playing, but being a

204 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

broth of a boy, he liked it — if a man finds that he does not get
on well with an Irishman, he may know that his own human
nature is not what it should be.

Another incident of my walks stays in my memory because
it has an interest from the humanistic and naturalistic side.
I had been collecting specimens of a Sunday morning along
the banks of the Mystic River in Medford. Returning in the
evening, I found a place by the old Middlesex Canal where the
alewives were running up to spawn and a large gang of Irishmen
were engaged in catching them. As it was the first time I had
seen this anadromous fish, I was much interested in watching
the movements of the sportsmen. My large collecting basket,
which contained several black snakes and half a dozen or so
bullfrogs, all alive, weighed upon me ; so I set it down and in
the course of my wandering got on the other side of the canal
from it, and perhaps fifty feet away from where it stood near
the fishermen. Suddenly, to my vast surprise, there came from
the basket a wail precisely like that of a young child in pain.
The Irishmen heard it also, and in a moment a dozen of them
were gathered about it, intent on inquiry but half afraid to
make it. Seeing that if they opened the lid I should lose the
specimens, and fancying that it must be some ventriloquist
trick, I shouted to them to leave the basket alone until I could
get to it. This confirmed their suspicions; they pulled out the
peg and threw the lid back, when forth sprang the frogs and
snakes, — it was a hot day and they were nimble. Away went
the throng in wild fright at the issue of their investigation.
When I won back to the basket — it was quite a way to the
place where I could cross back over the canal — my captives
had disappeared; so I filled the empty basket with alewives
and went home. I had lost my day's collecting, but we had fish
at the club table in plenty.

Though at first I thought it possible that the babe-like cry
was some trick of a ventriloquist, I was soon convinced that
such a trick was impossible, for the reason that the basket stood

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN VOICE 205

at a distance from the party and there was nothing to direct their
attention to it. It was clear that it came from the throat of one
of the bullfrogs, the creature perhaps being frightened by the
presence of the snakes. I could not find from any of my naturalist
friends that such a wailing note was recognized as a sound these
creatures make, nor was there any account of it in the books I
searched. I tried to have the sound repeated, and for a long
time without success ; finally I heard it once again, not so clear
as in the first instance, but sufficiently so to make the observa-
tion certain; a curiously human sound which would any where be
taken for an infant's wail. Since then I have found two other
persons who have heard it from the same species.

To me this observation is most interesting, because it shows
the primitive human cry as existing in a group which is sepa-
rated from us by thousands of species. The identity is due to
the early establishment of the relations between the lungs, the
vocal chords, and the emotions, which has in some forms re-
mained in the series to this day. In many groups the conditions
have been somewhat altered, but in nearly all the mammalian
forms the young, when frightened or in pain, will give out a cry
of the same general nature, one distinctly different from what
comes from the reptiles or the birds. The existence of this mode
of expression among the amphibia, while it is lacking in the
reptiles and the birds, serves in some measure to confirm the
other evidence to the effect that the mammalia were derived
from amphibian ancestors.

Of all my lesser excursions, I most enjoyed those along the
seashore. Watching for the lowest run of tides, I delighted to
wander in the sea mud-flats, and especially among the boulders
which abound in the bottom, off the cliffs of boulder clay. The
richness of this life along the New England coast would not be
suspected by those who do not watch for the rare occasions
when the tides have the fullest swing and the wind is off-shore.
I was also given at such times to searching with a boat the spiles
of the bridges in the inlets about Boston, where the display

206 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

of the sea-anemones often affords a spectacle of marvellous
beauty.

In my undergraduate days it was the custom to keep aquaria
in our rooms and in them to establish all the forms we could
contrive to make live there. He was the smartest fellow who
had the greatest number of species in the cubic foot or two of
water the vessel contained. To do the work well means that
we had frequently to pack fresh sea-water from the Charles
River at the proper stage of the tide, and also to rig up some
contrivance for aerating the water; much time and originality
were spent on such devices. In these days, when some kind of
histology is the aim of the naturalist, the aquarium has passed
out of use. I have not seen one in a student's room in thirty
years. They know much more of structure, but far less of life
than in my student days.

CHAPTER XV

OFF TO THE WAR

IN leaving Cambridge, I remember taking account of what I had
done in the three and a half years that I had been a student
there. Although at that day, I fully expected that three years
of work would not serve as the foundations of a career, for the
reason that I was going into conditions of grave stress with
what seemed to be a scant measure of strength, so that I was
pretty sure to find the way out in the field or in the hospital,
I was yet contented with the instrument. In the three years
of my connection with the University I had worked hard and
continuously, and with a clear purpose, which was to lay the
foundations for work in natural history with specialization in
geology. Although the official instruction I had access to was
scanty, almost absurd in its limitations, the contriving I had
done to supplement it had been fairly successful. From Marcou,
Jackson, and Rogers there had come good help, but the best, it
seemed, was from my sense that I had to be untiringly vigilant
in using all the opportunities which the field, the books, and
the men I was so fortunate as to know could give me. Moreover,
in this endeavor I had learned how to deal with men of my own
group. The fact that from about the age of fourteen until I came
to Cambridge I had not been in a boy's school, but with an
ancient philosopher, was in certain ways a misfortune; for it
left me untrained in the art of dealing with youths of my own
age. The intense life of the group of students with which I had
been thrown quickly made me, in the best sense of the word,
a man of the world, ready to meet his neighbor in the give-and-
take which is the most important feature in a college education.
The only unfortunate feature in this Cambridge student life
was the narrow range of acquaintances I had a chance to make.

208 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

Though I hungered for the society of like-minded mates, there
were in all not more than two score with whom I had even the
chance of such acquaintance as might lead to intimacy. There
is a common notion that Agassiz had a great following of young
men, but in the three years I was with him as a pupil, two of
them the best of his teaching time, there were never more than
a dozen youths who belonged to his group; and some of these
were of a social quality that did not attract me. The most of
my associates, outside of half a dozen in Agassiz's group of stu-
dents, were in the other separate folds of the Scientific School ;
one or two with Asa Gray and Wyman, and a few with Cooke
in the department of chemistry. I also came to know some of
the young men who were in the Nautical Almanac office, then
kept in a house on the north side of the Cambridge Common.
I had also some contact with two or three young men who were
connected with the Observatory, especially with Philip Sidney
Coolidge, of whom I have already said much. With the youths
in the College, none of us had much to do, except when, as in
the case of Leslie Waggener, there were special reasons for our
coming together. I had a "hail-fellow-well-met" relation with
perhaps half a dozen of these academic youths, and an affection
for some of them, but save in Waggener's case nothing that
could be called friendship ever came from our contacts. As a
group they seemed to me tiresome, with no intensity of purpose
and a very limited sense of the world; at that time I had a
preposterous sense of my insight into the doings of the sphere.
Looking back on myself in my undergraduate days, I am
inclined to suspect that I may have been a bit priggish ; yet
when I remember that I was one of the noisiest, and the leader
in sundry larks and with a humor for fighting, I am inclined
to believe that there was a fair share of unconsciousness in my
life; my relations with my mates bear this out. While I had
nothing to do with their hard drinking, then a common vice with
the groups I knew, nor with other forms of dissipation, our
relations seemed none the worse because of these limitations.

ATTITUDE TOWARDS VICE 209

This was probably because my attitude towards vice was not
based upon religious scruples, but was due to a primitive sense
of cleanliness, a vivid dislike to certain things because they stank.
I had the advantage of my mates, in that debauchery was not
novel to me, as it was to nearly all of them. In the rude, uncon-
cealed life where I was brought up, filth had always been visible,
so it had no mysterious charm. Moreover, the philosophical
way of looking at things which I had developed while with
Escher had, by the help of inheritance, given me a certain
antiquity of soul at its foundation, so that I looked upon the
doings of men with an amused interest which kept me then as
ever since much in the attitude of the spectator. So it fell to
me, who was the youngest of the lot, to be, as I was often called,
the old man ; to help the roisterers out of their messes, and to
see them through the stage of soda-water and repentance.

It is hardly too much to say that at three months over one
and twenty I was older in spirit than I am now. In fact, I look
back on myself with a certain perplexity in my efforts to account
for this curious state. The condition was probably due to the
fact that I had been a rather solitary child, had suffered much
from illness which too early forced introspection, had lacked
the good effects of public schooling, and had been too soon
inducted into philosophic ways. That I was not made a prig
was due to my keen interest in people, which led me to lose the
over-consciousness of self which is the necessary basis of that
detestable product of super-civilization.

In my training up to my majority there was very much lack-
ing, but I had the good fortune to come under the influence of
several strong men, who in some measure imbued me with their
personalities and on whom directly or by reaction I was to some
extent shaped. My grandfather and my father in my childhood
in diverse ways opened the outer world to me; so, too, did the
unhappy Marshall. Probably no drunken genius ever did so
much to enlarge a lad as he. Escher had shown me the philoso-
pher in many ways at his best and his worst; but of all Agassiz

210 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

had vastly stimulated my intelligence and had given me the
sense of the inquiring motive. To this work he brought not only
a majestic and charming personality, but the body of tradition
which had grown up among the naturalists of the marvellous
period of the European awakening misnamed the French Revo-
lution. His method of teaching was that of the great school
wherein he had his nurture, vivified by his sympathy and his
enthusiasm. More than most of his pupils, I had been made
ready for his hands, and my three years with him gave me rapid
development.

I would I could have set down a fit acknowledgment of my
debt through all my days to the women whose influence has
entered into my life and shaped for the best whatever has de-
veloped in me. I feel that I cannot do this part of my task even
to myself, so it will have to remain undone. It is, however, fit
to say that it has been my good fortune from the age of fifteen
years on, to be always in large measure controlled by women
of high character. For this I am devoutly thankful ; for it kept
me from the pit whereto I have seen so many go. While a man
should be a, man's man in quality, taking his measure from his
relations with his own sex, in my opinion he cannot attain his
full stature without the influence of women. Of himself alone
the male human is a mere fragment of his kind ; he attains to his
humanity through the shaping influence of its better half.

In my "account of stock" which I remember making as I
went from Cambridge to Kentucky, I found not much that was
likely to be of value in the work before me. On the moral side,
the equipment lacked the motive commonly noted as patriot-
ism or love of the "old flag," that humor which is well summed
up in the cry of "our country, right or wrong." This stimu-
lating, primitive emotion appears to have been left out in my
making. I felt, it is true, a certain measure of allegiance to my
native commonwealth, not to its name or area, but to the
people, for the reason that I knew and loved them. I firmly
believed that the Federal Union was a most useful convenience

JOINING THE FEDERAL ARMY 211

for uniting like states for protection and interchange. But
there was no such movement of the spirit as I found in others
at the mention of state or nation. My interest, then as now,
was in the purposes of governments, not in mere edifices. I am
not commending this rather arid state of mind ; it was to me a
misfortune, for the reason that it set and thus kept me apart
from my fellows. It is well for a man to have his adequate part
of all the primitive motives, even when he has to subjugate
them. I went about my business with the war not only without
enthusiasm, but in a hard, reckoning way, intending to do the
best I could to support the Union, as I would do the like for any
business institution in which I was concerned, and at the same
time to do what I could to maintain the rights of the several
states.

As for the rest of my poor stock for the trade of war, it con-
sisted in a weak body that could not be expected to withstand
stress : there was no determined disease, but a general ineffi-
ciency. The extremity of this is well shown by the remark of
a rugged cherry-cheeked young friend, a certain Dr. P., who
was at the time of our parting also going to the Federal army.
He said, " Good-by, Shaler, you won't stand the racket three
months; you look like a ghost already." While I agreed with
him in his judgment as to my appearance, this frank statement
nettled me; so I proposed that the one who first crossed the
Styx, should sit on the further bank until the other one passed
over. We shook hands on that contract. If the dear fellow kept
the agreement, he has been waiting for me by the dark river
for four and forty years ; for he who seemed embodied toughness
went down at once, while the peripatetic ghost withstood far
more serious trials and came forth for decades of service.

As soon as I arrived in Kentucky, I went straightway to
Frankfort, the state capital, to put myself in the line of service,
whatever it might be. I found there many, perhaps some score,
of the men I had known, my elders as well as those of my own
generation. I had from them at once a deep consolation in the

212 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

fact that the wiser of them, all indeed but the silly fellows, were
no more affected with patriotism than I was myself; they were
in a business state of mind, directed to have reckonings on the
hard problem before them, ready to act swiftly and together
when a definite thing was to be done. They had just then made
an end of the maundering Beriah Magoffin, a vastly patriotic
incompetent, who had obstructed the better men since the be-
ginning of the trouble. This they had accomplished by dint of
some very patient and kindly advice and due form of law. The
benevolent governor had joined the Confederacy, and by so
doing had made a vacancy in the office of president of the senate.
To this place, before Magoffin resigned, there was chosen Senator
James F. Robinson, an admirable choice in every way. . . .

THE MEMOIR

THE MEMOIR

FOREWORD

1859-1862

IN one of his early note-books Mr. Shaler writes, " I have kept
a journal since I was twelve years old, but from carelessness I
have preserved only a few pages of many hundreds; unless I
pursue a greater regularity it can never accomplish the inten-
tion I design." Had he taken the time to look over this journal,
fragmentary as it is, he would have found how much he had
forgotten — the spiritual travel toward ideals which later were
so amply developed and fulfilled, the names of books which
gave him delight and laid the foundation of his education, and
poems, full of sentiment, written on the spur of the moment.
All these aids to memory might have tempted him to wander
still farther afield in the world of reminiscence. Nevertheless
in the foregoing pages nothing essential is omitted. The jour-
nal and other private papers do, however, declare more con-
vincingly than could any retrospective chronicle the fact that
in Mr. Shaler's spiritual progress there was no ground lost, but
from boyhood onward a steady upward movement of mind and
character. Moreover, there are many passages in this youthful
record which show singular self-knowledge, and others which
reveal doubts and apprehensions that were never justified.
He writes : —

June 15, 1859. . . . Life is sweet to me, dearer now because I only now
begin to see its glories and to know my duty ; still I feel within me much want
of the sterling courage so needful. I cannot float down the waters, and yet I
doubt my strength for the long struggle which is before me if I live. If I
live my spirit compels me to think, and that too in a tangent to the thing

216 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

called public opinion. I believe every thought conceived in the spirit of
truth demands utterance as if it were the word of all nature ; so my life if
ever I should come into the sphere of action would of necessity be a struggle,
vehement on one side, earnest at first but soon faltering and weary on my own.

The lack of "sterling courage" was never his, nor when once
convinced that his course was right did his spirit ever falter or
grow weary. Fearlessness characterized his acts from the very
beginning of manhood. It showed itself in his political inde-
pendence; and later, though he was still a young man, in teach-
ing the principles of Evolution at a time when the dominant
scientific influence in Cambridge was antagonistic to it. For
months preceding the Civil War, Mr. Shaler was subjected to a
veritable cross-fire of political and rhetorical expression con-
cerning the coming conflict. These letters, mostly written by
Southern sympathizers, — indeed nearly all whom he loved
best were committed to that cause, — were dictated by unselfish
and generous motives and therefore are creditable to those who
wrote them; but especially to him, since they bear witness to
the social pressure which he resisted in taking his stand on the
side of the Union. In one of his own letters, brushing aside
the fine-spun speculations of his correspondent, he gives, in a
few words, for one of his age a singularly discerning picture of
the social situation. He writes : —

There is a civilization possible, having negro slavery for its foundation,
and a cultivation not wanting in many elements of moral and intellectual
beauty ; but it is a civilization and society of the Middle Ages with the lighter
circumstances of the nineteenth century — a feudal castle with modern
furniture. Such is the society south of Mason and Dixon's Line. The North,
on the contrary, is the creature of the day, never behind the march of
nations but a pioneer.

After 1861 1 find no trace of a journal ; henceforth Mr. Shaler 's
observations of natural phenomena were converted into mate-
rial for lectures or writings, while his experiences with men and
things were transmuted into a personal philosophy, which
eventually found literary expression in such books as "The

AS A LETTER-WRITER 217

Individual," "The Neighbor," and "The Citizen." He turned
over many times the things which came to him in life, making
varied applications of the lessons he learned. The emotional
side of his nature, especially in early manhood, found vent
whether on a railroad train, while waiting in a station, or in
some lonely place, in a few lines of poetry; sometimes the
thought is extended to the limits of a sonnet, but seldom fur-
ther. After the moment's satisfaction of writing them these
fragments were cast aside and forgotten. They are generally in
the minor key, provoked by a bit of beautiful scenery, or by
some fleeting aspect of nature which called forth the idea of
death, an idea which was ever present with him, probably for
the reason that he was often ill, and also because neither parent
endowed him with the spirit of buoyancy. This was a cultivated
fruit of his advancing years.

Besides Mr. Shaler's letters to his family but few have come
into my hands; indeed, he was in no sense a letter- writer, and
late in life those with whom he might naturally have corre-
sponded he met in daily intercourse. Furthermore, although
his handwriting was beguilingly fair, instead of a key it became
almost a barrier to his thought, and for this reason, after the
gist of what he had to say was laboriously arrived at, few were
tempted to put aside his letters for future reading. But, even
if they had been preserved, it is doubtful whether they would
have furnished much of a personal nature. During one of his
visits to Europe his father writes : -

... I have received an appendix to one of Sophy's letters written on a
piece of paper about as big as your hand, without one word about your
health, or enjoyment, or sight of places, but an engineering disquisition
on the water-supply of Newport from the Licking River, which, at this time,
could not water a herd of buffalo.

The fervid rate at which men lived in the early sixties of the
last century may be inferred from the events which took place
in Mr. Shaler's own life before he had reached the age of twenty-
two. He already had taken his S.B. degree with honors; had

218 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

become a captain of artillery; and had chosen his wife.1 This
fervor of a particular period which he shared with others,
eventually crystallized into a permanent personal quality, for
without fervor he could never have gone out as he did to meet
life on all sides. Rich experiences came to him in military and
civil affairs, in his work as field geologist, mining expert, di-
rector of a state survey, member of various state commissions
and of two bureaus of the national government; as traveller,
prose writer on many subjects, and poet. At twenty-three he
became lecturer, at twenty -seven professor, and dean at fifty.
This brief summary indicates the large lines on which Mr.
Shaler might have continued his autobiography. What follows
in this memoir is necessarily meagre compared with what he
had in his power to communicate had it been given him to con-
tinue the narrative of his life ; for, with truth, he may be likened
to a ship that has gone down deep-laden with treasure.

i He was married in the autumn of 1862 to Sophia Penn Page, the daughter of the Rev.
Charles H. Page, of Virginia. The young people had known each other from childhood.

CHAPTER XVI

THE WAR

1862-1867

REMINDED by some old letters that he came across, Mr. Shaler
stated in a paper published in the Atlantic Monthly, January,
1882, the reasons that led him, though Southern or States'-
Rights in his sympathies, to join the North. It was the fear
that Southern success would make for both peoples strong,
centralized, continually warring governments in which States'
Rights would be completely swamped. He was so determinately
a believer in the doctrine of States' Rights that he was always
opposed to the Republican Party and the spirit of centralization
which it embodied.

In the summer of 1862, Mr. Shaler received a commission
from the government to raise what was known as the Fifth
Kentucky Battery. Although the extremists on both sides had
long since gathered around the flags of their respective alle-
giances the Confederate movement in Kentucky, under the
command of Generals Bragg, Heth, and Kirby Smith at the high
tide of the Civil War, brought the conservative element into
full activity. There had already been an exodus of some forty
thousand of the natural leaders and fighting population to the
Southern army. Kentucky had also contributed its full share
to the Federal forces, almost without bounties and practically
without a draft ; and yet there were fighting men left who sprang
up everywhere eager to bar the veteran host. When Heth's army
assumed a commanding position within five miles of Cincinnati,1
there was hardly a single regiment on the ground that could

i See an account of this period in Kentucky, by N. S. Shaler, in the American Common-
wealths Series.

220 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

have been trusted in the open field. The defences consisted of
a few weak redoubts where guns were like angels' visits, few
and far between, " connected by rifle pits, behind which the
'squirrel hunters/ as the volunteers were termed, found a posi-
tion where it was hoped they could make some resistance."
Colonel Lew Wallace, who was in command, showed singular
energy in the work of organization ; so that the show of resist-
ance on the Ohio in connection with Buell's movements and
Bragg's dilatoriness caused the Confederates to lose a golden
opportunity for doing great things for their cause. Captain
Shaler's battery was called into action during this period of tur-
moil. His first camping-ground was at Lexington, from which
the following letter was written to his wife.1

Camp Clay, Nov., '62.

... Do you remember the old grove beyond Ashland on the road from
Lexington? We rode by it one morning about two months ago. Little did
I then think that I should have a camp pitched under the shade of its vener-
able trees before their leaves had fallen. ... I am not half well, having
a bad cold, severe enough to send me to the hospital were I a private in the
ranks: as it is, I must try and keep on my feet for a few days until it is fully
decided what the fate of my men is to be. Were I to consult my own in-
clinations, I should soon be out of this business, and be quite sure that the
long coming winter would be spent quietly with you : but I must not con-
sult my own inclinations. My officers and men have a claim upon me which
I cannot overlook. I must secure to them fair treatment before I look to
myself. . . .

A friend wrote at this time : " . . . Nat has a bad cold and I
think will be unwise to stay in camp, for though the weather is
pleasant, typhoid pneumonia prevails among the soldiers, most
of the cases in hospital being of that character, — so, know-
ing his obstinacy, you had better come and look after him.
He will dine with us to-day and will not return to camp until
to-morrow."

His health undermined by chills and fever, Mr. Shaler suc-
cumbed to an attack of bronchitis, and was advised for a time

i All letters not otherwise designated are addressed to his wife.

WAR EXPERIENCES TOLD IN VERSE 221'

to give up his command, which he did, again going into the
field when Morgan raided Ohio in the summer of '63. Of this
anticipated event he writes: "To-day there is a neat prospect
of a little episode of the Kirby Smith order; can't tell what
it portends, but unless all signs fail, my wife will be sewing
brass buttons on my coats and looking up my epaulettes. I
am in poor condition to do soldier's duty, but cannot set
private claims against the call to defend home and fireside.
Why the deuce don't the rascals keep t'other side of Cumber-
land?"

Many of his personal experiences while in this campaign are
recorded in the volume of poems entitled, "From Old Fields."
"The Eager Muster," "East Tennesseans," "The Georgians,"
"Madame B.'s Review," "The General's Yarn," "The Smug-
glers," are altogether reminiscent. In "A Midnight Venture"
he himself was the "lank youth," "with Fate's load on his
shoulders," who stood as captain.

Type of lads

In the hard wrestle of the Civil War,
Who 'fore their beards were grown and gristle set
Were burthened with the cares to weigh down men
Who Ve grizzled in the trade.

In the poem called "The Burial Place" it is he who, while in
the family burying-ground looking for the fairest place for one
more grave (his mother's), —

Where she shall bide
Who long hath striven faithfully to serve
God's will on earth, —

notices on the face of his grandfather's monument a deep
moss-grown scar made by heavy wheels, and tells the lad beside
him, forty years after the event, the tale of how it came about
when " swiftly and clear " rang the commands of " a master
of hard deeds " : —

But first of all to me,
To go upon the run upon this crest

222 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

And place my pieces by this monument

Sweeping the highway yonder in the vale.

Then in a moment, forth the battery

Swept down the slope before it, broke right through

The walls and fences, then into that gulch

In seeming ruin, yet with gear unharmed

And horses stout enough to pull it out,

With spur and lash to speed them up the slope.

"The Way with Mutineers" is another record of his own
experience: —

If you need exploration of your soul,
Get a command of raw men — reprobates
From minstrel shows and jails. Tumble them in
Red-hot campaign to shape them on the march
And in the fight for service. You '11 soon find
Their stuff and yours.

In "The Great Raid," a vivid description of Morgan's march
into Ohio, he tells of good Master Greenwood's invitation to
share a breakfast with him. After two days' feeding from sad-
dle-pockets none too full, the famished youth, first stationing
his orderly by the window (through which in the course of time
he got his share of the victuals) to keep watch, gladly welcomed
the chance to fill his hungry stomach. When the breakfast was
done, the host — a maker of great guns, with also a taste for
curious toys — put upon the bare floor some dolls (just arrived
from Paris) to "strut and dance and quaver words of French" :
these so well acting their comedy as to make entertainer and
guest, now on all fours, not only split their sides with laughter
but forget altogether that the tide of war rolled scarce a league
away. By chance they glanced toward the window, where to
their consternation they beheld the orderly with "jaw-dropped
wonder looking at the play."

Three leaps, and our scared leader's on his steed,
Spurring his best straightway across the fields,
To save a furlong length, cursing the fool
That harbored in his hide.

THE WAR IN KENTUCKY 223

Many years after the war, at his own table, Mr. Shaler nar-
rated this episode to a famous teller of stories — just then the
people's idol and whose hand students waiting in the library
were eager to grasp. The guest listened with rapt attention,
and when the tale was finished, he exclaimed: "Now that's
just the kind of thing no man can invent — it is unimaginable.
May I have it for my own?"

Mr. Shaler greatly admired John Morgan's military exploits;
indeed, there was a spiritual affinity between them in dash and
power of invention. In his history of Kentucky he lays stress
upon the fact that " Morgan's subordinate officers were nearly
all Kentuckians." "Their wonderful work," he writes, "is per-
haps the best evidence of the military capacity of this people.
More than any other it shows the people to possess fertility of
invention, endurance, and the vigor in action demanded in suc-
cessful war."

It was a dismal time in Kentucky during all the years '63 and
'64, for although the state was no longer the pathway of great
armies, many of the greatest events then happening took place
in its immediate vicinity. Its fertile lands and rich supplies
provoked a series of small raids which incessantly harassed the
people. To these were added the still more grievous hardships
of guerilla warfare. Bands made up of the unsoldierly rubbish,
deserters, and outlaws of both armies, invaded the state and
brought back to Kentucky the evils of Indian strife. Men again
tilled their fields with their muskets by their sides, and slept in
expectation of combat. The destruction of property and the
depreciation of land values touched the pockets of all classes in
the community, while the loss of the loved ones bowed down
the hearts of the people. One after another of Mr. Shaler's in-
timate friends, mostly in the Confederate army, were slain by
the sword or perished in prisons, so that while still a young man
there were few left, outside his immediate family, who ever
called him by his given name.

While waiting for the reestablishment of his health Mr. Shaler

224 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

carried on his studies as far as he was able; but becoming im-
patient of the inactivity of indoor life, he sought to occupy
himself in the country by clearing a large tract of land of its
timber. In order to get it into shape for the market he set up a
saw-mill, but he soon abandoned the enterprise as too costly
in time and money. In regard to this same tract of land his
father writes some years after: "The Benton farm is doing
well. You would hardly know the place where you acquired
your saw-mill experience ; the bottom is cleared and in grass.
I have about two hundred acres of good grazing — about one
hundred sheep and a fine lot of early grade Cotswold lambs
feeding upon it."

Then, further along, he became collector of internal revenue.
This work brought him into contact with all sorts of queer
people, and, in a superficial way, made him acquainted with
the material condition of the state, a knowledge which proved
of advantage when he became director of the Kentucky Geolo-
gical Survey. The work of " collector " at this time was hardly
less hazardous than military service, for in out-of-the-way
places the civil law was none too well respected, and the bearer
of gold was apt to be an object of altogether too vigilant atten-
tion. The only advantage of this service over the field was
his ability to regulate his movements with reference to his
health; otherwise the journeys were laborious, long horse-
back rides, early departures and late returns. Under this disci-
pline, whether or no, like Stevenson, he felt the need "to come
down off this feather bed of civilization, to put his feet upon
the floor of the globe strewn with cutting flints," he got the
experience.

Although it had for some time been manifest that, owing to
its malarial influence, the climate of Kentucky, so far from being
health-giving, was in fact a serious menace, Mr. Shaler did not
revisit New England until the summer of '64. The following
letter was written immediately upon his return : —

FIRST UNIVERSITY APPOINTMENT 225

Parker House, BOSTON, June 28, '64.

... I have been engaged during the day in looking up acquaintances
and endeavoring to find some suitable place of abode for you and the little
one. I met Professor Agassiz this afternoon and received from him a somewhat
cordial greeting. The old fellow is in a great rage against all students, and
is worn with the trouble they have lately given him. I am inclined to think
that there has been much wrong done him in the way of petty spite work
by the rebels of the M. C. Z. [Museum]. The students have failed to show
him the consideration his age and preeminent services entitle him to receive,
and have done much to embitter his declining years. I am satisfied that
reasonable treatment from them would have secured an amicable adjust-
ment. . . .

I have been out to, the M.'s: received a cordial welcome, which in this
land of cool greetings was very agreeable. They were packed ready to
move. . . .

It is going to be very difficult to get such accommodations as we want
on the seashore. Everything, they tell me, is full — four new paste-board
hotels have been built this year at Hingham, a place which fashion has
lately invaded. Prices are high, but not greatly above what I expected, still
it will make no great difference, for when our money gives out we will go
home : the higher the price the shorter the time we will have to stay.

The weather is delightfully cool and bracing, and old Boston looks mag-
nificent. It is a great gratification to see a clean town once more after
having lived in Western mud and dust for two years. . . .

In 1864 Mr. Shaler was appointed assistant in paleontology
in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. In the following year
he took charge of the regular instruction in zoology and geology,
given in the Lawrence Scientific School. This work, owing to
the continued indisposition of the Lawrence professor, remained
in his hands until 1872. As in the past so in the future much
of his time was spent within the walls of what was commonly
known as the Agassiz Museum ; therefore to pause here even at
the expense of anticipating dates seems worth while. In this
place he worked almost daily, often lingering late in the after-
noon, that is, until daylight failed, — in the waning hours occa-
sionally glancing out of the window in expectation of the little
child and her mother who came regularly to entice him home.
During these early years the life of the Museum was exceedingly

226 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

active; the work of organizing, and collecting and classifying
specimens, as well as teaching, under Agassiz's inspiring influ-
ence, awakened the energies and full powers of his pupils, —
for, whether they were regular assistants or not, they considered
themselves such. I find among Mr. Shaler's papers the follow-
ing " table of labor for the half-year ending Jan. 1, 1866" : -

July 15.

1. Essay on the intellectual relation of the four types of animals.

Sept. 1.

2. On the formation of continents.

Optional.

3. On the relation of philosophical systems to scientific methods.

Nov. 1.

4. On the changes of coast line in New England.

Dec. 31.

5. On the method of preserving recent specimens of natural history.

6. Museum Catalogue.

Lectures.

Oct. 15.

1. Either a course on geology or a course on paleontology for students,

24 lectures.

2. Five University Lectures on the growth of continents.

3. Three University Lectures on the silting up of harbors.
Preparation.

Compilation for work on formation of continents.
Compilation for index universal of memoirs.

The work of organizing and arranging the Museum was ar-
duous and fatiguing. In the autumn of '66 Mr. Shaler became
convinced that he needed an entire change of climate, and,
further compelled by the desire to visit foreign museums and
scenes of geological interest, he set sail for Europe. Among the
letters of introduction from Agassiz, he carried with him the
following, which, with another letter from the same hand, will
show something of his situation.

CAMBRIDGE, 4th Nov., 1866.

Dear Monsieur Barrande : . . . Confident in your benevolence, I take
the liberty of presenting to you one of my pupils, who has devoted himself
with much success to the study of geology. Mr. Shaler is the one of my Ameri-

MR. SHALER IN 1865

A LETTER FROM AGASSIZ 227

can students whom I love best. He goes to Europe for the purpose of study-
ing the most important geological localities, for learning the recent progress
of science, and also to visit the principal museums and collections, particu-
larly fossils. I pray you give him your good counsel to aid him in the ac-
complishment of his object. Believe me always your very devoted friend,

Louis AGASSIZ.

From the same to Mr. Shaler: —

NAHANT, August 6th, 1867.

My dear Sir: ... I have been seeking for two months, in order to answer
your letter to me, your direction, which I could get from no one, never having
been informed that you made Montreux your headquarters. Well, you
could not have chosen a lovelier spot.

I was delighted to hear from you such good news of your health and scien-
tific pursuits. It is my belief that you cannot do better than to go on with
your present course, strengthening your health and extending your know-
ledge of classical geological grounds. As to your return to Cambridge,
let it not interfere with those primary considerations. Nothing shall be
done here that may interfere with your projects. And in this connection
I would say that there are doubts entertained concerning Mr. Whitney's
return to the East and that I would therefore recommend you to make
yourself the more earnestly familiar with practical geology: and if you have
any inclination that way and time to do it, also with mining geology. I
was particularly glad to hear of the extensive collections you have been
making, and also of your visiting Alpine localities. There is not an American
geologist who has the slightest idea of mountain-structure on a grand scale,
unless it be Whitney; certainly neither Hall, nor Lesley, nor Newberry,
nor Dana know anything about it practically. All their views are purely
theoretical and it is the more advantageous for you to make the most of
your opportunities. Do not neglect also the glaciers and glacial traces.
As to the collections you want to send home, request Mr. Francillon to make
them over to some Commissionnaire and have them forwarded by sailing
vessel. . . . With kindest remembrance to Mrs. Shaler, — Yours very truly,

L. AGASSIZ.

CHAPTER XVII

WALKS AND TALKS ABROAD

1866-1868

MR. SHALER set sail for Europe in the fall of 1866. His stay
in England was short, for already the autumn was far advanced
and his object was to find a climate that offered the greatest
opportunities for outdoor life. These conditions, he was led to
believe, were to be had in Switzerland and thither he bent his
steps. From the moment he crossed the French border heavy
clouds blotted out the view of the mountains, so that when he
reached Montreux, where he had for some time been expected
at his sister-in-law's villa, close to the terraced banks of Lake
Geneva, even if the state of the atmosphere had permitted it
was too late in the evening to see anything of the hidden glory
of that famous region. Nevertheless he went to bed with the
uplifted sense of one girt about by grand scenery. His most
vivid imaginings were more than realized the next morning
when he opened his eyes and beheld from his bedroom window,
whose curtains had purposely been left undrawn, the Dent du
Midi's snow-capped heights radiant with the rose-light of the
dawn. This was his first unclouded view of the Alps and was a
vision of beauty which he never forgot.

It was not long before he began the study of mountain-struct-
ure and the movements of the ice-streams of the Alps. Already
he had been imbued by Agassiz with intense interest in all that
related to glaciers ; he was also familiar with Elie de Beaumont's
" Systeme des Montagnes," which had been one of the most diffi-
cult parts of his examination for his degree, as appears in the
Autobiography, and with James D. Forbes's and Helmholtz's
theories concerning the characteristics of ice. The fact which

IN THE ALPS 229

Tyndall emphasized, that ice during a thaw disintegrates so as
to form rude prisms whose axes are at right angles to the planes
of freezing, he had observed in the ice of the Ohio River. He
explored the great Aletsch glacier, that of the Grindelwald, the
Mer de Glace, and the system of glaciers between Monte Rosa
and Mont Cervin. He developed a love for long tramps, but
never cared to waste time and energy in trying to scale high
peaks; from the lower heights he was content to attack the
problem of mountain-building. At first he made his ascents
under professional leadership, acquiring a great liking for
the strong-limbed and brave-hearted Swiss guides. After a
while, however, wishing to try his own powers, he liberated him-
self from their companionship and often walked alone. His
senses trained to an exquisite perception of the glories of earth
and air, the scent of pine and song of birds, every step was a
delight. These solitary tramps, like sleep, " knit up the ravelled
sleeve of care."

While in Switzerland he became acquainted with Messieurs
Renivier, Pictet, and other geologists who were helpful in mak-
ing known the best localities for collecting fossils. During the
winter it was also his good fortune to meet at Montreux an
accomplished young English geologist, Edward Tawney, with
whom he travelled extensively. Tawney was a cripple, but had
in his veins the blood of the heroic Lawrences, John and Henry,
who saved India to England in the great mutiny. Yet, in spite
of his pluck, he was in a measure dependent for assistance upon
his companion, and the fact that he needed looking after awak-
ened, as such an appeal always did, Mr. Shaler's utmost vigi-
lance and care. Their journeys together were delightful as
well as mutually profitable, and a great friendship sprang up
between them, as well as a certain interchangeable guardian-
ship ; as, for instance, when Mr. Shaler's quick spirit would get
him into trouble with stupid and arrogant officials — when the
oft-repeated Sacrebleu, Cent Milk Diables, Nom de Dieu, made
the air hiss; then Tawney would exhaust his slender amount

230 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

of wind power by shrieking at the top of his voice, " Don't hit
him, Shaler, don't hit him; kick him if you must." Tawney's
longer experience on the Continent had taught him that instead
of the serious punishment inflicted for a blow with the fist only
a small fine was exacted for a kick.

On one occasion of a conflict with such officials, however, in
an out-of-the-way part of France, neither threats nor bland-
ishments were of avail. Suspicion happening to fall upon the
contents of their map-cases, the travellers were accused of
being German spies and of having rifled the secrets of French
fortifications. Geographical and geological information was
showered upon the gendarme without the least effect, and the
two were marched off to jail. Here they were strictly guarded
for some hours, until at length the absurdity of the situation
induced such peals of laughter from them that the policeman
himself became moved to mirth. He had wit enough to reflect
that criminals were not usually hilarious, and now was per-
suaded to send for the chief man of the place. This functionary
appeared, — a thick-headed, pursy magistrate, who solemnly
turned the map-cases upside down and inside out, examined
bags of specimens with the awe inspired by dynamite, then sat
for a long time meditating upon the complicated plot. Event-
ually, under the influence of a good cigar and a potent drink
from the combined brandy-flasks, he solved the problem to his
satisfaction and permitted the strangers, late in the evening,
to become the guests of the village inn instead of guests of the
state.

Map-cases in those days were a source of frequent bother,
for in the eyes of the custom-house officer every one with an
unusual package was regarded as a Prussian spy, devoting his
life to mastering the art of French defensive warfare. The
boxes of geological specimens that were forwarded from time
to time also fell under the ban of suspicion and caused trouble.
And the trouble was not always confined to custom-house
officers. I have cause to remember some of the specimens he

EDWARD TAWNEY 231

collected at a later time in Switzerland. At the last moment
before setting out for Paris to visit the exposition of 1867, after
all but one of the trunks had been closed, Mr. Shaler innocently
asked if he might put in a few more things, and while my back
was turned accomplished the feat. When the trunk was opened
at the end of the journey a lace hat and its pink roses, a holiday
gown, and sundry other fine things got together for the visit,
were found to be ground to powder by the weight and shifting
motion of at least half a peck of stones. Mr. Shaler, however,
made ample amends for the damage, and for the first time in
his life (he was afraid of store clerks) voluntarily entered a dry-
goods shop and purchased a beautiful robe which he happened
to see in the window. In compliment to him the dress was worn
for many years until it seemed too gay, and then was handed
down as a much-prized heirloom to his daughter.

Threats of danger, however, were not always confined to
France. Once, in Tawney's own country, while the two were
tramping together in the neighborhood of Manchester, some
roughs welcomed the cripple by shouting at the top of their
voices, " 'Eave a stone at him, 'eave a stone at him, I say ! " and
would have perpetrated the brutal assault had not Mr. Shaler
pitched into the crowd and made short work with them. His
friend took the hostile demonstration as a matter of course.

Two summers and a good part of one winter were profitably
spent in Switzerland, different localities being chosen as the
base of explorations. These sojourns, often in remote places,
away from the beaten track of the diligent tourist, furnished
agreeable episodes in the serious work of the geologist. In those
old days every canton, almost every village, had its distinctive
customs and opinions, but with the coming of the railways
miscellaneous habits and lukewarm beliefs have long since
taken their place. In 1866 there was apparently no such thing
as the "neutral heart," hatred and doubtless its converse love
were strongly developed; at least the former passion was ap-
parent at the target practice of the citizen soldiers on Sunday

OF THE

UNIVERSITY

232 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

mornings at the little village of B. On these occasions Mr.
Shaler won the hearts of the people by his enthusiastic applause,
especially when the ball struck, as it often did, the heart of the
French Zouave (a stuffed figure) which just then represented
the arch-enemy across the border. His familiarity with Swit-
zerland's heroic struggles against over-confident invaders was
always the road to a friendly understanding between him and
the sturdy country folk, whom he loved to compliment on their
capacity to drive back at any time new foes as insolent as the
old ones.

At Le Locle, the centre of the watch industry, Mr. Shaler made
the acquaintance of an excellent geologist with whom he had
some pleasant and instructive walks. Monsieur Jacquard was a
member of a watchmakers' association, also a maker of watches
himself. In his house Mr. Shaler bought a lady's watch still
warm, so to speak, from the friction of the machine which en-
graved it. This delicate industry carried on in the homes of
the artisans, uniting the domestic and the economic under
such simple conditions, was to him a far more satisfactory sight
than the well-equipped, well-organized, but less human manu-
factory at Waltham, Massachusetts. Indeed, every enterprise
in which the family life was harmoniously blended, was, to
his mind, the best solution of social difficulties.

It was at this same town that he had the chance of "assist-
ing," in the French sense of the word, at a unique spectacle
— a military review of the children soldiers, uniformed and
equipped like their elder fighting brothers; muskets and can-
non, all of a size to match their small dimensions. These young
heroes at first showed themselves past masters of drill, execut-
ing the manoeuvres with exemplary precision ; but after the
early dinner provided by the good mothers of the town, many
a young warrior who had stood steadfast in the morning
wavered in his alignment and stumbled in his march, while
others with their hands significantly clasped over the seat of
pain were led off the mimic field of battle. One little fellow who

A FRENCH COUNTRY INN 233

had feasted, if not wisely, at least more profusely perhaps than
his mates, blubbered outright from the ache that too many cher-
ries had given him, and was glad to have Mr. Shaler take him
in his arms and carry him to the near-by hospital tent. The
couple of francs left in his hand gave a compensating joy to his
thrifty little Swiss soul.

At Salins, another halting-place which lingers pleasantly
in the memory, letters of introduction from Mr. Jules Marcou
to his old friends were the means of giving Mr. Shaler some
pleasant geological and social experiences. Captain B. espe-
cially exerted himself to make known the local points of inter-
est. To one spot in particular — a place of refreshment — he
conducted the strangers with an enthusiasm that geological
sites pure and simple had failed to awaken. In answer to an
inquiry whether a luncheon had better be carried on that day's
excursion, his countenance suggested a good time coming that
allayed all doubts. The morning spent in driving and walking
through a fair and sunny land laid the foundation for keen and
appreciative appetites; therefore, at noon, the captain was
asked to fulfil his earlier promise. He prodded the nag and
soon there loomed in the distance a large wooden structure,
bare outside and apparently empty within ; but if at the sight
of the barren prospect the American countenances fell, the face
of the bold forager was lit with reassuring cheerfulness. Soon
the appearance of a comely Frenchwoman at the door — a femi-
nine Boniface of typical looks and manner — brought back
the abandoned hope. Evidently, from the nature of their greet-
ing, she and the captain were old and tried friends. Moreover,
as good luck would have it, the dejeuner had been ordered by
special messenger the day before, and did not, as was usually
the case, have to be gathered together at the last moment, then
wait for the charcoal to be bought, and the fire to be made be-
fore the cooking could begin.

The announcement that the meal was served brought Mr.
Shaler to the foot of a staircase narrow and steep as a ladder,

234 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

which he nimbly mounted. At the top was a large unplastered
timber-roofed hall with windows opening on a fine fertile coun-
try. The potage a la printaniere, the capon roasted to perfec-
tion, the green peas and asparagus fresh and succulent, the
newly made butter, and bread that had been baked in an oven
that admitted of no sogginess, constituted a repast that proved
the captain to be a man not given to false promises. Excellent
claret added to the feast, and finally a bottle of champagne,
native to the region, exhilarated the spirits. This last was of so
fine a quality that later, thanks to Mr. Marcou, a liberal supply
was brought to America. Mr. Shaler got his share, and when it
came upon the table it always reminded him of that ideal day
and its breakfast, of Captain B.'s jolly company, and not the
least of the beautiful Franche-Comte*. He loved to revive old
memories and a pleasant experience was not to be dismissed
with one telling, so that guests who drank the champagne often
listened to the twice-told tale. If old wine is good they were
convinced that, as Mr. Shaler told it, an old story is better.

There was one walk to which he often reverted, and this was
through a part of the Rhone valley leading to Zermatt. The
moon was still in the heavens when the early morning start was
made. There were no impedimenta to drag the steps, only
alpenstocks and a knapsack holding the day's provisions.
Exhilarated by the pure air, for a while the body was indiffer-
ent to time and space and the feet carelessly trod the way to the
great and mystic Matterhorn. But the east gradually bright-
ened and the sun sent its hot rays down through the thick
branches across the road that till then had been dark and cool.
And at last, as the day progressed, the usual feud between
body and soul, which for a time had been suspended, set in,
and hunger and fatigue became the imperious facts in all
nature. Sitting by the roadside, beneath the shade of a great
tree, Mr. Shaler emptied the knapsack of its contents — black
bread, tough cheese, and sour wine. " Oh," he exclaimed, in the
impatient accent that an empty stomach gives, " I would swap

A HAPPY VALLEY 235

the Alps for a gallon of buttermilk and a pone of Margaret's
corn bread. Out upon Brillat-Savarin, even though born at
Belley! If the wine were better I would drink to the whole
race of darkey cooks, now and forever." Humiliated by this
animal outbreak, the travellers were inclined to beg the great
monarch in the distance to forgive the lese majeste, and finally,
with the sense that carnal thoughts, though bound up with the
remembrance of home, had taken the bloom off the rose, the
line of march was resumed in a happy though less exalted
state of mind.

In his wanderings through the Jura a discovery was made
which gave Mr. Shaler almost as much pleasure as some of the
facts that he gained of his science. Without reference to other
considerations he chose the village of X. as a convenient point
of departure for geological excursions, notwithstanding the
railway had left the village rather wide of the travellers' mark.
But a good hotel, reduced to the pension stage of existence,
offered comfortable entertainment. Moreover, there was no
crowd, no noise, no confusion ; bees hummed about the flowers,
the cattle grazed peacefully on the mountain-slopes, and the
church clock sounded the hours with silvery tongue, though it
must be confessed it grew hoarse under the stress of announcing
the twenty-fourth hour. It was a happy valley, overflowing
with milk and honey. After a week spent at this restful spot,
forsaking the diligence, we entered the train that was to trans-
port us to other regions. In the same compartment there
chanced to be a young English couple who, seeing Mr. Shaler
from time to time consult his map, ventured to question him
about the country. They seemed to be wandering about in a
maze without ultimate point of destination ; but the fact, which
with flaunting nonchalance they endeavored to conceal, that
they were bride and bridegroom, enlightened him as to their ro-
mantic needs. So immediately with his irresistible enthusiasm
he described the charms of the deserted village of X., although
he had to admit it was a trifle stagnant; still at this happy

236 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

epoch in the young people's lives presumably the stream of
time itself might stop. When the tale was told it was evident
that in their hearts the young couple were already booked for
X. Some months after, one day while walking down the Rue
de Rivoli in Paris, Mr. Shaler was accosted by two strangers,
who explained that they had instantly recognized him as their
fellow traveller. "We had a lovely time at X.," said the young
wife, "and we sent some friends and they sent their friends;
and so, on the strength of your recommendation, the little vil-
lage has become a regular resort for brides and bridegrooms."
And she added naively, " I suppose you did n't know when we
met you that we were on our wedding journey."

From Switzerland to Italy was the natural transition. Mr.
Shaler first saw Rome when the Pope was still unbereft of his
temporal power — the old, dirty, picturesque Rome, shrunken
within its ancient walls. Rome was never again the same home
of the spirit to him; the ancient city smothered in the new,
transformed and cheaply modernized, the street-cars bumping
and screeching along the ways which to his youthful imagina-
tion had, so, to speak, been profanely sacred, grew to be posi-
tively distasteful. He liked, however, to tramp beyond the city
walls out on the Campagna, where he felt as light and free, as
swift-footed, as though the wings of Mercury speeded his way.
He was also at that time and during later visits to Italy su-
premely happy in his excursions to the small neighboring towns,
where, in addition to Nature's gentle doings, he was sure to
find a beautiful church, a famous picture, or a rare specimen
of the silversmith's art, — beauties which he could enjoy at his
leisure without the din of comment of hurried travellers. At the
simple inn, too, he rarely failed of good and racy company to
share with him his dinner — a jolly priest, or some sensitive
crowd-detesting wanderer like himself. Ever ready to be a
brother to all worthy souls, frank, guileless, and fearless, he
got much of generous giving, in the way of good fellowship, from
these passing comrades.

ITALY AND PARIS 237

At Vicenza the door of the hotel stood wide open and when
we entered its halls were deserted. After waiting a while in
its spacious vacancy, an old servant doing his leisurely rounds,
surprised at the sight of visitors, disappeared somewhere into
the echoing distance, and later emerged with the sorrowful-
eyed master. His welcome of the guests was more like that of
a sad and impoverished host than of a money-making keeper
of a tavern. While waiting for the precarious getting together
of dinner, he offered to show the attractions of the town. Mr.
Shaler's sensitive appreciation of Palladio's work — the glory
of Vicenza — warmed the Italian's poor old heart and in the
waning sunlight he showed one after another of that architect's
beautiful palaces. After this he led the way to the outskirts of
the town, that a particular view might be had, which, for beauty,
sadness, and suggestiveness of fading glory, Mr. Shaler often
spoke of as one of the most impressive he remembered ever to
have seen.

At Naples of course Vesuvius was the great attraction, and
almost at the risk of his life he looked down into the crater,
sending forth at the time lava, stones, and ashes. So intensely
interested was he in what was going on that it required all the
strength of his guide to drag him away at a critical moment
when the danger obvious to the guide was unsuspected by the
enthusiastic student. But his true volcanic spree was in the
classic Auvergne region of France, where, by driving, walking,
and almost climbing on his knees, like the devout pilgrims, to
the Puy du Dome and Puy de Parion, he studied the phenomena
of extinct volcanoes in all their details.

In the late winter of 1867 Mr. Shaler returned to Paris. He
was never over smitten with the French Capital. Indeed he
liked Frenchmen none too well, and least of all their self-
constituted ruler Napoleon III, who at that time was at the
height of his meretricious glory. He revolted at the forced uni-
formity of the city that Baron Haussmann had brought about ;
such imposed regularity was perhaps admissible in an American

238 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

town, planned and executed in a day, but deliberately to wipe
out the impress of the slow evolution of centuries was to his
sequence-tracing mind an unpardonable sin. He gained, how-
ever, from the picture-galleries, the School of Mines, and the
natural history collections much pleasure and profit. At the
Jardin des Plantes he attended the lectures given by some of
the most distinguished scientific men of the day. He of ten spoke
of the small and inferior quality of the audiences, and of the
perfunctory manner of some of the lecturers. His attention
was not infrequently diverted by an old soldier who came at
regular intervals apparently for no other purpose than to have
his epileptic fit in a safe place. Another old man, whose blear
eyes denoted the previous night's debauch, dropped in several
times a week to refresh himself with a nap ; and now and then
a nurse-maid brought her baby in to profit by the warmth found
beneath the academic roof. As for the alert and intelligent
listeners that lecturers of equal eminence are wont to attract
in America, they were not manifest.

In Germany Mr. Shaler was more at home. His knowledge
of the language and literature of the country brought him into
sympathetic relation with the people, and instead of search-
ing for national differences, as in France, he was intent upon
detecting points of resemblance in the Anglo-Saxon and
Teutonic character. But when it was a question of manual
dexterity so conspicuous in his own country, he was driven to
the verge of despair. At Dresden he endeavored to have con-
structed the model of an invention for the ventilation of hos-
pitals. The clumsy affair, when finished, was sent to Dr. Evans
(the American dentist), who hoped to be able to introduce it in
the hospitals of Paris. The effort finally languished, and Mr.
Shaler himself in the course of time forgot all about it.

While at the Saxon Capital he was induced to enter a water-
cure establishment, where he was led to believe he would get
rid of his old enemy, malaria. The heroic treatment peculiar
to the place was supervised by an able though uneducated

WATER CURE AT DRESDEN 239

physician, the Herr Naturheilkundigenrath, a follower of the
celebrated Priessnitz of Grafenberg, who as a penalty for prac-
tising without a diploma was obliged to spend a couple of
months each year in prison. Owing, however, to his probity of
character and real success as a practitioner, he was allowed to
take his punishment in instalments, and at times of his own
choosing. It was a conviction in the establishment that his
exile from it was coincident with Frau M.'s outbursts of temper ;
when these attacks threatened to last longer than usual it was
observed that the doctor would coolly collect his books and
other effects, and with placid countenance turn his back upon
the scene of turmoil. The patients sometimes wished they might
do the same, for when the kind-hearted, but quick-tempered
and garrulous Hausfrau once allowed her tongue full swing,
it was enough to drive the most devoted bather and follower
of the "new diet" back to the unclean world of savory dishes.
Under her dispensation the "dry days" especially were the
hardest to bear, for eating (it was impossible to drink it) a thick
pea soup, with salt for its only condiment, and stale bread for
its only accompaniment, without water, beer, or other fluid to
quench the raging thirst, reduced even the stalwart Prussian
officers undergoing treatment to a nerveless band of resentful
invalids. For moral support during these desiccated days,
the patient had to depend upon the theory that the diet which
produced the discomfort caused the viscous mucous coating of
the inner parts of the body to be absorbed and thus to purify
the system. These same Prussian officers whose haughtiness
waned only on Tauchen Tagen held themselves aloof from
their dyspeptic countrymen as well as from the Americans; but,
unable to keep their ears closed to Mr. Shaler's entertaining
talk at table, they learned that he was acquainted with the art
of war and inferred that he was or had been a soldier. When
the inference had ripened into a conviction, one day after din-
ner the chief of the party, bowing profoundly, asked if he was
right in supposing that Herr Shaler had worn a sword. The

240 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

affirmative answer led to good-natured reproaches that he had
not at once made known his distinction. The bond of brother-
hood was immediately established and there followed an
effusive recognition by all the other dazzling sons of Mars of
his belonging to a superior order of being.

Among other agreeable acquaintances made at this primitive,
homelike sanitarium was that of a Cuban, who, on the first day
of his arrival, presented himself at the door and announced
that he had been a student at the Lawrence Scientific School
and had come forthwith to welcome with open arms the teacher
from Cambridge. He was a distinguished-looking and cultivated
gentleman, a great lover of music, and at Vienna, where he
finished his engineering education, he had the entree of the
most exclusive houses. Since he lived in the " Annex " which we
occupied, we saw much of him, and, previously bored almost
to death, we now had Seiior N. for our guide, philosopher, and
friend, who made known to us the resources of Dresden, the
best places to hear music and the plays best worth seeing. Going
to the theatre in those days could scarcely be called a dissipa-
tion, since the performance began at six and generally ended
before ten ; if, however, there was any delay the patients were
sore put to it to get back before the gates of the establishment
were irrevocably locked. In the effort to reach the goal Mr.
Shaler always came out ahead of his companions and until the
belated sprinters caught up, he with one yarn and another ca-
joled the custodian to postpone the final turn of the key. Since
one of the party was not a patient and therefore not bound
by the rules of the house, it was her province to have ready
as a fit ending to the evening's diversions a modest repast, and
no feast, however delicious, was ever more enjoyed than the
few delicacies that were smuggled in as an offset to the peculiar
dietary prescribed by the Herr Doctor. Many years after these
light-hearted escapades, if such they could be called, Mr. Shaler
endeavored to look up Senor N. when in Cuba. He drove to his
father's once-flourishing plantation to find there neglect and

CONCERTS AT DRESDEN 241

ruin: the doors of the spacious old homestead swinging loose
on their hinges; the shutters falling from the windows. In the
stress of war the family, broken in fortune, had gone back to
Spain. His former comrade was dead.

For the first time during this winter Mr. Shaler had the op-
portunity to hear fine music almost daily; he had a sensitive
ear and often wished he had time to practise composition in
order that he might give expression to the themes constantly
floating in his head. The concerts given in the Zoological Gar-
den were a source of delight to him. He liked the friendly
German fashion of sitting at a table and between the pauses of
the music talking over a cup of coffee with a genial friend.
This custom, he said, took the strain off the attention and
enabled one to avoid the mental dyspepsia which came from
swallowing a whole concert at one gulp. Furthermore he was
taught to associate good music with pecuniary profit: Frau
M. — and she was excellent authority — insisted that the
saving at home in light and fuel and sharing the cost of supper
with a sociable friend made the afternoon concert an actual
economy. He enjoyed watching the family life that adjourned
to the Music Hall, the knitting and darning that went on among
the women, and the ever-sympathetic dog who barked in unison
with his master's clapping of hands — this well-to-do, self-
respecting master who wore a fur-lined coat, a symbol of luxury,
and caressed it just a little when he laid it on the back of his
chair, fur side out. Indeed he was enamored in those happy
days of the simple, kindly German folk.

Among the scientific men of Dresden he saw something of
Guinitz, and attended the meeting of the Isis Society for the
promotion of natural history. It was also the first time he
had ever been able to study a large number of animals in close
confinement. The well-managed Zoological Garden inspired
him with the desire to see something similar established at
Cambridge, and with this end in view he often conferred with
the director concerning the running of such an institution.

242 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

The following letter written to his parents shows how well
pleased he was with Dresden.

DRESDEN, SAXONY, Dec. 31st, 1867.

. . . We both of us enter the New Year in better health than for a long
time. Personally I am, despite bad weather, in better shape than I have
ever been at this season within my memory. Stomach nearly right, no
rheumatism or any other bodily ill. I should like to remain in this insti-
tution for a month to come, and would do so but that on account of the
continued incapacity of the director [he was serving his time in jail] to
superintend the work things are getting somewhat out of gear with the ad-
ministration. On that account I expect to be again in motion within a fort-
night, first to Freiberg and then to Berlin. There we will remain perhaps a
fortnight before taking up our march for Paris via Brussels. We hope to
get into England by the middle of March or first of April and to be on the
ocean in the first days of June. ... I am tolerably confident that by the
continued use of water treatment I could safely make a lengthened visit
to Kentucky. However it would be very much more agreeable for you all
to come to us. So arrange your minds for the trip. I wish you could get
the courage to come over to us in May and spend the summer in Europe.
Epes Dixwell made the trip last summer, had a good time, and was back in

season for his school. ... I am very glad to hear of 's improvement,

but sorry to hear of his trying to study law; it is, as practised with us, a
loafing, dishonorable profession in the majority of cases and success of any
kind demands either high and brilliant talent or knavery of every descrip-
tion. I would rather see him raising garden vegetables, a thousand times
more profitable and honorable a calling. I am sorry to see by the American
papers that business is in bad order in the U.S. We may have some years
of depression as a reaction arising from the febrile condition during the war.
I am afraid the radical members of the Republican Party have killed it
beyond hope of revival ; no party can carry the load of negro suffrage and
white disfranchisement. The second stage of abolition will, I fear, soon
begin. The first was the abolition of slavery, the next will be abolition of
the negro, unhappy race!

Winter is fairly upon us, and, from the sample we have already had, pro-
mises to be severe for this climate. For about a week the thermometer has
been nearly to zero every morning ; although about 14° farther north than
Cincinnati we have here less severe winters than you often have. It is nearly
always cloudy, and as the sun does not rise until about half-past eight
and sets about half-past three there is scant daylight. What it fails in day-
light and sunshine it takes out in blowing, a half gale being a slow pace

THE FREIBERG MINING SCHOOL 243

with the Dresden wind. I have nevertheless never seen a more agreeable
place to live in than this, artificial advantages going very far to compensate
for natural inconveniences. I heartily wish German immigration could be
made in bulk and this old town brought to our continent.

At Freiberg, while endeavoring to acquaint himself with the
methods of the Mining School, Mr. Shaler descended the deeply
driven shaft and took a hand at the manual labor of the work-
men. In that rich field of instruction the mineral ores were
numerous, silver, nickel, cobalt, zinc, and arsenic. Often, when
speaking of his stay at Freiberg, he mentioned the fact that
many of the miners had the ends of their fingers eaten off as a
consequence of handling arsenic, and, in some instances, their
noses were also reduced in size ; otherwise they were a healthy-
looking lot of men. But along with the practical side of the
School were involved other associations of an equally interest-
ing nature. Freiberg had been the home of Abraham Gottlob
Werner, the famous geologist and teacher, whose genius had
raised the Mining School from a local seminary to a great acad-
emy or university. The remarkable personal charm of this
man as handed down by tradition, his enthusiasm as a teacher,
his affection for his pupils and his vast influence over them,
could not fail to appeal to a person of Mr. Shaler's generous
nature ; but while he himself likewise had the capacity to invest
dry subjects with interest and awaken zeal on the part of
students, his success in teaching was unattended by dogmatic
preachments, such as are associated with the Freiberg professor.

While at Freiberg he made the acquaintance of Von Cotta,
the well-known geologist. He was also courteously received by
other professors. At one house where he was invited to supper
he arrived at the designated hour, but finding no one ready to
receive him, and supposing he had mistaken the day, was on the
eve of leaving, when the Frau Professorin appeared full of
apologies for her belated welcome. "As you have noticed/' she
said, "the weather has suddenly turned warm, and having a lot
of pork in the house I was examining it with the microscope

244 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

before salting it down. I have just finished the job." The pro-
fessor himself soon added his welcome to hers, and, shortly after,
we took our seats at the table, where, among other viands,
some nice-looking slices of cold pork were partaken of with a
degree of relish and confidence never before evoked by the
flesh of the swine. It was soon evident that the good hostess
was not only an excellent housewife but a most intelligent
woman; and, later, when the daughters, who had served at
table, played and sang, Mr. Shaler was charmed with the happy
combination of the useful and the aesthetic that this simple
German household represented. Before going, however, his
gravity was somewhat taxed when his wife was asked by one
of the ladies if she had ever seen a sewing-machine, and although
she answered in the affirmative, the strangers were conducted
by devious ways to a long gallery where a huge apparatus, ap-
parently intended to be run by horse-power, stood against the
wall. It had been constructed, as Frau Professorin proudly
announced, by a local craftsman, and when she further stated
that she and her daughters had much pleasure in using it, Mr.
Shaler's respect for her physical strength was only equalled
by his admiration of her other qualities. Truly the machine
was a wonder, if not a delight, to the natives of a land where
mechanical contrivances as a rule demonstrate the theory that
efficiency and beauty largely consist in the purgation of the
superfluous.

The principal German cities and many out-of-the-way places
were journeyed to at this time — among the latter the visit he
paid to Boll in Wtirttemberg lingered vividly in his mind. It was
here that he afterwards affirmed that he saw the progress of
miracles from the simple origin to the inexplicable mystery. It
was not, however, the search for the supernatural that brought
him to this neighborhood ; he came for the purpose of collecting
fossils in a region famous for ichthyosauri and ammonites.
On the day of arrival at the hotel to which he was directed,
while registering his name, he was asked his profession. " Geo-

A FAITH-CURE HOTEL 245

log," was the reply, and not long after he was introduced to
Father Blumhardt, the presiding genius of the place. At the
early supper he was placed at his right hand and otherwise
treated as one worthy to be his brother. The meal was pre-
ceded by a chapter from the Bible read by a young acolyte,
followed by prayer and song. The next morning at breakfast the
same procedure was gone through with, all of which took a good
deal of time; moreover the company seemed to be made up
chiefly of the halt and the blind. At the early dinner, to shorten
the time spent at table Mr. Shaler concluded to evade the for-
midable preamble, likewise the closing exercises. The day was
slipping away and as yet he had done no geologizing. There-
fore, although it was Sunday, he determined to venture forth ;
since, however, the sentiment of the place seemed to be strictly
religious, he and his wife secreted his hammer and bag for
specimens and started off in the direction of an interesting
locality toward which his thoughts had been travelling for
many months. On his return tired and heavily laden with his
treasures, he was obliged to confront his fellow pensionnaires
assembled on the front verandah. Curiosity was aroused as to
the nature of his burden, and when it was found to consist
of rocks it flashed upon the inquirers that after all the stranger
was a geolog, not a theolog as the clerk's mistake had led
them to suppose. The consequence of the discovery was a
considerable lowering of Mr. Shaler's dignity in the eyes of the
public ; he was in a measure obliterated, shifted down to near
the foot of the table instead of feasting as before under the eyes
of the master. He in his turn likewise received light, and now
for the first time saw more clearly into the nature of his sur-
roundings: the place was a high seat of the faith cure and
Father Blumhardt was its prophet. On Mr. Shaler's left sat a
youth whose eyes were so badly injured as to make it painful to
look at him. He was praying daily for a miracle to be performed.
Near by was a woman whose hip was out of joint : she too was
waiting to develop the faith that makes whole. A sprained

246 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

ankle which would doubtless have got well of itself in a day
or two, and which recovered as quickly under the influence of
prayer, was soon magnified until it was a broken limb which
had healed under the miraculous touch of the inspired Blum-
hardt. The morning he was to depart, Mr. Shaler strayed into
the little chapel and there he saw in front of the chancel Father
Blumhardt, a transfigured being, standing grandly erect, his
face lit up with the light of heaven; and the prayer that fell
from his lips for unfaltering confidence and beseeching power
Mr. Shaler always said was the most tremendous he had ever
heard. Suddenly the priest stopped and took from the arms
of a peasant woman, kneeling in front of him, her child, lame
and sick unto death. He breathed upon it, and then went on
with his invocation, asking as only a believing soul could ask,
for its recovery. At last he bowed his head, gave the child
back to its mother, and she with perfect faith set it upon its
feet; and hand in hand the two walked out into the sunlight;
the miracle (for the time being at least) had been performed.

CHAPTER XVIII

TEACHING AND EXPLORING

1869-1873

IN the interval between his return from Europe and his next
journey abroad, Mr. Shaler devoted himself to teaching, to
Museum affairs, to investigations for the United States Geo-
logical Survey and the Coast Survey ; work which ranged from
the shores of Maine to Florida. In the summer of 1869 he ac-
companied Professor Winlock, Mr. Charles Peirce, and other
astronomers and physicists to Shelbyville, Kentucky, to ob-
serve the sun's eclipse. He used to say that this was a profitable
event for at least a part of the community, since he was called
upon in the interest of his friends to negotiate for a good many
gallons of Bourbon whiskey to be shipped East as a sort of
trail to the expedition.

From a scientific point of view one of the most interesting
episodes of this time was the unearthing of the fossil remains
of elephants at Big Bone Lick. Mr. Shaler was anxious to ac-
quire these specimens for the Museum, and with this end in
view he tried to get its friends to subscribe money for carry-
ing on the excavations. But while the treasurer earnestly
desired to enrich the Museum by these possessions, money was
short. Finally the owner of the thirty acres of bones gave
Mr. Shaler permission to dig at pleasure. One of the tusks
unearthed was eleven feet long on the curve. It may be men-
tioned here that these bones, which at first could find no pur-
chasers, were later sold by the pound. Mr. Shaler told some
amusing stories of the "natives" who sat on the periphery of
the excavations silently watching all that was going on. One
in particular referred to an old man who had been constant in

248 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

attendance. At last one day when the fragments of a huge ele-
phant were dug out, he exclaimed, "That knocks Moses/' and,
in a disgusted frame of mind, walked away, never to return.
In a letter to Agassiz, dated Cambridge, July 6, 1868, Mr.
Shaler sets forth his plan of work at the Museum. Some ex-
tracts from this letter will show the general trend of his thought
at an early period in regard to teaching. He writes : -

. . . That I may the better explain the objects I shall have in view
during my connection with the Museum in the years to come, I will con-
sider the work as divided into two parts which need be described separately.
The first relates to the teaching which I shall undertake to do. The second
to the work of carrying forward the arrangement of the collection of fossils.

In setting before me a plan for my work in the first of these lines I have
been guided by the desire to do all in my power to render apparent to the
public generally, and especially to the authorities of Massachusetts, to whom
we owe so much, the eminent value of natural history as a branch of a general
education, and the extent to which our Museum, by the organization and
its resources, is capable of effecting the dissemination of sound knowledge
of this science. . . There are two subsidiary means of giving value to
our labor which seem to me to promise good results. The first is to organize
lectures of such a character as the people may comprehend, to be given
on Sundays, Saturday afternoons, or some such hours as would admit the
presence of the laboring public; further than this, short excursions from
Boston, on Sundays, if public opinion would permit, open, with certain
restrictions, to the public. The other plan is to begin the formation of
type collections of specimens intended to illustrate descriptive catalogues,
in the form of text-books if it should be considered desirable. . . .

I see my way more clearly in all that regards the strictly scientific
teaching. This should be divided into lecture teaching, which must be a
process of imparting knowledge, and field teaching, which shall be so ar-
ranged as to train observation. ... I expect to give two courses of lectures
each year belonging to this plan, of about twenty lectures each. I shall
avoid a textbook arrangement of the matter by the effort to embody some
one object in each course. Thus the first course on geology shall be so
arranged as to give preeminence to the greatest phenomenon in the history
of our earth's surface, viz. the formation of the continents with the attend-
ant differentiations of the sea-basins. Without excluding the ordinary
matter of geological lectures, I expect to group my facts so that the great
scheme of land and sea can be watched in its development and studied in its

WORK ON THE COAST SURVEY 249

adult state. I need not say that it will be impossible to do a great deal with
this subject in the present state of our science ; but I hope to learn myself
and teach my hearers that questions admitting of no great amount of accu-
rate determination may still be studied with profit. In the same way I hope
to make the course on paleontology serve to impress upon the student the
feeling which I have acquired from your teachings and which I value above
any other intellectual result : that there is an intelligence guiding the changes
of nature and that the surest way to assimilate ourselves to this great guide
is by patiently seeking to comprehend the things about us. With this view
the leading thought of the lectures on paleontology will be the evidences of
an intellectual plan in the history of the animal kingdom. . . .

During 1870 Mr. Shaler worked on the Quincy and Nahant
sheet for the United States Coast Survey, and from this time
on, covering a period of many years, he was continuously em-
ployed in its service ; his connection with it was very close and
twice he was offered the directorship, which he declined. Mr.
Cleveland was almost indignant with him for refusing the
office. Mr. Shaler, however, had an intense dislike to the politi-
cal side of government employment. The diplomacy, verging
toward intrigue, which often seemed necessary to secure appro-
priations as well as to maintain oneself against rival claimants
was repugnant to his temper of mind. He preferred the stability
of tenure at Harvard and the non-interference which character-
izes the administration of that university. And yet, notwith-
standing his unwillingness to become the director of a National
Survey, he took an active part in furthering the organization
of Government Surveys, as is shown in the following letter.

May 20th, 1870.

THE HON. SIB RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, BART.,

President of the Royal Geological Society, etc., etc.
Sir: — The American Social Science Associations are endeavoring to urge
upon the people of the United States the importance of a National Survey
with the hope of securing from the Federal Congress the necessary legisla-
tion for the organization of a thorough Geodetic and Geological Survey
together with a careful study of the ethnology and natural history of the
region traversed. The society proposes to have a paper on the value of
such surveys printed and widely distributed among our people. Knowing

250 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

the influence of your name in our country, they have deputized me to write
to you, begging that you will favor them with your written opinion of the
value of such surveys in the development of national resources and in the
furtherance of scientific investigation, and allow them to print and circulate
the same with the aforesaid report.

Trusting that you will pardon this trespass upon your patience,
I have the honor to remain,

Your most obedient servant,

N. S. SHALER.

Although Mr. Shaler had for some time (having received his
appointment in 1868) been discharging the duties of professor
of paleontology, there seems still to have been difficulty in
finding room for his classes. During his forty years of teach-
ing his classes migrated from one lecture-hall to another in
quest of space and air. His largest class, Geology 4, after various
wanderings found a resting-place for some time in Sanders
Theatre, and finally in the large lecture-room at the Museum.
Some of the letters written by Professor Agassiz at this period
throw light on Museum affairs, and also show that he was in-
terested in securing accommodations for Mr. Shaler's students.

March 30, 1870 [?].

Dear Sir: — I shall do everything that can be done to accommodate as
large classes of working students as are likely to be brought together. There
need be no delay about it, as our new building is up and I am willing to fit
out for the purpose any part that will answer. But the thing must be done
by the administration of the Museum and not by that of the College.
Ever truly yours, L. AGASSIZ.

June 8th, 1870.

My dear Shaler: — I cannot let you or the Museum alone as long as I
live. Remember that the central part of the new building might have been
spoiled but for my interference; as long as I breathe I mean to look after
everything. It is my nature never to give up.

Ever truly yours, L. AGASSIZ.

My dear Sir: ... I have too much to say concerning your letter of
yesterday to do it in writing. I would only request you now to see the

THE SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL CLASSES 251

President and urge upon him the necessity of connecting with Harvard at
any price all the men in the country who will give character to American
culture in letters and science during the present generation. Unless we do
this no plan for organization or combination will avail. ... I know that
unless the University follows at the rate at which the Museum advances, the
Museum must stop or be separated from the University, which would be
a lamentable result. And now tell Lyman that it is of paramount importance
to press on the building of the Museum, since you can have no fitting accom-
modation for the students before our addition is completed. I shall write
to him also. Until that is done I do not see how we could receive the speci-
mens of the Harvard Natural History Society, — unless they are willing to
have them boxed up and stored in one of our sheds until next winter.
Yours truly, L. AGASSIZ.

Nov. 29, 1871.

Dear Mr. Shaler: ... If I were to surrender that room to students' work
the Museum would suffer materially. . . . You will remember that when
I told you I could only give up one room for students' work, it was because
the Museum assistants should be provided for ; but only two were provided
for and the others are to this day entirely without proper accommodations.
I must therefore leave you for this year where you are. But be assured that
I will make every proper exertion for the accommodation of your students.
Ever truly yours, L. AGASSIZ.

In 1872, among other undertakings, Mr. Shaler worked up
the geology of the Sea Island district, and having an excellent
opportunity to do so made a close study of the Sea Island
negroes, who, because of their isolated life on the plantations
there, showed, in his opinion, more plainly than any others
the natural bent of the race. Many of his letters written during
these geological wanderings, although they seldom allude to his
scientific work, are so thoroughly characteristic that it seems
worth while to give extracts from them.

OAK BLUFFS, MARTHA'S VINEYARD, June 29th, 1872.

... If it were of any use I could swear once again that the next time
I had to travel you and the little ones should go along with me. The day
has been hot, and, except the sea ride, quite uncomfortable. Oak Bluffs

252 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

is a mushroom town without any oaks, except some scrubs, and little in
the way of bluffs except what one gets from the super-christianized people.
White pine in the shape of gothic shanties is the only forest growth I have
yet found. One is shockingly reminded of the surroundings of a race-track
rather than a camp-meeting. The place is not altogether bad. There are
some hundreds of little box-like houses of a queer and profane architecture
occupied by people of the middle classes or waiting for some one of that
class to buy them. These little dabs of dwellings, about as big as boarding-
house slices of mince pie, are scattered around through the thick-set copse
of oaks! (save the mark) which are not high enough to hide their ten-foot
eaves. There is no visible kitchen to them, nor any outward means of exist-
ence unless they live on acorns or are fed by the woodchucks or the emaci-
ated crows, which look old enough to have performed the work for the Syrian
hermit some centuries ago.

The only substantial and satisfactory thing here is the sea that seems the
greater for the weak things on its shore. It is as quiet as a baby to-night,
but it looks as if it might claim this sand-heap as its plaything again some
day and so make an end of it. The only place to behold the sea is from an
island: the mainland seems too steadfast, a boat is too familiar, besides
uncomfortable and makes a bitter end of sentiment; but here you are
hemmed in by immensity, feeling like Jonah when the whale opened for
him. A change of air always excites me ; my young companion has gone to
bed overpowered by emotions of a composite kind : affected almost to tears
by the grandeur of the sea and the size of his supper. I hear his melancholy
snore through the double coat of whitewash and wall-paper which form the
wall of my room. I have no one to talk to and only a smoky coal-oil lamp
for light, so I must try to sleep it off ; I am obliged to the glacial period for
having made my work at this end of the island quite simple. I go to-morrow
or Monday to Tisbury, when I shall write again.

S. W. HARBOR, Sept. 13, 1872.

. . . Should it continue stormy to-morrow I shall not take the steamer
but go by stage to Bangor and then by rail to Eastport, even though it take
me another day. Safety is sometimes better than speed. I dined, or supped,
as one has a mind to call it, this evening with Mr. and his wife, Balti-
more people and very pleasant. The officers have a life of dull routine, but
they seem to have their hearts in it. So far the journey has been only moder-
ately profitable. I fear that I am not fresh enough to see to the best advan-
tage. There is not a bit of holiday spirit in the business. I want to get home
and merely work because I am here for that. The Mount-Deserters are a
hard set, almost as poor as Carolinians. They have a better excuse, however;

GEOLOGICAL WANDERINGS 253

on some tracts of a thousand acres there is not enough soil to hide the naked-
ness of a single acre. Bleak bare rocks channelled with all sorts of ugly
scars of ice.

SOUTHWEST HARBOR, MOUNT DESERT, Thursday evening.

... I came to-day from Sedgwick, first by carriage six miles, then by
fishing boat eight, then by carriage again eight to this place, saving thereby
nearly two days of time. To-morrow and Saturday morning I hope to finish
my work here and leave that noon for Machias, which lies about twenty miles
from Eastport. Sunday I shall, if all goes well, cross that distance, and if
nothing goes awry, get home on Tuesday morning. The mountains here
have been wrapped in clouds nearly all day. They have fine, strong outlines,
though too bleak to be beautiful. The deep inlets and lakes of the island give
it a peculiar beauty. After all I am inclined to think it the most beautiful
part of our shore. My ride to-day has been lonesome enough ; a drizzling
rain is not good company, and one tires of the unending march.

EASTPORT, MAINE, Sept. 15.

... I have kept up well under food at all hours and all fashions ; dined
to-day off of potatoes and pie. Within twenty-four hours have travelled in
two rowboats, one sailboat, one steamboat, one express- wagon, one buggy,
besides multitudinous goings afoot with baggage and without. Eastport has
burned down and been built up since I was here : the people I knew have died
save one old man, who I dare say has forgotten me. Eleven years brings its
changes. Of our Anticosti expedition three of the six, and the most strong,
are gone.

The town is pretty, but a dreadful fog hole. It has, however, become a
place of summer resort. We are getting thickly crowded when the world comes
to this land of eclipse for summer. I fear I shall soon be bored with geology
if it keeps me away from you and your chickens.

About this time Mr. Shaler also undertook several scientific
expeditions of a more or less private nature. One of these was
a journey with nine students, his family, and two men servants,
as far south as the White Sulphur Springs of Virginia. The party
started in wagons from Mr. Shaler's door in Cambridge, driving
or walking by day and sleeping in tents at night. He did not
urge the students to walk more than ten miles a day ; for, when
this limit is exceeded, he said, "your soul goes to your shoes
and you have not nervous force enough left to be keenly appre-
ciative of that which passes around you."

254 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

One preliminary difficulty was found in securing a cook who
could do his work by an open fire. The throng who applied in
answer to an advertisement was composed, as he described
them, of "broken-down actors, decayed gentlemen, ruffianly-
looking foreigners of mixed nationalities, and sickly Irish boys."
Since none of these could prove their efficiency, it was necessary
to send to Virginia. " George proved to be as worthy a fel-
low as ever turned a flapjack and fed our eager appetites with
commendable patience." For some time before the departure,
a number of horses bought by Mr. Shaler for the occasion (he
had a true eye for the points of a horse, and could make an
instantaneous decision as to an animal's merits — a few tricks
more or less, and the ingredient known as "ginger," were to
him unobjectionable features) were mustered in his yard on
Bow Street, now the site of Westmorly Hall, where, having full
range, their horseplay attracted all the small boys in the neigh-
borhood as well as many adults, who hung like a fringe about
the fence stimulating in every possible way the circus-like
antics of the animals, soon to be brought down to hard work.

The experiences and results of this journey are given in a
series of articles published in the Atlantic Monthly. This was
Mr. Shaler's first literary venture of any importance and at
once the felicity of his style was recognized. From this time
on, writing upon one subject or another was an almost daily
occupation with him, becoming at last, so to speak, a second
nature.

CHAPTER XIX

ENGLAND

1872-1873

His health again failing him, Mr. Shaler embarked on the
Siberia for England, and reached Liverpool December 4, 1872.
The passage was exceedingly stormy. The ship, heavily laden
with grain, listed, and at times when she went over on her
beam-ends, it seemed as if she would never again right herself.
The lifeboats, the captain's bridge, and the bulwarks were all
swept away; everything in fact that could be rent asunder by
the huge waves parted company from the stanch hull. A num-
ber of the crew were washed overboard and others seriously
injured. Mr. Shaler, whose nature always moved him to give
aid and comfort to others at trying times, was lying prostrate,
so ill that he could take for nourishment only a few table-
spoonfuls of champagne. Dr. Maurice Richardson of Boston,
then a young man whose laurels were still in the bud, happily
was a fellow passenger, and in the forlorn state of affairs helped
to take care of the baby ; while the captain, a surly old sea-dog
in fair weather, came often during the day and night to give
courage by his presence and also to make the dreary travellers
laugh at his marvellous feats of ventriloquism; but when the
sky cleared, he withdrew into his crusty shell and once more
became the brusque disciplinarian.

At Malvern Mr. Shaler soon got well enough to enjoy geolo-
gical tramps, and to study, particularly, the black shales and
holly-bush sandstones of that region. Dr. Grindrod's geological
collection and his personal guidance were of great service to
him. There are letters which show that he was also at his old
business of instructing boys, taking the sons of friends to see the

256 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

doctor's collection as well as to interesting geological localities.
He often spoke of his effort at this time to find the Rev. Mr.
Simons, a cultivated gentleman and a geologist, to whom he had

been warmly commended. Arriving at A , he set out for the

parsonage, asking directions of the various country people he
happened to meet, none of whom, however, seemed to have
the slightest idea where their parson dwelt. At last two yokels
more conscientious than the others stopped to think, and after
a while one of them, receiving a ray of light, looked inquiringly
at the other and exclaimed : " Why, man, he must mean the
Squarson." Mystified as to who or what the " Squarson" was,
Mr. Shaler nevertheless followed the course his finger pointed,
and soon learned from Mr. Simons himself that, since he was
both squire and parson, the natives, with verbal thrift, merged
the titles. During his stay with this squire-parson, Mr. Shaler
was charmed with the man himself and with the felicitous man-
ner in which he discharged his combined duties — preparing
the soul for virtue and both body and soul for the punishment
he sometimes felt called upon to mete out.

As soon as the doctor would permit, Mr. Shaler left Malvern
for London. He succeeded in finding agreeable lodgings in Re-
gent's Park. The bedrooms were sunny, — that is, the windows
admitted the sun whenever it shone, — and the grounds were
enclosed with a high brick wall, which shut out the noise. The
conditions were favorable both for health and comfort, and he
did not fail to make physical progress notwithstanding the
enormous temptation to overdo; for he not only wished to gain
an insight into the conditions of social life, but also to profit
by the intellectual revival which had just then put England at
the head of European thought. In one of his letters to Hooker,
Huxley writes, "I firmly believe in the advent of an English
epoch in science and art which will lick the Augustan (which
by the bye had neither science nor art in our sense, but you
know what I mean) into fits." Perhaps this was the epoch he
predicted, although, living in the thick of it, he did not perceive

VISIT TO LONDON 257

it at the time. Mr. Shaler felt it a privilege to meet, as he con-
stantly did, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Lyell, Galton, Proctor,
Ramsay, Geoffrys, and others, and to go to the various scien-
tific meetings, clubs, and social reunions illuminated by their
presence.

Mr. Shaler rather prided himself upon being able at a glance
to distinguish a Scotchman, no matter how long he had been
out of his native land, from any other Britisher; moreover,
wherever he went, he was struck with the potency of Scotch
influence, and in illustration of this he was fond of telling of an
experience he had one evening at the Royal Society (I think it
was the Royal Society) . Sitting at the president's right hand
at dinner, he casually remarked, " I am glad at last to find an
Englishman at the head of one of the great London societies."
Thanking him for the implied compliment, the president re-
plied, " I came from Edinburgh to London before I was twenty-
one and therefore may claim to be an English citizen, but I am
not an Englishman."

At another dinner, where Tyndall was called upon to speak,
having returned not long before from the United States, he pro-
ceeded to give an account of what he saw and did at Niagara
Falls. In the midst of a thrilling description of a hairbreadth
escape from beneath the Bridal Veil, his eyes happening to fall
upon Mr. Shaler, he stood for a moment dumbfounded, and then,
with a look which seemed to say " Don't tell on me, old fellow,"
continued in a more subdued and veracious strain. Before the
evening was over he came up to Mr. Shaler and said, " I was
surprised to see you here, and to tell the truth, perhaps in my
story of Niagara I did stretch the long bow a little, but then
you know how, at a dinner, one has got to make his speech
telling"; and, shaking hands, he went on his way convinced
that his American friend was not unacquainted with the cloak
of charity.

While Mr. Shaler was seemingly engrossed with all the vital
interest of the mother country, he was not unmindful of what

258 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

was going on at home. He wrote back frequently, asking for
information concerning scientific progress there. Moreover he
was constantly tantalized by the sight of treasures which he
coveted for the Museum, but which, in most instances, he was
obliged to pass by, not because the director did not want them,
but because he could not find the means for their purchase.
The scheme for a Summer School originally intended to be held
at Nantucket was also at this time much on his mind.

From London to Cambridge, according to the American
reckoning of distance, is but a step, and there Mr. Shaler was
at once reminded of Cambridge by the Charles. Furthermore,
he was convinced that the younger town did not monopolize
all the dulness or the tinge of melancholy that the poet Gray
chafed under as something inseparable from his own and other
colleges. It is true it was not term time, and therefore an un-
wonted stillness brooded over the venerable place ; but if light-
hearted students failed to troop through the corridors there was
no barren void: the shades of the great men dead and gone
spoke to the spirit.

One of the most enduring and agreeable friendships that Mr.
Shaler made while at Cambridge was with Thompson, the
Master of Trinity College. Mr. Shaler happening one day in his
presence to mention the celebrated Richard Bentley, Thomp-
son asked abruptly, "What do you know about him?" "Oh,"
said Mr. Shaler, " I only know him in connection with the Let-
ters of Phalaris and with Horace, as the builder of the famous
staircase and the hen-house, as the man who wrung money
from the doctors of divinity and in spite of the uprising of
his subjects couldn't be ousted from Trinity." "Well," said
Thompson, laughing, "that's pretty good for an outsider. Come
and see me."

A few days after, an invitation to luncheon was received.
We went at the appointed time, but found the host and hostess
more grave than gay, the air charged with an overtaxed and
perfunctory hospitality which was not reassuring. As the meal

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 259

progressed, greater geniality prevailed, and, finally, when the
party adjourned to the beautiful garden, all barriers broke
down at the recital of some amusing incidents connected with
the recent visit of the Armenian patriarchs and their numerous
attendants. These guests had just gone, apparently in the full
odor of sanctity. Their customs, not being in accordance with
Western habits, had necessitated a thorough house-cleaning, —
the taking down of bedsteads and the taking up of carpets.
This element of confusion, together with the previous efforts
to entertain their guests from the gorgeous East, had reduced
the master and his wife to a state verging on a nervous collapse.
The next visit to Trinity was more auspicious. Nothing could
have exceeded the kindness of the famous scholar, and finally,
when Mr. Shaler took his leave of Cambridge, he carried away
with him various gifts as souvenirs of the great college, — en-
graved portraits of Newton and Milton as well as facsimiles of
their writings, these showing corrections multitudinous enough
to encourage even a Harvard freshman. Besides their potential
use, there was another field, remote from the poet's usual
wanderings, wherein practical help from him was won. In
reply to some disparaging remarks made by one of the dons
about Yankee pies, he insisting that the fruit pie was alien to
England, Mr. Shaler proved by Milton's own statement that at
the time of the plague, among other edibles, apple pies were
left at Trinity Gate for the students living there in a state of
quarantine.

At a memorial meeting held in honor of the late Woodwardian
Professor of Geology — the kindly, witty, and vivacious Adam
Sedgwick, a man of the same type as Mr. Shaler himself — there
was a notable assemblage of men gathered on the platform.
Among these were the old Earl of Powis, the Duke of Argyle,
the Duke of Devonshire, and others distinguished for high so-
cial position, statesmanship, and learning. Mr. Shaler watched
closely the faces of this picked lot of Englishmen, seeking to note
what changes the race might have undergone by being trans-

260 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

planted to the New World. So far from discovering certain alleged
modifications, he recalled corresponding types of faces among
his old friends in Kentucky and Virginia, and laughingly directed
his companion's attention to the strong likeness between the
Duke of Argyle and a respected old carpenter in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Furthermore, while talking to some of these
men he noticed a similarity of phrasing ; also the use of certain
words peculiar to the Southern section of his own country.
As regards public speaking, he was struck with the fact that the
young men who had profited by the recently organized unions
for debate delivered themselves more freely and to the point
than the older ones, who seemed to have made a cult of a hesi-
tating and inconclusive utterance. Mr. Shaler himself was
greatly applauded whenever he spoke in public, his success at
times bringing its reward, as will be seen from the following
incident.

One morning while wandering over Ely Cathedral, "the
most glorious shrine in Christendom," he was approached by a
gentleman who introduced himself as the Dean. " I heard you
speak," he said, "a few evenings ago at Cambridge and was
so much impressed by your clearness of thought and statement
that, recognizing you here, I was prompted to seek your ac-
quaintance; and now," he added, "will you permit me to be
your guide." And in and out of vault, choir, crypt, and Lady
chapel, and down the transepts and great aisles, into the
" Galilee," or western porch, he led the travellers, indicating here
and there the work of the centuries as recorded in early Norman,
Decorated, and Perpendicular Gothic architecture; rolling off all
the while the names of founders, builders, and restorers, from
St. Etheldreda to Alan de Walsingham and Sir Gilbert Scott.
At last, when all had been seen that the learned doctor could
show, he wound up by inviting the strangers to come home with
him to luncheon. The thirteenth-century Guesten Hall of the
old Abbey, which at one time had been a camp of refuge for
Hereward, had been converted into a deanery; and here, at

VISIT TO OXFORD 261

the very threshold, one was obliged to simulate, by bending
low, the spirit of the ancient and devout monks, for the arched
doorway was under five feet in height. But inside all was
glorious, the ceilings rose high and the walls receded. More-
over, in this wonderful place of contrasts there was one room,
a studio, holding the most modern examples of sculpture,
wrought by the dean's own daughter.

This fen region, the reclaimed Marshlands (some two thou-
sand square miles of the best corn land in England), set Mr.
Shaler to thinking what might be done by draining the vast
acreage of swamp in the United States. His imagination also
played about the political consequences of the appropriation of
this land to farming uses. He maintained (jestingly, perhaps)
that the final deadly struggle between Charles I and Crom-
well originated in their early disputes over this same land -
whether it should belong to the crown or to individuals. How-
ever this may be, the potential riches of the swamp districts
in his own country were constantly in mind, and later, in addi-
tion to the actual study and reports that he made upon them,
he persistently called the attention of business men to this great
undeveloped source of wealth.

Mr. Shaler carried but few letters of introduction to Oxford ;
but after the first perfunctory civilities extended to a professor
from another learned institution he received attentions which
only respect and personal liking call forth. Some of the enter-
tainments given in his honor are mentioned in a journal kept
by his wife. He himself was so occupied during his travels with
his geological notes and sketches that he left to her the record
of lighter events. Nearly all of the incidents mentioned in the
journal afterwards entered into his conversation, and therefore
seem pertinent here.

Oxford, April 24th, 1873. — We dined last evening at Dr. Rolleston's (pro-
fessor of anatomy). He is a fine-looking, quick-witted man, with a wide
range of knowledge and experience. He talks well, and a great deal, upon
every subject. Mr. Shaler has taken a great fancy to him and when the two

262 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

get together they have a slashing time of it. The other day while he was
examining in company with several others Rolleston's collection of early
bronze implements, he (Rolleston) handed a frail but beautiful Roman strigil
to a young Englishwoman to look at. Unhappily it slipped from her hands
and in striking the floor was almost resolved to dust. It was easy to see the
distress on the doctor's face, but he quickly rallied, and gathering up the
fragments said to the frightened girl, " Don't worry, my dear, it has, I assure
you, been in many a scrape before."

April 26th. — We lunched yesterday with the Master of " All Souls " College.
The luncheon was served in the beautiful, high wainscoted combination
room. In Professor B.'s own room, into which he took us while showing the
college, we noticed his surplice hanging behind the door. Each looked at
the other with the same thought in mind. Here was a man of the world
much involved in its tortuous ways coming back to his peaceful, secluded
college, and once more putting on the robe of his youth and innocence.

Tuesday. — We spent last evening at Dr. Acland 's, a noted physician who
accompanied the Prince of Wales to America. While there Mr. Shaler had
a long talk with Mark Pattison — thought him cold and clammy. The
Acklands, doctor, wife, seven sons and one daughter, are charming.

May 1st. — We went to a reception at the vice-chancellor's given in honor
of Mr. Emerson. Mrs. Liddell is very handsome. She was dressed in a Paris
gown (the wife of the vice-chancellor at Cambridge wore badly cut home-
made clothes) and is unusually agreeable. He is a regular old grumpus ; his
opinion of himself as lofty as the tower of Christ Church, of which he is dean.
I had a long talk with Max Muller. He insisted that Emerson intellectually
was utterly un-American — that he was Greek in every essential. I main-
tained that he was the very epitome of a certain New England cast of mind,
but if he was to be transplanted the " antiquity of his soul " should give him
place back in the dynasties. Apparently Muller gave no credence to my
statement; fortunately, however, Mr. Shaler just then joined us and
squelched his argument completely. Muller is good-looking, but neither
of us thought his face showed genius. During the evening the much-prized
original manuscript of "Alice in Wonderland" was exhibited; it belongs
to the elder Miss Liddell. The story, it seems, in the first place was told by
Carroll to her and her sisters when he took them for strolls on the banks
of the Isis. Supper frugal, the English apparently know but one meal —
dinner.

May Uh. — Dined last night at the vice-chancellor's. He gave me a
charming little pen-and-ink drawing that he had made on blotting-paper,
one of his many accomplishments. Nat is greatly impressed by the accom-
plishments of the university men and often wonders, industrious as he is

DOM PEDRO — PRINCE LEOPOLD 263

himself, how they find time for the gratification of their tastes; for, as he
says, the professors rise late, lunch leisurely, spend the afternoons in some
kind of sport or exercise, dine late and well, and linger long at table. There
appears to be left for work only some hours towards midnight. On the other
hand he thinks, perhaps, a cloudy sky is more favorable for concentration
of thought, and if perchance one does undertake mental labor in the day-
time one's mind is not distracted by the allurements of the brilliant sunlight
which in America makes one impatient of any but the outdoor life.

Mrs. Liddell gave Mr. Shaler an amusing account of the Emperor of
Brazil's recent visit. His Majesty, it seems, is an inveterate sight-seer and
showed frantic haste in going from place to place. One morning at five
o'clock he roused the household that he might go to Blenheim. On the out-
skirts of Oxford, at a shop where a grocerman was just taking down the
shutters, he stopped his carriage and bought some buns. From time to time
His Majesty dipped into the brown paper bag that held them and apparently
relished the buns, much to the disgust of his stately host, who for polite-
ness' sake was obliged to swallow one. The only respite that his entertainers
enjoyed during his stay was just after a visit to the Astronomical Observatory,
which the Emperor stormed late one night when every one but Professor
Adams had gone to bed. In his tour of observation, anxious to examine
some part of one of the instruments, he knelt on the floor and on attempt-
ing to rise gave his imperial head a resounding blow. A bandage took the
place of a crown, and, carried back to Trinity College, he was put to bed and
advised by the doctor not to leave it until he thought it wise to let him do
so. Every one heaved a sigh of relief and prepared to give himself twenty-
four hours of rest at least. But next day at luncheon, just as they were
comfortably seated at the table, without warning, in popped the Emperor,
and shortly after activities set in with unabated fury, which lasted until the
end.

Sunday. — We were invited by Mrs. Liddell to take afternoon tea with
Prince Leopold. He is rather an awkward youth, his face dull, but his man-
ners are unassuming. He was not half so agreeable or fluent in speech as
his clever Irish tutor. After my talk with the prince one of the ladies asked
if I had felt embarrassed. " No," I said, " he is very much like some of our
own students," whereupon she looked at me as if I were demented.

It might as well be mentioned here, though recorded later,
that after a few days there came through Dr. Acland an invita-
tion from the Prince to Mr. Shaler to take luncheon with him
at his villa on the outskirts of Oxford. In the afternoon, while

264 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

strolling through the garden, the Prince took pains to say how
warm was his mother's regard for America ; that she had never
forgotten the attentions shown his brother during his visit to
the United States, and moreover her one wish was to maintain
friendly relations with the country. In illustration of this, he
went on to say that as a boy the first full realization he had of
his mother's influence as a queen — of her power, outside her
immediate surrounding — was at the time of the Mason and
Slidell difficulty. "At this critical stage of affairs, I happened
to be in the room," he said, "when Lord John Russell brought
in a state paper for the Queen to sign. After reading it over
she handed it back to him, saying, "This will lead to war.'
Again he returned and handed her the paper. Looking over it
the second time, she gave it back with the remark, ' This must
be still further modified.' Once more the document was sub-
mitted, and after some discussion, in which the words 'war,'
'battleships/ and 'armies' figured largely, she wrote her sig-
nature."

During several geological walks together Mr. Shaler formed a
favorable opinion of the Prince, and once, while the two were
going through a hospital with Dr. Acland, he was struck with
the young man's disposition to efface himself. As he approached,
the various invalids tried to rise in order to show their respect
for the Queen's son, but in every instance he protested against
the exertion, and at last turned to Mr. Shaler and said, " This is
the misery of my position; I cannot go about without being
bothered by this kind of thing."

The journal for Sunday, May 5th, continues : —

Mr. Shaler lunched to-day with some gentlemen at one of the colleges
(I forget which one). On his return he said he had never before been so
strongly impressed with the rich associations of English life. While sitting
at the table, attracted by its splendid color, he happened to look fixedly at a
stained glass window just in front of him and then turning to his neighbor
he made some comment about it. "Yes," the neighbor answered indiffer-
ently, " it is rather a good bit of glass ; it was ordered to be put in place, you
know, by Richard III when he was a student here."

RUSKIN — MALVERN — SCOTLAND 265

May 6, Monday. — We went to hear Mr. Ruskin lecture on the "Swal-
low." We were disappointed; even his drawings on the blackboard were
not remarkable ; more than that, Mr. Shaler was exasperated by the state-
ment he made that men of science had given no attention to so remarkable
a phenomenon as the flight of birds. On his way out he said to one of the
professors, "Is it possible that Ruskin knows nothing of Marais' great
work on the flight of birds? "Of course, he knows all about it, but it
doesn't suit his purpose to recognize it here." "Hypocrite!" exclaimed
Mr. Shaler, and forthwith his sentiment was confirmed by a knowing wink
on the part of the lecturer's colleague.

In spite of the disillusionment as to Ruskin's veracity,
Mr. Shaler paid close attention to the Art School that he had
founded. He knew that both Mr. Norton and Mr. Charles H.
Moore regarded it as admirable for scope and thoroughness
and without parallel elsewhere in Europe.

May 9th. — We returned to Malvern late last evening; found our lodgings
comfortable and pleasant. Mr. Shaler not well, however, and much depressed
in spirits ; fears he will never regain his strength. We can only hope and
pray for the best.

While undergoing a mild form of treatment at the establish-
ment at Malvern, Mr. Shaler made use of this health-giving
resort as a place of departure for excursions to the surrounding
towns. He also journeyed to Scotland, making a point of
visiting certain classic geological localities, noting with special
interest the glacial scratches which many years before had
yielded his master, Agassiz, such joy as indisputable proof of
his glacial theory, viz., that a great ice period had covered the
surface of the earth with a sheet of ice extending at least from
the North Pole to central Europe and Asia. Besides the asso-
ciation with Agassiz, Scotland was the home of Hutton, that
man of genius whose "immortal theory" of the earth made a
turning-point in the history of geology; his conception that
the past history of the globe must be explained by what can be
seen to be happening at present struck a responsive chord in
Mr. Shaler's mental attitude towards nature. Arthur's Seat and
Salisbury Crags, with their records of ancient volcanic eruptions,

266 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

naturally attracted him, as well as the noted localities where
proofs of the erosive power of running water were to be seen.
The Scottish itinerary included Edinburgh, Glasgow, Sterling,
Loch Lomond, and other places usually haunted by sight-seers.

May 23. — With his thoughts as much centred upon Richard Ill's war-
like exploits at Tewkesbury, as upon the venerable abbey, Mr. Shaler and
I took the third-class car, filled with good-looking country folk, for that
place. It happened to be election day, and men and women were gathered
in groups at the corners of the quaint old streets through which we passed.
On the way from the station to the abbey, he heard a woman say to her
friend, " We are having a jolly time! did you know, already one man has been
thrown out of a second-story window and got smashed to pieces." While
walking up the beautiful avenue leading to the entrance, we noticed in the
graveyard close at hand a lot of rosy-faced children frolicking among the
tombstones. In contrast with these grim tokens of age and decay they
looked as bright and as ephemeral as butterflies living their happy day. At
the door a number of visitors were waiting to get in, and although search
had been made for the beadle, and even the vicar's house had been besieged
for the keys, there seemed no way of gaining admission, for while the inner
door stood open, an outside wooden gate barred the entrance. After knock-
ing loudly to awaken the custodian, who, it was thought, might be napping
in the peace of his vast surroundings, Mr. Shaler, unwilling to be balked,
examined the gate; and then, calling for assistance, to* the astonishment
of the custom-hardened natives, he lifted it off its hinges and triumphantly
led the party into the very heart of the sanctuary. Within, unmarshaled
and undisciplined, we wandered through the aisles of this twelfth-century
Norman church, stopping here and there to look at the tombs of the old
knights, their effigies reposing at full length. Lost in this ancient world,
suddenly we were brought back into the present by angry words, seemingly
hurled from the far-off door, reverberating and multiplying themselves
through the lofty spaces. Attracted thither, we observed the other sight-
seers, less smitten with the ancient glory, trying to get past the avenging
beadle, who stood with outstretched hands beside the barred doorway
demanding one shilling from each intruder. Appreciating the joke, Mr.
Shaler rewarded him liberally for his share in the breach of beadle etiquette ;
and after the others had gone, by his praises of the great abbey, he so cooled
the wrath within the ^-dropping servitor that the man volunteered to go
back and reveal some treasures hidden from the eyes of the thrifty. At last,
exhausted by the bounty of the show, we were glad to escape. While sitting
outside on a tombstone, waiting for the "fly," Mr. Shaler made a sketch of

HEREFORD AND THE WYE 267

the abbey, drawing in the flowers growing in the high-up window of one
of the towers. These flowers looked as if they had been planted by human
hands, and we expected to see a tonsured monk with emaciated features
(the pictorial monk) look out upon the objects of his care; but no such
spectral vision greeted the eye. The tower evidently was the home of no
human joy or sorrow. Nevertheless N. insisted upon spoiling the sketch by
filling up one window with a broad-faced monk.

Friday. — The drive in an open carriage to Hereford led through a coun-
try of bounteous aspect. The apple orchards confirmed what we had heard
about the quantity and quality of Herefordshire cider. The exterior of the
cathedral was not especially impressive ; but the choir and the Lady chapel
were exceedingly beautiful, and Mr. Shaler was particularly impressed by
the mighty Norman piers, whose capitals were more richly carved than any
he had seen, also by the old map of the world, made about 1310. The
secluded and peaceful garden stretching along the Wye led N. to say
he would like to come and live the rest of his days under the shelter of the
great cathedral, but then, he added, "I dare say familiarity, gossip, and
petty cares would soon reduce even this venerable pile to the level of the
commonplace." We were very tired and went to the "Green Dragon,"
where, paying no modest price for tea, bread, and butter, N. remarked that
all English hotels should be dedicated to the Golden Fleece.

July 3. — We rose early and started for a trip down the Wye. The third-
class car was crowded with soldiers and market-men. We concluded, in spite
of the advice of English friends, to avoid the third class in the future.
Mr. Shaler said if he could only rip the stuffing out of the first class, and
insinuate a little liveliness into it, it would suit him better. At Ross we
engaged a boat and started on the journey. The boatman was a stolid John
Bull who only became talkative as the time for his tip drew near. It was
not long before the rain descended, first in drops and then in torrents. Nat
and I, crowding together on one bench, drew up the waterproof blanket,
hoisted the umbrella, and sadly prepared to enjoy the scenery from beneath
the eaves of our shelter. The longer the boatman rowed, so tortuous is the
Wye, the farther we seemed from our destination. The heavier it rained
the more N. tried to keep up our spirits. But at last even his succumbed,
and we stopped at an inn on the banks of the river. A brief lull in the wind
and rain gave a chance to reembark, and finally, with misty recollections
of the Wye, Monmouth was attained. At the Beaufort Arms a fire was
ordered, and we proceeded to dry our clothes and abuse the English climate.

We arrived at York Cathedral just in time for the afternoon service.
Sitting in the great nave, we listened entranced to the music. Nat was

268 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

especially pleased with the grand simplicity of this great shrine and with the
rich- toned lancet windows. The beadle showered information upon our
sated ears and strove hard to earn his fee. When at last N. asked him to open
the door, he answered, "I will do so with pleasure; I have been shut up in
this cathedral since nine o'clock this morning." Alas, it was little better
than a jail to him. Nat was eager to get to the old walls of the city. There
he fought over the Wars of the Roses; in imagination joined the warriors
who struggled across the ditch and scaled the inner defences. He called upon
the Emperor Severus in his palace, talked with Constantino and Caracalla.
Altogether he voted York a place worth seeing.

At Whitby Mr. Shaler had the companionship of his friend Tawney, and to-
gether they did some splendid geologizing, filling boxes and the empty corners
of my trunks with fossils. They also poked fun at one another about the cus-
toms of their respective countries. On the beach the boys and girls played
almost in a state of nature; the women wore scant gowns, but the men
appeared in the uniform of Eden. The whole scene, N. said, reminded him
in its indecency of Naples. In revenge, Tawney picked out a bespectacled,
short-skirted, heavily shod dame, striding along with a cane in her hand,
as a typical strong-minded American woman. The dispute growing warm,
I was sent to follow this formidable creature and find out what part of the
world she came from. Happily she sat down on the sand, thus giving her
pursuer a chance to catch up, and after a few minutes' talk it was possible
to relieve Mr. Shaler's tension of mind by the statement that she was to
the manner born.

At Durham we climbed the hill under a really hot sun and reached the
cathedral tired and thirsty : but the solemn stillness and the coolness within
made the pain seem small and the pleasure infinite. The massive pillars
appealed to Nat's love of all that is strong ; indeed he seemed more sensitive
than usual to the beauty of the edifice, although, if he were an architect by
profession, he could not take more interest in the structure and ornamenta-
tion of these great ecclesiastical buildings. Since the service was about to
begin, fearing that the magnificent ritual would be spoiled in the manner we
had sometimes heard by a sing-song delivery, he suggested that we go out-
side. Without, we looked for the swans that one sees in the pictures of the
great cathedral, and, behold, there they were, those arched-necked creatures
showing plain upon the dark waters of the river. As usual at such places,
we sat on a tombstone and, besides watching the swans, watched the pious
folk that came to the vesper service, and soon the music floated out upon
the stillness. When it ceased, N. beckoned to a small boy hovering near with

DURHAM SPRING-WATER 269

the hope of winning a penny and sent him down to the town for a cab ; another
he bribed to bring a jug of water from the famous spring close by. "This
cool, sweet water," he said, "should be drunk out of a gourd and from
a cedar bucket." "Ah!" said his companion, "you forget you are not in
Kentucky."

CHAPTER XX

FIELD WORK

1873-1879

WHILE he was in England, Mr. Shaler's friends at home sug-
gested to the Governor of Kentucky that he be invited to take
charge of the Kentucky Geological Survey, which was about to
be set on foot again after some years of interruption. Among
the many other letters sent in his behalf the two given below
show in what esteem he was held by those competent to judge
of his qualifications.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., April 22d, 1873.

To His EXCELLENCY PRESTON H. LESLIE, Governor of Kentucky.

Dear Sir: — I am so thoroughly convinced that it would be a good fortune
for your state to secure the services of Professor N. S. Shaler as Geologist
to direct your survey, that though he is absent and I know nothing of his
intentions I take the liberty of calling your attention to his eminent abilities
and perfect qualifications for such work.

I have known Mr. Shaler from the time he first began to study the natural
and physical sciences. He has been my pupil and afterwards my assistant
for about ten years, and more recently my fellow professor in our Scientific
School in Harvard University. He is not only a thorough student and a
skilful practical observer, but his ready perception of the relations of facts
eminently qualifies him to direct an extensive geological survey ; and your
state is so constituted geologically as to require the fullest preparation and the
best ability in the man who shall explore it successfully.

With great regard, very respectfully yours, L. AGASSIZ.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., June 30, 1873.
To His EXCELLENCY PRESTON H. LESLIE, Governor of Kentucky.

Dear Sir: — Since the receipt of your letter [asking for the assistance of
the Coast Survey] of the 16th instant, I have daily expected the return of
Professor Shaler from Europe, but cannot longer forego the pleasure of ex-

KENTUCKY GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 271

pressing my own gratification at the appointment of that able man as State
Geologist of Kentucky, and of assuring you, as I will also assure him, that
such cooperation as may be practicable in geodetic operations by parties
of the Coast Survey will be cheerfully directed.

Very respectfully yours, BENJAMIN PEIRCE,

Supt. U. S. Coast Survey.

The request that he become the director of the Survey was
sent to Mr. Shaler and accepted while he was out of the coun-
try. Agassiz again writes : -

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., June 9th, 1873.

... It never rains but it pours. No sooner was the conference committee
of the House and Senate agreed to let me have $25,000 with the conditions
so amended that I could match it with $25,000 already paid in than my
son-in-law, Q. A. Shaw, and my daughter, Pauline, presented me with
$100,000. What I have, of course, goes to the Museum, only in this case I
have not to consult either board of trustees, or corporation, or faculty. It
makes me very happy, as I now see my way to give a tremendous impulse
to the Museum, and I want you to make sure that there is nothing in Eng-
land left unnoticed that may benefit it.

And now another question. Are you going to accept the direction of the
Geological Survey of Kentucky? In your place I would, but without giving
up your connection with our University. I think it would not be difficult
to bring this about; and I will at once go to work in that direction if you
say so. ...

From the same : —

PENIKESE ISLAND, Aug. 17th, 1873.

... I lament that your visit to the Anderson School has been so short.
I hoped for many weeks of your presence to help in the work, instead of
which you have given us only a few hours. But I understand that at present
your whole time belongs to the Geological Survey of your native state.
Before you leave Massachusetts, however, there is one thing I want to say
to you: that whatever the Museum of Comparative Zoology affords of re-
sources which may foster an undertaking like that now committed to your
care shall be at your disposal, whether you need specimens for comparison
or men to carry on the work, and whenever I can be personally useful, you
need never hesitate to call upon me.

There are already several subjects of special scientific interest which I
would particularly recommend to your attention as likely to contribute to

272 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

the advancement of our knowledge in general, and the proper solution of
which may not be without practical importance. I name, first, the study
of the fishes of all your rivers separately. Now that pisciculture has become
an art of great practical importance an investigation into the distribution
of your fishes would furnish an essential basis for the introduction of such
species as may be of greater economical value than those which naturally
inhabit your waters. . . .

Although Mr. Shaler could spend but little time at Penikese,
his interest in the theory and practice of summer schools never
abated. The idea of establishing a Summer School of Geology
was persistently advanced until, after much discouragement,
he succeeded in putting on a permanent basis this form of
teaching at Harvard University — a system now in operation
throughout the country. Some of his friends were disturbed
lest he fail of the credit due him for the idea, a matter about
which, however, he was indifferent. The following extract is
from a letter written by a friend in Cambridge in the spring of
1873, before he came back from England.

. . . And now about this summer school of natural history and the island
which old "fine cut" John Anderson has given to Agassiz. Your friends
think you ought to be on the ground when the thing is started even if you
go back to Europe as soon as the first term is over. ... It looks very much
as if the "big wigs" and their satellites will rush in and bear away all the
credit of the idea and as none of them know anything about "outdoor"
teaching it will end in failure. It is true that at the tail end of one of his

letters did admit that his young friend Shaler had originated the idea.

Now ... if you wish to start the thing in accordance with your ideas, it
would seem to me that you ought to be here at the opening so as to take
your proper place in the management. ... It makes me indignant when I
see other people stealing your thunder. One thing though you must let me
insist on, and that is, you must run no risks in the way of health, and in this
matter I would much rather trust to Mrs. Shaler's opinion than your own.
If the worst should come, you can fight the thing a year or so hence.

Notwithstanding his friend's uneasiness, Mr. Shaler's instruc-
tion in geology, including the Summer School, in the course of
time became so far developed and perfected as to meet with
wide recognition.

A SUMMER SCHOOL 273

Soon after his return to America he took up the survey work
with great zest and carried it on successfully at two different
periods. He enlisted the ablest men he could get as assistants,
and trained a body of aids to the point where they became
successful workers in that and other fields.

In the summer-time he carried on a Summer School for
Harvard men, camping in such localities as seemed fittest for
the advancement of the survey as well as for the training of the
students. He invited some of the foremost scientific men of the
day to visit the camp and give inspiration by their presence to
the undertaking. A number of teachers from other colleges
attended the school, which for two seasons was held at Cumber-
land Gap. Among the guests were a few dilettantes, a sprink-
ling of politicians, and some women; these elements made
something of the nature of a lark of the occasion. But while
there was a share of festivity, the camp was by no means a
Castle of Indolence. There were the early departure and the late
return — with the different states of mind shown in the accom-
panying illustration. Furthermore, there was no exemption
from the various vicissitudes of camp life, — the long spell of
rainy weather, the occasional short rations, the missing cook.
The last was a good-natured, much-liked "native," whose labors
were interrupted by being called to court to give a reckoning
for his third murder. The excuse offered, however, was deemed
sufficient to ensure his liberty. According to Jim's account, his
victim (his father-in-law) was "a mighty pesterin' ole man."
Among the lighter incidents was the rattlesnake episode.
The students having advertised their desire to purchase rattle-
snakes to be "pickled," in other words to be preserved in alco-
hol, forthwith the hills and valleys were ransacked by the
"natives" for the largest and most vicious of their kind. The
best brought at first as much as five dollars apiece; but after a
while the supply increased beyond the demand, there was a
glut, and the price fell as low as twenty-five cents. At this un-
favorable stage of the market a belated merchant of reptiles

274 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

brought to camp, confined in a loosely put together wooden
box, one of the largest and fiercest specimens that had been
caught for a long time. Mr. Shaler happening to meet the old
man first, told him he was too late, and advised him to kill the
snake. Nevertheless he persisted in going the rounds in the hope
of selling his commodity. In the hurry of getting off on the
day's tramp he was brusquely pushed aside by the young men
and doubtless soon forgotten. Finally when the camp was
deserted by its militant element he was observed sitting discon-
solately on a rock gazing at the prisoner in the box, whereupon
one of the timid sex approached and asked what he was going
to do with the reptile. "I'm er goin' to let him loose," was his
reply. "Surely not here." "Yes, jist right hyur, er long sides
them tents. I worked tumble hard to get that thar sarpent ;
walked nigh on to fourteen miles over the mountain, an' now
I'm goin' to have my five dollars or knowther reason why."
"Come down to my tent," said the alarmed questioner, "and
let's talk about it over a cup of coffee." The order was given
to bring the refreshment, which, next to home-made whiskey,
was the most loved by the "native," but in the presence of the
dormant terror it seemed ages before it appeared.

In the meanwhile the mountaineer was enticed into telling
his adventures — his moonlight search for medicinal herbs, the
circumstances under which "he brought down his men," and
other details of family feuds. At last the pot of coffee, together
with bread and bacon, came, and the feast began. With each
fresh cup, though the vaunted superiority of the snake in-
creased, the price fell until at last it seemed likely to stick at
three dollars. At this stage of the negotiation some tobacco
was produced and the stiff trader persuaded to fill his pipe.
After a few whiffs, he exclaimed, looking lovingly at his trophy,
"He's the gamest ever I seed. I reckon he's got pison enough
in them thar fangs of his'n ter kill nigh on ter er dozen folks.
Yes, I tell you he's jes 'er bustin' ter git arter them studen's,
and what's more, all the whiskey in creation, nor lard nuther,

A RATTLESNAKE EPISODE 275

could n't cure his bite. He's er he snake, as strong as Samsin, I
reckon, an' es lively es er kitten : but I say, stranger [lowering
his voice], es long es it's er woman who's er dickeren I'll take
two dollars cash. What do yer say to that?" At length the
price of one dollar for the snake and the killing of it was
agreed upon. Without further delay the slats were torn off the
box and the bewildered mass of venom dumped upon the
ground, and in the twinkling of an eye the hiss of a hickory
stick announced that the end had come. Stretched out at full
length upon the ground to show how big a bargain had been
got, the creature measured nearly six feet. He was un-
doubtedly a superb specimen ; all the same he was hung up as
a warning and no more snakes of his particular breed were
brought into camp.

These trifles emerge from the dim corners of memory; the
really significant events and the important investigations are
recorded in the exhaustive reports of the Survey. Under Mr.
Shaler's directorship its scope could not be otherwise than wide.
One of the aims most successfully carried out was to show the
state in his own actions the determination and devotion that
should be given to all undertakings which affect the welfare
of the commonwealth. In addition to the usual scientific work,
or rather in connection with it, a general description of the
state — its geography, geology, and zoology, and its material
resources of all kinds — was prepared in conformity with an
emigration bill which he drew up for the Legislature. In the
directing of the survey he kept his eyes pretty steadily fixed
upon the development of possible business enterprises, and with
this end in view furnished special information to capitalists. A
very successful exhibit of the products of Kentucky was made
at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, which attracted wide
attention.

It is needless to say that the work was laborious, involving at
all seasons of the year journeys within the state and to and
from Cambridge, for Mr. Shaler still discharged his college

276 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

duties. There were also the usual troubles with the Legislature
concerning appropriations, which varied from ten to twelve
thousand dollars a year, — sums so small as to cramp the
efficiency of the Survey and to lead to occasional outbursts of
indignation on the part of those in service. One gentleman of
influence writes, "If we had a little more intelligence among
those who push themselves into public places there would be
much more real economy." His most constant annoyance was
with regard to the pay of assistants. He himself often advanced
out of his own pocket money for field expenses and even to meet
family exigencies, such as a marriage, a birth, or a death.
Besides the many legitimate cares of the office, in connection
with it was the fearful American waste of high intellectual
powers upon petty details which, under a better clerical system,
would be left to men of inferior grade. (In regard to this matter
the writer once heard an English professor of eminence say,
after a visit to Mr. Shaler's office in Cambridge, that he had
been struck in America with the absence of trained assistants
and the amount of clerical work done by college teachers.)
Letters addressed to Mr. Shaler at this time abound with such
questions as, "What shall I do with Mollie, the mare? Shall I
use her or hire a team? " " How much will you take for the wagon
and harness belonging to the Survey? I have a brother who
is going to move to Texas. He is very poor and unless you put it
at very low figures he will not take it," etc. And then come
requests of the following order: "Please send at once three
tents, some camp-stools, and blankets."

While there were annoyances, there were also agreeable epi-
sodes— the pleasure derived from an extended acquaintance
with the people and with the rich resources of his native state.
In the introduction to his first report Mr. Shaler writes : —

The thanks of the Survey are due to the generous citizens, whose names
are too numerous for mention, who, by their unfailing kindness, have aided
every step of its work. My own gratitude is due, in large measure, to the

THE WORK OF THE SURVEY 277

officers of the Survey,1 who, by their unfaltering diligence, have made it
possible for me to do far more than I expected to accomplish with the limited
means that have been at my command.

It is but justice to the Survey to say, that the means at its disposal have
been exceedingly limited. The total amount appropriated for all the ex-
penses of the years 1874 and 1875 was thirty-three thousand five hundred
dollars. Out of this sum must come the costs of maintaining a force averag-
ing twelve assistants and aids, the expenses of the state cabinet, of exhibi-
tions at Louisville, a chemical laboratory, the outfit of camps, instruments,
etc., and all the expenses of preparing the results for publication, including
the making of lithographic and stereotype plates. Only the most rigorous
economy has made it possible to do the large amount of field work that has
been done during the last two years ; and this saving has been brought about
by the devotion and self-sacrifice of my coadjutors of the Survey, who have
not only been willing to labor for small compensations, but have unhesitat-
ingly adapted themselves to the rude and comfortless life which has neces-
sarily been followed in order to secure economy and convenience in the work.

What Mr. Shaler thought of the general conditions of Ken-
tucky is set forth in a less official manner in a letter of a some-
what earlier date written to an English friend.

My dear Mr. Lawrence: ... I am so sorry that you could not come to
Kentucky. It is by far the richest state in America, and although the
people are absurdly conservative yet they present the highest type of rural
life which the country affords, the only region which would remind you of
the best parts of your own island. . . .

Mr. Shaler often laughingly alluded to an experience he had at
this time with the War Department concerning some barometer
straps. It was a case of red tape pushed to the extreme limits
of patience. The correspondence began in 1875 and was con-
cluded in 1877. On the back of a communication from the War
Department which had travelled from one official to another
is written, " What straps was he accountable for? Answer : —
Barom. straps nos. 2 & 24 sent from this office June 25, 1875."
On another: "Shaler N. S. says he is unable to produce the

i Some of these officers upon whom he depended most were C. "W. Beckham, John R.
Proctor, A. R. Crandell, P. M. Moore, W. B. Page, C. J. Norwood, besides a number of
valuable assistants.

278 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

straps referred to in communication of 30th, but says he will
either replace them with money or other straps." Still another
bears the question: "What is the cost of straps? " Mr. Shaler
himself writes to H. W. Howgate, War Office : —

Sir: — The straps referred to in your favor of the 30th, which the mail
has just brought to me, were loaned by your office to the surveyor sent to
your office to bring to my camp certain barometers, etc. At the time I sup-
posed that they were included with the instruments, for which I gave receipt,
and which have since been accounted for. I am now unable to identify them
in the property of the Kentucky Survey and must ask you to allow me to
give you an equivalent in money or in other straps made according to your
orders in Washington. I regret this mischance, but in my little survey there
is no means for keeping a careful account of small items of property; the
state having failed to provide me with even a single clerk.

Very respectfully, N. S. SHALER,

Director of the Survey of Kentucky.

And at last came the first endorsement : —

WASHINGTON, D. C., Aug. 9, 1877.
War Department, Office Chief Signal Officer.

Respectfully return to Prof: N. S. Shaler, with the information that the
cost of these straps to the Service is $3.00 each.

H. W. HOWGATE.

The extracts below from other letters written by Mr. Shaler
at different periods while in charge of the Survey, furnish a clue
to his undertakings and indirectly to his opinions upon many
subjects.

FRANKFORT, Aug. 22nd, '73.

... I wrote you yesterday and telegraphed. I now with sleepy eyes will
try and give you a word about the day which has gone. I slept at home. They
are all well, and the house is cool and charming. ... I arose at 4 A. M. to
take train for Lexington; came at 1.40 to Frankfort. Saw the Governor, a
plain, blunt man, but seems direct and satisfactory. He says the Legisla-
ture is in a humor for work and will give the money necessary for its doing.
I am better pleased with Kentucky than with Ohio ; the surface is beautiful,
horses charming, ditto cows, men able-bodied, women often have a high-
bred air. ... It is very hot — stifling, old-fashioned heat. The street is

TRAVELLING IN KENTUCKY 279

shaded and full of fireflies and bats. A negro band over the way is tortur-
ing a tune, starting bravely but getting thrown every time, quarreling, but
returning to the charge. The house is as large as the Revere and really fine

in its sturdy stone strength. Old Col. T is dead, some friends have

moved away, others have gone to the still place on the hill, so I feel like an
old man. I am pretty well but dreadfully tired and homesick. . . .

Sunday Evening.

... So far I have made a decent headway with my work, getting things
in reasonable train. I am inclined to think that the work is not above my
powers, provided new sources of chafe do not disclose themselves. . . .

NEWPORT, Aug. 30.

. . . I am still here, but go to-morrow to see the Governor again and to get
some information unobtainable by letter. I feel better to-day than for some
days and think I can live along here provided you and the little ones come
soon. Remember my hammer, and please pack Herbert Spencer's works.

Tell M to come along to Grayson Springs; he will have already done so,

if he is not a fool. If you can, start on Monday. Fee the car servants well
and make them assist at the transfers. I would come for you but I fear the
journey would use me up.

RIVERTON, KY., Oct. 21, 1873.

. . . The steamboat left me here at 2 p. M. in fair condition. The boat
had no staterooms but piled the passengers into two-storied cots in one
common room. A cargo of pigs down stairs sang a duet with the snorers

above. However withal I am pretty well. I found C waiting for me,

which has saved me some running about. ... I shall write again to-morrow
to tell you just what my plans are, if I am so fortunate as to know them my-
self. Be assured I shall do my best to get home Saturday night. . . .

Mouth of the Cumberland River, '73.

... I came here this morning and got a little rest from the questions
of the public — have been at it all day again. We have had a charming day
full of spring balm. I like the people — not industrious, but decent and law-
abiding in their way; they treat me kindly and considerately. ... I am
pretty well and not very tired. I have shut out the populace, and fortunately
there is a murder trial on hand which diverts attention from "bating" the
state geologists, which has become a favorite amusement in the state. One
of the worthy citizens goes with me to-morrow to Marion and Princeton, so I
have good company.

I was congratulating myself on the quiet evening when in came (without

280 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

knocking) seven interviewers to sit an hour. They mean well and are kind,
but there are too many people in the world.

PRINCETON [no date].

. . . This is rather a spry little town, clean and paved. The country, how-
ever, is somewhat God-forsaken ; no milk to be had. When one leaves the blue-
grass land one fares hardly. I think of taking a goat along — your favorite
plan. ... I am sorry to see there is no end of Kentucky in this direction.
This world is a deal too big, and we have too much of it; thank God it is
shrinking and in time will be a nice tight little world. I am so tired that I
feel foolish — I have quite talked my brain into an addled state.

LEXINGTON, Dec. 8th, 1873.

... I had a dull ride to La Grange, the cars were crowded, there being
the whole Fifth Avenue Troop aboard. Whether it was the weight of wit
or wickedness that made us fall behind time I cannot say, but we made
slow progress. I have had a busy day talking to many men of many minds.
It is not going to be easy to get much money ; they are disposed to be " cheese-
parers," these legislators, possibly in a rattish way. It seems an intelligent
body of men, much above the old average of ability. I shall soon know
whether they are disposed to do well by the Survey or no. ... I have only
had six interruptions since I began this, though it is after nine o'clock, so I
shall have to put out my light and go to sleep in order to secure peace.

FKANKFOET, Feb. 11, 1874.

. . . The Survey matter looks rather blue. I still hope, however, that
Monday will see it well on its way and me well on mine to Cambridge. There
are all sorts of cross-purposes here which require looking after almost from
hour to hour. ... I have never been so impatient of delay ; I have been half
sick ever since I came here. . . .

CAMBRIDGE, Friday [no date].

... It looks as if I might be kept here until Sunday or Monday, though I
shall try to get away this evening. ... I have arranged with Eliot that
if I come back next autumn I am to have the post of geology alone, with about
half the work I did before and a salary of about $3000. I can reduce the
work to about eight hours of actual work each week. [This of course he did
not do.]

March 30, 1874.

... A silent and rather sad journey down the Ohio : fair night's sleep and
me void this morning. Have done a good day's work, cleaned away a great

DECIDED TO ROOST HIGH

LITHOGRAPHIC CAVE
FINDETH A SEW SPECIES

MISCALCULATES THE STRENGTH OF MATERIALS

LITHOGRAPHIC CAVE

THERE'S MANY A SLIP," ETC.

CATCHING EYELESS FISH

GEOLOGIZING IN SILHOUETTE

/v Jk~~-

^JL^> ^^ati^ "«*-«-L*&*rX*" ^Sf^^3>

LEAVING CAMP RETURNING TO CAMP

7 A. M. 7 P. M.

FOOTPRINTS

I SAY ! MISTER ! WILL THAT THING SHOOT ? OUR MINERALOGIST THOUGHT HE 'D LIKE TO

TAKE IT AWAY! IT SKEERS MY CREETER SEE THE MULE HE COULDN'T DRIVE

BEE SPRING CAMP

GEOLOGIZING IN SILHOUETTE

ON THE OHIO 281

score of things, am tired but hope for a good night's sleep though the house
is noisy. One month more and my roving will be done so far as Kentucky
is concerned for some time. Glory for that when it comes. . . .

LOUISVILLE.

... I arrived here in tolerable order at 4 A. M. Have just had a good
breakfast and am much set up thereby. Not much trouble from my cough,
which goes to show that knocking about agrees with me. Please take the map
which is in two sheets, — a map from the Big Sandy to Lexington, — and
send by express. Be on the lookout for another roll of traced maps; look up
accounts. I am sorry to be going away, but I shall turn my way home as
soon as possible. . . .

HAMILTON, BOONE COUNTY, June, 1874.

. . . We have reached this place, about fifty miles from Cincinnati — all
well, no startling adventures. Can* is enjoying himself, having taken
greatly to the tea, of which he is a famous compounder; each brew we think
of you and bless your provident care.

I see already the great profit of the journey in this fashion ; I have made
some important observations which had quite escaped me before. We are
red as boiled lobsters, sore-handed, but both quite well. No miasm observed.
I think the water is healthier than the bank. I shall write each day, but you
may not get letters oftener than twice a week, for the mails are rare in the
small towns.

NORTH BEND, June 20, 1874.

... I was glad you were so considerate as to send me the overcoat, etc.
You showed a fine strategic sense in your plan for intercepting us. We came
quietly but slowly, making only fifteen miles this day. ... I feel wonder-
fully better for the exercise of rowing. ... I am delighted with the chance
we get to see and to collect. . . . The teapot works well ; we had a good brew

on the boat, and C was enchanted with the onions. To-morrow we hope

to make thirty miles. I am sorry the river takes us each hour farther and
farther away. . . .

Camp at BEE SPRING [no date].

... A plow-horse and plenty of timber brought me here before dark in

excellent appetite for our camp fare. C has several skulls and is as happy

as a Carib therein. The tent stands water, which is the end of my fears.

S is more like the hero in "Chicken Hazard" than ever. P has

made some happy efforts at camp illustration, one in which I figure hand-
somely. You shan't see them (happy thought) unless you come to Grayson
Springs. I shall be around here for at least a week, but unless you come
by next Friday I shall saddle my horse and go deeper into the woods.

282 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

LlCHFIELD.

... I came here yesterday to the tune of continual rain. At sundown
came a clearing, and by to-morrow the streams will be f ordable and the roads
in a measure possible. I am going this morning to look for the young men
of my party. I shall find them within fifteen miles and shall have my business
done. ... If there were anything like the railroad system of England here
I could come home this evening and back on Monday. It is only 140 miles
in an air line, but it inevitably takes 18 hours to make it. So one is really no
better off than one would be with post horses, except as to price. Until
the children are old enough to look after themselves I fear we cannot go
about much together, but it will be a compensation for advancing years.

MAMMOTH CAVE [no date].

... If I had not been alone I should have enjoyed myself very much
the last ten days — the weather has been delightful, the sky and earth agree-
ing with each other. The woods are in all the tender beauty of early spring ;
ferns everywhere, and the perfectly dustless conditions are admirable for
irritable lungs; and the cave air, uniform and clean, is so good that one even
bears the want of light with patience. I should feel like inventing excuses
to stay here and sending for you were it not that there is no milk to be had.
A beautiful illustration of Kentucky thrift : in the sixty years the hotel has
been here it has not cleared enough land for decent pasturage. Otherwise the
food is bearable. . . .

In the autumn of 1874, as will be seen from the letters
given below, Mr. Shaler's outdoor work, chiefly for the Coast
Survey, was carried on in New England.

Coast Survey Camp, Sept. 23rd, 1874.

... I arrived here in good order and had a comfortable night's sleep. After
all I am tempted to bring you and the babies to some upper world like this,
and drowse away our lives in sleepy rural content — or discontent, as the
case may be. I cannot tell how long I shall be kept here, but I shall leave
no stone unturned (geological joke) to get back as soon as possible. I should
like to move Harvard College up to this hilltop ; teaching would not be half
the labor.

Coast Survey Camp, Hoosac Mountains [no date].

. . . Since the morning I have done two and a half miles, or one half of
the tunnel ; to-morrow shall do the rest. This finishes the bad leg work, the
remainder I can do on horseback or from a wagon. ... I shall accumulate

COAST SURVEY WORK 283

enough work to keep me busied with my hands: taking specific gravities
and so forth, for something like fifty days. The camp agrees with me.
I did a long morning's work and now feel very well. I shall try and bring
my observations to that point where I shall have at most one more journey
to make. ... Be assured I shall be home as soon as possible.

Camp, Hoosac Mt. [no date].

. . . Who should turn up yesterday but Sterry Hunt? He is looking after
some matters for the state and is staying at North Adams. I shall go there
this evening to have a conference with him about some points which he is
more competent to consider than I am. I have the satisfaction of being able
to give far more than I shall receive, for he is not up in the physical questions.
Chauncey Wright has been here with Charles Peirce for a day or two : he will
take this down to you.

Mr. Shaler often referred to this stay at the Hoosac Mountains
as one of the most interesting and intellectually inspiring
experiences of his life. To come in close contact with two such
broad and penetrating minds as Charles Peirce's and Chauncey
Wright's was a delight and stimulus to him. In the intervals
of their works their talk was persistent, lasting late into the
night and often even after they had got into bed.

It is evident from the following letter that Mr. Shaler con-
tinued to be engaged during the ensuing year with other im-
portant works for the government. Professor Benjamin Peirce
(director of the Coast Survey) writes : —

CAMBRIDGE, Oct. 8th, 1875.

... I have read and approved your profound and ingenious report upon
the geology of the coast, Boston to New York. But I do not profess to have
criticised it very minutely, for it was too difficult. Your handwriting, which
is nice to look at, is not easy for one to read, so I cannot make out every
word. . . . [The remainder of Mr. Peirce's long letter is hopelessly illegible.]

Shaler's difficult handwriting, as we have before stated, was
often an annoyance as well as a source of amusement to his
friends, as will be seen in the letter given below : —

June 24, 1875.

My dear Shaler: ... I presented your paper to the publishing com-
mittee and they considered the matter very favorably. There was but one

284 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

slight objection, the force of which you will recognize at once. No one could
read the MS. and say what was in the essay. Therefore they deputed me
to request you to fulfil the usual requirements and present the paper as a
communication at some future meeting. I dare say that this will annoy
you a little at first, but I think after a time it will be more amusing than
annoying.

I hope you have by this time entirely surmounted the first difficulties of
the summer campaign.

Very truly yours, A. HYATT.

It was doubtless his Coast Survey work that necessitated
many short journeys at this time, such, for instance, as the one
referred to in the next letter.

HINGHAM, April 23, 1875.

... Six o'clock found us here, about twenty-three miles behind us.
We wanted to go to Cohasset, but a likely-looking hotel tempted us to give
up the five miles. My companion is rather dull, not conceited enough to be
amusing. I feel somewhat rested already. I can't see my letters, and the
thousand and one things that solicit care are away from my hand. I shall
like the road after it turns towards home much better than I do now. My
horse and I feel alike, he constantly tries to turn around and evidently thinks
the performance very foolish. I am not sure that he is not right.

Within a month Mr. Shaler was back in Kentucky again
supervising the State Survey. He writes : —

May 15, 1875.

. . . We had a fatiguing journey to Grayson, the weather has been hot
and the roads something frightful for stones and gullies. If the boy gets here
with my horse I shall ride to S.'s camp, about fifteen miles, and, after seeing
him, take a boat to Vanceburg. ... I fear I shall not get home before
Wednesday morning, for I have promised the people of Lewis to come their
way, and I suppose they are in a certain sense entitled to my presence. I am
tired and stewed with heat. Generally in a bad humor. I see four months

of hot work ahead, but I hope to be able to go through it. P left me

to-day; he is a good fellow but a little tiresome with time, like most mortals.
The room is full of dorbugs; five already in the wash-basin by their own
blundering, so you may reckon the number. I wish I were home to-night,
even though I should have to take up the burden of another move the next
day. . . . Fortunately I am tired and can hope to find some forgetful-

IN KENTUCKY AGAIN 285

ness of the rather hateful present in sleep. My friends the B s here

have been very kind. They have an elegant house and are very hospitable.
This endless running around makes one's life a thing of shreds and
patches. I feel sick of it. ... Eighteen hours since I sent you a despatch.
No answer. . . .

June 1.

. . . Our nooning, tea-drinking, bug-fighting hour comes and gives me
time to write. All goes well, and we are getting along speedily towards
our camp, which we hope to reach on Thursday night. . . . Our nooning
reminds me quite forcibly of our Alleghany Camps — the sun, the shade,
the flies, the agreeable discomforts, all help the likeness. . . .

GRAYSON SPRINGS, June 3rd, 1875.

. . . We have just arrived jaded and hungry, ever so much leaner in body
and wearier in soul : thirty-six hours to rest, then I go south to look up my
camp. If it were in my power I should give up all wandering that took me
away from my belongings. . . .

June 4, 1875.

. . . We were very tired, so the day has been given to rest and writing.
... I have written my Lexington address; it is rather scrappy, but the
manuscript has the dust of forty counties on it and will need your copying
hand if it is to be read at all. This summer heat is training me down in
weight, but I seem to recover easily, though at times much worn. There is
nothing to do but to peg away hoping for the best.

Train, June 16th.

. . . Arrived in Louisville tired, but most of the fatigue was due to read-
ing on the train Victor Hugo's raving nonsense; it has a certain fascination
for one ; it is railway literature. They made me comfortable at the hotel.
Some of the rooms look as homelike as an English inn. The boys at table
know my leanings away from hot bread and towards milk, so I do not grow
less thin. It won't be so this coming week — " Farewell, a long farewell to
all my greatness," I can sing with Wolsey. There is one satisfaction, there
is less to carry and less for the ticks. One is willing to be lean to starve the
scoundrels. You had better bring a bottle of pennyroyal and train your nose
a little. I expect to adopt it as the perfume of the camp. . . . Please look
over my letters, answer those you can, and write the contents of the others.
Take the auditor's check to bank — this is important during 's sick-
ness. I wish you could show some kindness to the poor man. I fear the

286 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

dry-souled will do nothing for him in an illness which promises to be

long. I shall get to camp to-day if I can find a horse, mule, or other transpor-
tation. A ducking is on the bills, for I forgot my overcoat and the clouds
are sulkily watching for me ; fortunately I am neither sugar nor salt so I shall
not melt, but will growl through it and eat my ration and drink an apple
toddy (if it is not smashed) when I get to camp.

July 1st.

... A fog delays us and there is the well-known dismal tooting while
the boat crawls along. This cuts me out of a day. ... I feel very blue
about diving into the woods for ten days or more, but I take courage in the
hope that it will be the last time for some months. ... In packing manu-
scripts, note-books, etc., be very careful so that they shall be secure. ... I
forgot my razor, so you will find me in a ferocious beard when I come out
of the woods.

July 19th.

... A pleasant journey but a weary night, the unending grind of a stern-
wheeler crawling over sand-bars and stumps, a wretched hotel with the din
of dinner and its stench ; it makes me sick, so I must seek a level place in the
open if it is to be found.

Aug. 8.

... I am tolerably well but tired of this endless chase. Have had good
luck with my geological work but bad luck with my personal effects. I hope
you are gradually making ready for the trip East. Don't be anxious about
me, for I have some acquaintances at Hickman who will look after me, and
the hope of getting through quickly will carry me safely through. . . .

WlLLAKD, Aug. 18, '75.

. . . Everything has gone to sixes and sevens, only part of our things
arrived, horses sore-backed. This is a miserable chafing existence I lead
after all. I hope it will soon be mended. Am pretty well despite irritation
and hope to feel quite well as soon as we get into the woods. . . . Shan't
I be happy when we get our heads in the Cambridge Shanty! ... I am
anxious to have a quiet two weeks before the winter's dance begins.

Wednesday [no date].

. . . We shall sleep at Peach Orchard and make a long march to-morrow.
Am quite well, sleeping soundly at night. You will see on the edge of this
sheet evidence of a lamentable accident, the smashing of my quinine and
iron and the inundation of my portfolio ; this life of accidents is accursed.

IRKSOMENESS OF THE WORK 287

"Wednesday night [no date].

... I hoped that my delay at Albany was the last, but I had a dreary
wait of five hours at the Cleveland depot. ... I have never had a more
tedious and lonesome journey than this has been. It seems a month since
I started and an age is laid out in the five days to come. I have half a notion

that the Survey bill is fated to fail. P has not yet got in the bill and

this is much against it. He cannot act; he is a sort of McClellan in legisla-
tion. . . .

Dec. 22nd.

. . . Another day has gone and I come to my "fourthly." About the
only good thing in my days at present is their going. ... I am really
tempted to resign this Survey business, but it would be cowardly at this
moment. I shall have to wait until next autumn, at least then I must do
something to get the load of this winter journey off my shoulders. My
highest ambition is to do a [word illegible] work and do it well. I have done
my share of running up and down this world, for the present at least. . . .

FBANKFOBT, Dec. 23.

... I had a charming letter from you yesterday, which quite cheered
me up. ... I did not come directly to the hotel, but went to see the Gov-
ernor ; so I told Jeff [the porter], who was at the station, to pick me a room.
He remembered that we were here before, so, with a fineness that his white
betters would not have shown, he chose this, for which I thank him. I may
be able to start up the river on Sunday evening, which should bring me home
on Thursday.

Louisville Hotel, Dec. 24th.

... I came here belated by the train, full of happy people going here
and there to their Xmas Eve. This town is a rattle of sounds ; they are merry
enough, I dare say; but I am tired, so they are noise to me. . . . Have got
my work in pretty good trim ; it moves on fairly. ... So far I have been
quite well, but to-night I am extremely weary, I have never had a journey
go more irksomely by. I have only been a week and it seems a month since
I left home. . . .

Dec. 27, '75.

... It appears that the Survey bill is likely to pass the legislature.
I am glad for the sake of my hungry young friends and sorry for our own.
I am writing in the car ; a drunken man is yelling like a demon and prancing
like a devil — a coarse crowd, but full of a fiery animal vigor which in its
way is fine.

288 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

FRANKFORT, Dec. 28, '75.

... I am getting on pretty well save for a headache which promises me
a day of misery. The Legislature meets Friday ; I am to address them on
Monday. The chance for the Survey seems good, but many shake their
heads. I went to the governor's levee. The last I attended was seventeen
years ago; nearly all the men I knew then and saw there are dead. The
Governor and his wife are handsome and well mannered. The mass on the
whole are a very quiet-mannered people, not a bit loud — a great change in
thirty years. A fine but incongruous supper, serving its purpose, however, of
feeding a lot of hungry politicians.

Dec. 30, 75.

. . . Many protests are made against my leaving on Tuesday, but I cannot
stand the place any longer ; it is a perfect pandemonium. To make it worse,
the weather is like summer, grass and flowers growing as in spring, no frost
since I came here. Confusion is made more hateful by good weather. I have
seen no one but members of the Legislature, and am sick of the work, for it

is the hardest I have ever had to do. ... I shall have P stay here

after I have gone to complete the task of explanation; he fits the work,
I am sick of the business. It will be a close fight, but the strongest men are
for the Survey. [In regard to the answering of endless questions, he writes :]
I am pretty well and rested mentally, the conundrum devil is laid for the
moment at least.

Geological Cabinet, PHILADELPHIA, 1876.

... I had a dreary but pretty easy time to Philadelphia. Came here
this morning and found much that needed eye and thought. We shall do
very well for our means; though we fall behind many nations, we are not
surpassed by any state in the real utility of the show. . . .

Centennial Exposition, Friday [no date].

... A frightful throng here to-day, marring the earth on one of our per-
fect autumn days. I am in fair order, and, save for weariness of soul which

besets my devious ways, may be said to be well. Dr. R of Frankfort

goes with me to Cincinnati ; he is a good fellow and will light the way. . . .
Proctor is doing his duty manfully, and as he has his wife and children with
him he will be contented. Please send my compass and telescope combined,
the large opera-glass, rubber coat, and leggings to Morristown by express.
Send brown case with photograph proofs within it, pamphlet on the An-
tiquity of Caverns and Cave Life in the Ohio Valley, to Proctor at Phila-
delphia by mail or express.

LETTERS FROM ENGLAND 289

E. B. Tawney's letters throw further light upon this period.
He writes : —

BRISTOL, 1875.

. . . There is a notice in Nature of a paper by you in the Atlantic Monthly:
I thoroughly agree with what you say in the extract about the English
Geological Survey. It fails as a teacher: it is all rule of thumb and men
have to teach themselves. The reason is that the School of Mines is not in-
timately connected with the Survey and the School is badly treated : the
professors take little interest in it, and lecture therefore without exciting en-
thusiasm : no love of learning is begotten and no esprit de corps such as there
is in a university. . . .

. . . Two Memoirs arrived soon after your letter, on "Ohio-Cavern Life"
and "Recent Changes of Sea-Level on the Coast of Maine." They are a
source of pleasure to me ; reading them brings back pleasant remembrances,
snatches of Malvern, Val de Travers walks, in the way things jump into the
mind. I shall be glad to receive subsequent parts so that we may notice them
in the Geological Record.

Your account of the Appalachian summer teaching of geology sounds very
attractive, and if you have it on again next year I shall certainly try to run
over and see how you manage things. It is such a novel idea to us and it
seems as if it might possibly be imitated here ; it would be very desirable to
do so. Then as you say one could go to the Buffalo meeting. Many thanks
for the prospectus of the Lawrence Scientific School : it appears to be a most
complete system of teaching. ... I should like to see some of your arrange-
ments or understand more of them ; you are far ahead of us, I fear.

Again in Kentucky, Mr. Shaler writes: —

Camp Harvard, July 4, '76.

. . . This morning finds us climbing up to the gap-shrouded camp.
Seventeen days of pretty steady rain has given a natural look to things and
a promise of familiar days. Everything is at odds, nothing but the tents and

some food. C has done what was expected of him, but the others have

failed to do their duty. I hope to rush things at full pressure. ... I shall
get away on Saturday for a cruise to the northward ; after that I shall start
for North Carolina and wind up my own work as fast as possible. . . . The
mail here is abandoned, at least there has been none for a week. I shall have
to run my own line unless the government recovers its organization. I hope
for a letter by to-morrow, as I shall send out a searcher this evening. ... I
must seek still other aid from you; send two thermometers, one for use
in springs, costing say $3.00, Safford's Geology of Tennessee, etc., etc.

290 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

The above reference to the mail recalls the fact that at
Cumberland Gap going to the post-office was looked upon some-
what in the light of a joke. On one occasion the postmaster
produced a letter from some obscure corner and before handing
it to the owner, scanning it closely, discovered the postmark to
be Cambridge Station; seized with a thirst for knowledge, he
said, "I say, stranger, isn't Boston somewhere near Cam-
bridge?" This happy conjecture was afterward used with
effect when Bostonians assumed, as they sometimes did, that
Cambridge in a social way was an unimportant suburb of the
larger city.

Camp Harvard, July 7, '76.

. . . The machinery of our life gives little pause for anything but utter
weariness at night-time. I am glad of it, for it helps along the days. Im-
agine all of our troubles of last year repeated with half the people and you
can see it all before you. We have a pretty good set of students, up to the
average of last year I believe, but our Harvard men are not here yet; they
will bring it down materially, for they can't compare in character or attain-
ments with the teachers we have. So far I have kept quite well owing to
care in eating and exercise. Several of the people have been upset just as
last year because of their excessive eating. Still unending rains, but a cool
air at night giving a chance for peaceful sleep. ... I have never welcomed
the going of the days as I do now ; they slip away slowly but surely and I
now count near one fourth of the time behind me.

Camp Harvard, July 12, '76.
... I came back last night, having been absent since last Monday. At

midnight I was aroused by a messenger with direful news : a Mr. C from

Minnesota, who had betaken himself to archaeology, he having been much
of a worker in that field, was killed by the caving-in of an excavation in a
mound about twenty miles from here. I have just finished preparations for
sending the body home ; at least we will try, though earth may claim its own
before we can get to the railway. Another man was damaged, but we hope
he will live. ... I should be more chagrined than I am, were it not that

C 's work was no part of the school work and was the result of a sudden

change of plan for which I am in no way responsible. Moreover, he was of
fifty years and had been digging in mounds for years; besides he was fore-
warned of the danger. ... I found four letters from you, which have
cheered me greatly, and I need such help now. . . .

SURVEY WORK IN KENTUCKY 291

FRANKFORT, Aug. 3, '76.

. . . Another busy day behind me and night that is welcome as another
stage on. Have got on smoothly with the Governor. There is still further
trouble with the printing and the end is not yet. I shall have a boat-ride up

the Kentucky River for ten miles with J this evening. I expect it will be

a bore but rather less than staying in the hotel. ..." Those to whom God
wishes well," Schiller says, "those sends He forth out into His beautiful
world." I used to think this fine, but Schiller was never a state geologist.
I shall hurry to Morristown for letters.

DANVILLE JUNCTION, Aug. 5, '76.

... I have just learned that W was in Danville when I passed through.

I spent an hour in a pelting rain trying to find him ; asked at post-office,
telegraph-office, of mutual acquaintances, etc., but did not find his majesty,
who I suppose will be surprised that he could be lost in a town of five thou-
sand people. However, he will doubtless feel badly enough at the result
of his carelessness. This is his great fault, he cannot provide for contingen-
cies. ... It will be a good lesson to him. I am in a bad humor and won't
write any more. I have been in a bad humor ever since I left home and fear
it is getting chronic. You must prepare to treat it when we meet.

Near MORRISTOWN, Aug. 8, '76.

. . . Have just finished a long chase for my party, having ridden the
greater part of last night. I find them all well and happy. I feel a sense of
rest at having my long chase behind me. I am lean and a little overworked,
but I believe the open-air life will do much to set me up again. . . . This is
a pretty country, forlorn and far away, but the air is sweet and pure — that
counts for much.

NEWPORT, KT., Oct. 14, '76.

. . . Arrived at 9 P. M. in good condition, better than usual. They seem
poorly here; all climate-ridden and suffering from Centennial collapse.

has seen my lucubrations on the South and is in sore dudgeon thereat ;

he will recover however. I now believe Tilden can be elected unless there
is a sudden access of folly in the Democracy. Indiana has gone about 5500
Democratic and can hold it in November. New York and Connecticut are
safe. So there is some hope of getting out of the frying-pan whether into the
fire or no remains to be seen hereafter. I rode out with Dr. R , a well-
educated physician from Frankfort. He is a diligent student and an enthu-
siast in his profession. Knows the use of water cure and is in successful

practice with it. Found G here ; he is as dull as ever, but I believe he

is not chronic.

292 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

FRANKFORT, KY., Dec. 7, '76.

... I am weary with an unspeakable weariness which has grown with
every hour of my journey. . . . The Survey bill has made no headway
yet. I shall drag it out and make it win or lose this week. It looks as if I
might have to stay here until Friday to do this. I shall have to go over to

Lexington to-morrow and get a quiet night at Dr. Peter's. P and N

and the others seem absolutely dependent on the Survey and helpless if it
fails. The Legislature is without an efficient leader and so does little business.
I greatly doubt whether the bill gets through.

LEXINGTON, Dec. 29, '76.

... I have had a piece of good fortune. M and P , half buried in

snow in western Kentucky, wisely decided to give up the field work with-
out waiting for me, so I find them here. I have therefore escaped the journey
to that part of the state and can fairly hope to be on my way home Tuesday
evening. It is an additional reason for being grateful that we are now having
a prodigious snow-storm, the heaviest in this region for fifty years. Find
matters in good train here; the season's work has been good on the whole,
the best yet had in the Survey. I have been pretty well so far. . . .

FRANKFORT, Dec. 30, '76.

... I wrestled over here this afternoon in a train baffled with snow
which people do not know how to deal with. I find enough bothers to keep
me until Tuesday afternoon, when I hope to be away for home. ... If
I have much more of this travel to do I shall take to venturing in telegraph
stock so that I may feel that it is allowable to send you as many messages
as I want to. ...

The succeeding letters close the correspondence while Mr.
Shaler had charge of the Kentucky State Survey.

FRANKFORT, KY., Jan. 3, 1878.

. . . There is a red heat here over the senatorial election ; we cannot get
a hearing until that is over. I have sought for my enemies, but do not find
them. I dare say they will appear in time. We count the necessary vote,
however, and hope to get through in decent shape. I do not intend to come
out again in February. The work is detestable.

Since writing the above, Stoddard Johnson has been talking to me for an
hour to convince me of the absolute need of my giving a lecture on next
Wednesday, when he believes the election will be over. I am so determined
to make this my only visit that I may consider it is best to do this. I have

SURVEY WORK IN KENTUCKY 293

two or three thousand spent dollars in the question and at least twenty-
four hundred to come. If the bill passes it will not hereafter require legisla-
tive action and will not compel me to take winter journeys. It is snowing
hard and I fear you are having your share as it comes from the east. I hate
the thousand miles that separate me from Cambridge.

FBANKFORT, KY., Feb. 13, 1878.

I hoped to have started from here to-morrow, but I fear that it will be
Friday before I can get away. I shall come through New York in order to
see the Tilly Foster mine. In case the ground is clear of snow I may try
to get up there on Sunday to finish up my work. . . .

HUMBOLDT, TENN., June 15, 1878.

I left Louisville at 12.30 and had a very disagreeable ride to this place —
stifling heat and coal smoke making a very good imitation of hell. Dante
needs come again to do justice to it. It is curious to see how far along the
season is here. Peaches and plums ripe, and corn in some fields with the
plume showing its yellow hue among the green. I have a few hours of waiting
here in a place which surely was first named for Humboldt the patent medi-
cine man. All the fences are decorated with Buchu or Ague Bitters adver-
tisements. I am sure that the people have confounded the names of these
two good and great men. Such is fame.

I shall be in Columbus this evening at 8 P. M., if the ague doesn't shake
the train off the track ; the very road seems to have the ague.

I am glad to have you spared sight of this forlorn country, ... it has
an aboriginally damned look which is almost awe-inspiring. Hungry, ravaged
fields which the woods cannot reclaim, scabby-looking cotton-fields, and
dog-fennel pastures. It is hard to gather hope in such fields.

COLUMBUS, KENTUCKY, June 16, 1878.

. . . We are tolerably comfortable here ; the house is very clean and well
kept; but it is a shifting little town on the banks of the Mississippi, where
it is gridironed by the sun. The thermometer is up to 90 degrees. The land-
lady is " sort of kinsfolk." She is a sister of my old friend Edward T , who

long ago eat and danced himself into the jaws of death. The good woman
makes a slender subsistence in keeping a little inn : the natural end of many
Virginia efforts with life. I dried myself in the sun for three hours this morn-
ing ; it seemed to limber me up considerably. I find myself as usual without
a toothbrush. I should have three, but they seem to have a curious volatile
nature in my hands. I shall have to rob the next apothecary of his stock and

294 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

stuff all my baggage with them. ... I now remember that it is the custom
to wear short dresses at the Mammoth Cave. So you will have to provide
yourself with some sort of bloomeresque costume. You must not give up the
journey. It is not likely that I shall ever be called this way again. I hope
to give a good deal of energy to getting through rapidly, and as I travel
towards home for the first two weeks, be sure that no grass will grow under
my feet.

Cainp near MAYFIELD, June 20, 1878.

We get along slowly : the roads are crooked and the devil of delay in every
corner. I now see to my sorrow that I cannot get back to you on Saturday.
We have been quite well; the country we have traversed is healthy and
high, a beautiful farming country, about the most uniformly good land
in the state. . . . We must be at the Mammoth Cave on the sixth. I shall
in this way get about a week away from Camp. I am utterly disgusted at
the failure of my plans for getting home this week.

Camp, July 28, 1878.

I find my camp, the northern party, — for it is divided into two, — in
rather poor shape, doing little save getting over the ground. Last night the
other, the southern party, came to a Bull Run retreat, having managed to
smash up their instruments, after which, ceasing work, they fell back upon
my camp in a demoralized condition. . . . The following is my plan. . . .
I have nothing to do but to tell over this plan for putting distance behind
me. It is the way out of my present wilderness to the happy land of home.
Please see that money is sent to me at Abingdon.

Camp at OLD LANDING, July 31, 1878.

Proctor turns west this morning, so that I get a chance to send a letter
which will not run the gauntlet of the mountain mails, when each five miles
the letters are poured upon a bar-room table and each man takes his pick.
My camp is again in working order and doing all that the weather and
country will allow. ... So far we have found an interesting country with
a big-limbed, hospitable people. The camp keeps well ; they are a set of
bronzed savages that do me credit as a camp-master. I shall have to hire
two yoke of oxen to complete my outfit, then we can creep up the hills,
and along the valleys towards our goal. We are camped in a beautiful
amphitheatre, with fine cliffs all around and some fine caves, where it is
the fashion to hide for a while after having killed a man; this adds a little
romantic touch to the scene.

SURVEY WORK IN KENTUCKY 295

Camp near BEATTYVILLB, Aug. 1, 1878.

Let us congratulate ourselves that another month of this troubled summer
time is among the shadows. We may fairly hope that another six weeks
will bring us to our own roof again. We made a good march yesterday,
despite a long hill that required four oxen and two horses to each wagon
as well as a dozen men to steer the craft. The weather was fine and the woods
charming. . . . We now go into a region of mails once a week, so, but for
passing chances, we must get few letters out to mail. I believe that it will
not be possible to get to Abingdon before the nineteenth of the month with-
out wearing out men and horses or slighting work. So far the wild folk here
have been very kind and neighborly, as they doubtless will be to the end of
our road. , . .

Camp near JACKSON, Aug. 5, 1878.

We are creeping on, every now and then getting to a piece of road which
seems impossible to wagons, but we still get on. In places it is hard to tell
that there has ever been a road at all. All that there ever was here to decay
is decaying, at least in the way of man's work, for the river runs pure and
the woods are beautiful, the better for the worthlessness of man. The people
raise just enough for subsistence and get their share of earthly satisfaction
out of their feuds and whiskey ; but for all their shif tlessness they are kindly
and hospitable. ... So far, except for ticks, jiggers, fleas, and other
plagues of the kind, I have been well. There is, however, a weariness with the
life coming over me which it will take all my patience to restrain. I shall
reckon on getting to Cambridge on the twentieth. This is a fair-weather
reckoning however.

Camp near PENNINGTON GAP, July 9, 1879.

. . . Our camp is in very rude shape, a sad falling-off from that at Cum-
berland Gap. Our old tent, ragged and forlorn, is up, but it made me sad to

occupy it. I was up all night with D , who had a severe attack of cholera

morbus. . . . Our plans are well matured, so I hope for quick and profitable
work. " I shall let folks see how spry I be." To-day at noon I count off one
third of my exile. . . .

Camp at PENNTNGTON GAP, July 17, 1879.

. . . We have had a hard journey . . . and there is another sharp pull
before us from this afternoon to next Wednesday, in which time we shall
have to make a good many miles of travel ; but I shall find them shorter than
before, for I am taking great comfort from the reflection that I am in the
last ten days of my absence. ... It is possible that McKay may require
my services in North Carolina : if so there will be but little time left for any

296 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

formal rest before term begins. I don't feel that I need it more than last
year. My camp life has not been very chafing, though it has been harder
work than usual. You will find that the laurel leaves I send will give you
good subjects for painting; they are as beautiful as flowers in their forms
and colors. ... It is not worth while to send any papers here. I have no
time to read them.

The next letter is written on the way to Colorado.

On C. & O. R. R., Aug. 23, 1879.

I have got through one of the most uncomfortable nights of the summer.
No sleeping-car, and a lot of chattering idiots to cut out the sleep one might
have had doubled up on the seat. Still it is one eighth of my journey done.
. . . The 25th, Monday, is almost gone; I have been occupying it with my
camp accounts. I have less hair on my head, but they are about straight. I
don't believe I have lost this time more than fifty dollars by the wayside. . . .

Near KANSAS CITY, Saturday, 1879.

The third night is behind us and we are fairly out on this western sea of
earth. It is a dull, clay-sodden earth to which no tenderness of association can
well cling. It seems to me a vast, broad sow fat and piggy prairie of genera-
tions of bacon and savory fatness, but not the mother earth that one loves.
Men will have to live well if they are to sweeten it by deeds and make it lovely
by memories. Kansas City is forlorn-looking but prosperous, a conglomera-
tion of rich, poor, decent, vicious, such as I have never seen. The depot is a
wonderful whirl of trains and on them drifts out a strange tide of wanderers.
I pity the archangel who has to foresee what is to come out of this strange
sowing of men in this wilderness — forty sorts of wheat and forty sorts of
tares all at once. Although there is much to see I am rather bored with it all.
When we see the mountains it will be a relief; but I would not swap the
quarter-acre at 13 Bow Street for all this empire of plains. I shall write
every day, but as the chance for mails is not good, you must not be anxious
if delay occurs.

DENVER, COLORADO, Dec. 22, 1879.

... I have seen the "Rockies." The view is much like that from Mon-
treux (you remember the first time we saw the Dent du Midi) except that
in place of the lake we have the valley of the Platte River. They are majestic,
but unlovely, a stern battle-front of mountains built up against the ancient
seas that wrapped these plains. . . . We have here one of the owners of
the mine, a fine rough fellow. I believe he is honest and that McKay will
take his chance. Next Monday I hope to be homeward bound. ... It is

ADVICE FROM AGASSIZ 297

delightful here, clear, crisp, and, though cold, not chilling. I walked all the
morning without needing an overcoat. The town is new and bare but full
of decent people and with a great promise for the future. There is a curious
absence of children. . . .

LEADVILLE, COLORADO, Dec. 25, 1879.

A merry Xmas to you and the children. I wish I could show you the view
from the window where I sit. We stayed over night at a mining-camp on
the hillside four hundred feet above Leadville. On the west the mountains
rise into the great range that parts the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific.
At their feet lies the plain of the upper Arkansas, and on its hither side the
concentrated squalor of this great camp where thirty thousand hungry,
eager mortals are scratching for wealth in these ancient hills. I was on the
mining-ground yesterday and am pleased with its prospect. Yet I do not
feel sure that McKay will come to a contract with the owners. . . . The
thermometer is 20 degrees below zero, the snow deep, and though the cold
does not bite as at home, it is hard to bear. My wits seem frozen in me.
I find it hard to fix my mind on work or hold impressions.

Aside from his field work, the letters from Louis Agassiz,
extending over a great many years, throw additional light upon
his scientific work, and the variety of the demands which Mr.
Shaler met in connection with the organization and building up
of the Museum; also upon the whole-souled way in which he
labored to promote the interests of the institution. There were
occasions when he not only had his own hands full, but the
added responsibility of holding others up to the mark. In one of
his letters Agassiz writes, "Keep all these people busy; make
the most of them by pushing them hard." Now and then there
is a fatherly word of warning lest he do too much.

"... I beseech you/' he says, "not to lend yourself towards
the College to more work of lecturing than you can well bear.
They are not likely in a hurry to relieve you of anything you
have once undertaken. Remember that I have had to go on
with zoology and geology together for more than twenty years,
and I am afraid too much teaching will interfere with your
own scientific progress. Therefore begin with the distinct
understanding with the President that you will not consider

298 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

yourself bound to do year after year what you are willing to do
this year in order to make a right beginning."

And again: "After what N told me just now of your

days I beseech you not to undertake more than you can carry.
Take my example as a warning; and look out for assistance,
active and efficient, sooner than I did. You might at once
prepare the ways with some of those working at the Museum."

Later, in regard to the arrangement of fossil collections sent
to Dom Pedro II and a number of distinguished scientific
men, Agassiz writes, " I have only praises and thanks for such
work." Mrs. Agassiz, in the letters which she wrote for her hus-
band, again and again speaks of "the comfort and peace your
efficient and affectionate sympathy gives the Professor."

The letters of 1870 written by Agassiz close the correspond-
ence so far as Museum matters are concerned. During this
period Mr. Shaler went frequently at Agassiz 's request to Deer-
field, where he was staying, to talk over plans for the instruc-
tion of natural history, and other matters. One of these letters
is significant, since the closing sentence reflects Mr. Shaler 's,
as well as Agassiz 's, mind in regard to a subject of high
import. Agassiz writes :"...! cannot tell you how much
comfort your sympathy for my plan gives me. ... I shall
have upon the wall cases of the main room busts or portraits
of Aristotle, Rondelet, Linnaeus, Pallas, Cuvier, and Humboldt.
I should like to have Moses there as the man who wrote the
first geological essay and rescue him from the false position
in which Jews and Christians hold him. This little room will
oblige physicists and geologists to remember that our earth is
the home of spiritual and intellectual beings. ..."

CHAPTER XXI

ITALY

1881-1882

IN the summer of 1881, owing to the ill health of a member of
his family and also to his own run-down condition, Mr. Shaler
set sail for Europe. Going first to England, by easy stages he
gradually made his approach to Italy, and before the cold
season closed in, established himself comfortably in a villa out-
side the Porta Romana at Florence. When he first saw the
Tuscan city it was girt about by the ancient walls that for cen-
turies had been its protection against its many enemies. But
now on one side these walls were torn away to let the town grow
freely should it fancy to expand. The barrier that once served
for safety now only kept the smugglers of wine and oil from
evading the duty. The brisk customs officer, with his pen over
his ear and a probe to rummage in the loads of hay, took the
place of the wardens of old with their trumpets and cross-bows.
The old scenes were doubtless more picturesque, but through
the gate the tide of life still flowed. All the wagons of the coun-
try people must stop and be searched, for everything that
came into the town was taxed. This made the gate a whirlpool
in the stream of life, and Mr. Shaler never passed through it,
though it might be several times a day, without seeing some-
thing that was worth telling, or getting some hint as to the real
nature of the people.

In his walks he was frequently accompanied by an English
officer who had survived many perilous campaigns in India.
Both were exceedingly critical of the Italian soldier ; they de-
precated his lack of discipline and especially when on duty his

300 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

slouchy gait. At the Porta Romana the sentinel who guarded
the entrance, no matter how often he was replaced, was to their
minds always the same incompetent pigeon-toed fellow. The
general insisted that some day in his march he would inevitably
twist one foot round the other, stumble and stick his bayonet
in the nearest passer-by. To be thus ignominiously despatched
was a fate dreaded by the Indian veteran. He and Mr. Shaler
therefore would give the soldier a wide berth and would laugh-
ingly congratulate one another whenever they escaped the
threatened danger.

As it turned out, the weather for several months proved to
be exceptionally fine. Mr. Shaler was thus able to indulge his
fancy for long tramps and for the exploration of geological
localities. In the intervals between his more extended excur-
sions he studied Florence, — its architecture, its picture gal-
leries, its social conditions, — and became exceedingly fond of
what he called "the gloomy old city." Living in the artists'
quarter of the town, he saw much of the sculptors who congre-
gate there, and became an interested and keen critic of their
work. In several instances where he had gone farther afield
than they he was able to guide them to places holding some
bit of precious work, hidden from those who tread only the
much-frequented ways.

During the winter there came the news of his father's death,
and although he was not unprepared for it, it was nevertheless
a great grief to him, as the following letters show.

To his brother-in-law, the Hon. Albert S. Berry : —

FLORENCE, ITALY, Jan. 18, 1882.

Your telegram came to me this noon. The date was lost from it, so I am
not sure when the end came. If my mother bears it badly and you think
seeing me would be a consolation to her, please telegraph me at any moment.
... I cannot tell you how much I deplore my absence. If it were for any
private gain I should curse the day I set my foot on ship and put half the
world between me and home. The parting is harder to bear than I thought
it would be. I know that he wished for death and that death was the only

ITALY — DEATH OF HIS FATHER 301

help the world held for him. Yet now that it has come I feel as if much of
the good of life has gone with him. Time will wear this down, nothing is
permanent with man, still a great change will always rest upon our lives
who knew him for father. ... I cannot thank you enough for your cease-
less kindness in our great trial.

To his mother : —

FLORENCE, ITALY, Jan. 18, 1882.

I would that I could have been with you when the end came. I have never
so grieved over our parting as I have done this day. I hope you will make
nothing of the distance, but let me come to you if I can be of any comfort
to you. ... I so hope that the end was in peace and that you have courage
to bear the blow. I know that it will be hard to bear, for I feel myself that it
is a sore trial, though we have so long awaited it and know so well that it is
for the best. Let us take heart in the surety of that meeting beyond the
earth that should help us to bear all partings here. When we parted, he
told me that he longed for the end that he might no longer suffer from the
confusion of mind that beset him. . . .

In his books Mr. Shaler ordinarily wrote so philosophically of
death that to those who knew his devoted nature, it seemed
almost as if upon such occasions he made an effort to chill his
deeper emotions. It must be said, however, that in the course
of his life he had been called upon to mourn those only, who,
either because of disease or the limitations of years, had ended
their days at a timely moment. For all the largeness of his
conception of life and death we can but believe that, in face of
the supreme bereavement, philosophy would have been to him,
as to others, a cold comforter. In other words, when the man
of science holds the pen there is a sense of the sufficiency of
philosophy, but when the poet writes there is the cry of the
heart. In his "Elizabeth" he speaks of —

That sorrow vast and vain for ages gone
For beauty turned to dust ; for voices still
That waked forgotten love to ecstasy,
For all the souls we know kin to our own
With whom we never can exchange a cry
Across the gulf that parts us.

OF THE

UNIVERSITY

r F

302 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

In the notes which Mr. Shaler kept while in Italy is ample
record of his outdoor experiences. His scientific observations
and those concerned with human nature are closely interwoven,
for here as everywhere the scientist and the humanist marched
together. Since the lack of space compels a choice between the
two, we shall give extracts dealing more particularly with men
and the picturesque aspects of Italian life; for these subjects
seem in a way to be nearer to him.

The first walk he describes was that which led to Impruneta.

Most travellers in Italy know Florence, but few are sagacious enough to
give time for journeys in its environs. . . . Within twenty miles around
there is the Italy of the middle ages with its face unchanged, as unlike the
Haussmannized city as the fourteenth century is unlike our own. There are
roads that look as they did when they bore the armies of Rome, and villages
that Dante would find in nothing different from what they were when he
saw hell beneath their pavements and a better flame in the blue sky above.
. . . Let me premise that these journeys should be made afoot, or if that
is not possible, in the little native two-wheeled gigs. If the stranger goes
in a city carriage he carries with him an atmosphere of disenchantment —
a sort of cock-crow that sends the mystery away from his path. The beggar
and the innkeeper mark him for their own. Every group of peasants dis-
solves and the people face about to gape at the English milor and speculate
on him. Even the hills and walls look unnatural. The people are always
sensitive to anything like obtrusive observation, for among this singularly
sensitive folk the least onlooking freezes them into stolidity. . . .

I left Florence before sunrise of a winter's morning when the snow-clad
hills were still sending their tides of nipping air into the green valleys below.
The streets and roads of the town were white with hoar frost, and at the
Porta Romana the peasants, waiting with their loads of wine and oil for
the slow process of the octroi officers, were crowded around a fire of straw
or dancing with antic gyres to keep their slow blood in motion. These
Italian skies light wonderfully at dawn. At evening there is want of cloud
to enrich the vault, but in the coming of day the light floods the upper air,
which though transparent is vaporous, and seems to set it afire. This gold
of the heavens came lower and lower until it caught the hilltops at Certosa
two miles out; the dawn was just catching the spires and roofs in its glory
while the river Arno held the night in its vapors. I have never seen this effect
of sun-bathed hilltops so perfect in any other place. It turned the ancient
monastery into something favored of heaven, and despite the want of favor

A WALK TO IMPRUNETA 303

for all things monkish that comes to those who know Italy well, I could not
help feeling that there must be a holy ghost, a gift of things unspeakable
descending in this flood of light. Near by is an avenue of cypresses that climb
a long hill toward the east, going from the stream to the summit. These
Italian cypresses are the most monumental of trees; stiff as a Lombardy
poplar, they want grace and give none of that sense of enduring shelter
that belongs to our Northern trees, but like all trees they have a perfect
fitness for their landscape. Here the best use of a tree is to look monumental.
These cypresses are tiresome things when they grow wild ; they look like the
trees of Noah's Ark, but in an avenue they are like the propylsea of a temple.

At the bridge over the Arno I stopped to watch the stream of folk going
to the city. An Italian town lives from day to day, so each morning the
carts stream in full of all sorts of stores. They are vehicles of two thousand
years ago, two-wheeled, of a form that we may sometimes see carved on
Roman monuments ; the horses and donkeys weighed down with gear that
helps nothing save their picturesqueness. In a quarter of an hour I saw con-
tributions to almost every natural need — wood, charcoal, heaps of faggots
for the brief fire that the Italians use for cooking, crates of wine and oil,
wagons with boards stacked up like hay in a lattice of wooden strips; and
with them a host of sturdy, cold, pinched men munching their breakfast of
wine and bread as they went.

In the corners of the houses where the sun's rays were coming the people
huddled like barnyard fowls taking the enlivening warmth. . . . There are
few small dwellings and these of rather recent date. The greater part of
the dwellings are really strongholds that could easily be held even in modern
war against anything but artillery. The love of strong construction that the
ages of fear imposed on the people makes even the modern houses keep
to the fortress type. Up on the rolling table-land I find people at work in
the field. The Tuscan is as good a spader as the Irishman. He is an earth-
lover. There is no end to the brawny patience with which he cares for the
fat valley lands where his vines and mulberry trees share the ground with
grain, or gives to the rescuing of some profit from the rocky hillsides above.
The men and women work together in the fields. At this season they are
spading the richer spaces between the mulberry trees for their spring vege-
tables. A straight-handled spade, the staff six feet or so long, is driven into
the ground, the handle is shaken to and fro in a rhythmic swing, and the
slow, steady motion gives time for the melodious chatter that seasons all
labor in this cheerful land.

In three miles of way I have passed through several clusters of villas, the
summer homes of Florentines. The habit of having a country as well as a
town house is older here than in any other land, and to the close association

304 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

it brings between the town and country folk is attributable much of the
good relations that maintain between the wealthy and the poor. The ten-
antry hold the land on the metayer system, the most perfect tenant system
that has ever been devised. The landowner furnishes the land, the seed,
the beasts, and the few tools that the work requires. When the crop is gath-
ered he receives half in kind. The rest goes to the tiller. It is easy to see
that this is a true partnership, and that the vexed and vexing things that
come with rack-rents are avoided. If the heavens favor the crop both peasant
and lord share the increase. In times of bad seasons they share the hard-
ships. As long as a tiller is faithful to the work the proprietor has no interest
in change ; given the inequalities that must exist between rich and poor,
this system is the best that can be found for lessening the hardships. We
see its results in the easy courtesy that rules both classes. If you speak
to a peasant he meets you with a smile and a bow ; no cringing, no sense
of difference marks your talk with him. The droll land pride of the French
peasant, and the cloddy quality of the English laborer, are alike absent.
There is an easy swing about his social contact that is hard to describe.

Impruneta is a village of two or three thousand people gathered about a
fine old Tuscan church with solemn monumental outer walls and a fine
unbroken tower, windowless up to the bell clock. Though outwardly a
mean heap of masonry, the church is rich within. The town is gathered
about the church, and the church is gathered about a wonderful figure of
the Virgin.

At Impruneta I met by appointment my guide to whom I was commended.
I had been assured that he was quite insane in a harmless way, but that he
knew the nooks and crannies of the hills for many miles about; guides are
rare in Italy, and except from the shepherds within range of their sheep
walks, it is hard to get any advice concerning the mountain paths. My guide
looked his reputation. He was an unkempt, fantastic old fellow who, from
the time I appeared around the corner of the road until I left him at sun-
down, poured on me a torrent of rural Tuscan that was wonderful to hear.
Save when I succeeded in avoiding him on some very steep hill I had no
respite from the deluge of his conversation. Even then the rest was brief,
for by those skilled in this liquid speech a cubic inch of air can be whipped
by the tongue into an amazing lather of sound. Despite the badgering he
gave me, which was the sorer because I am accustomed to walk alone, this
old fellow was mightily interesting. He had patched-up opinions on every-
thing and had a curiosity that was a devouring flame. He looked almost
bloodthirsty when I failed to stand and deliver an answer to his thousand
and one questions. It was clear that his insanity came from a violent acces-
sion of the philosophic desire to know.

A WALK TO IMPRUNETA 305

In the course of my day I managed to see the industries that support this
well-conditioned village. The land about it is so poor that it cannot do much
more than feed itself ; indeed but for the Madonna there would never have
been a town here at all. The burden of life is carried on straw braid. The
women and children do this work ; the men are busied in preparing the straw
with various dyeing and softening processes for the work of the hands.
There are also some potteries. It was curious to notice that the forms of
the vessels have not changed since ancient times. It is only when the people
begin to consider the foreign market that they get a modern flavor in their
work. The great amphorae, each big enough to hold several middle-sized
thieves, particularly fixed my attention. The people of this land have never
become reconciled to the barrel. One rarely sees hooped vessels of any form,
and they are generally tubs. I have never seen a cask on duty that would hold
over fifteen gallons, and these are of a flattened form and show that the prin-
ciple of the barrel has never been understood. The same is the case with the
wheelbarrow; this, though an invention of Leonardo da Vinci, has never
taken in Italy. No room is found here for the machinery of life that has been
invented in this century. Simple as the life is, it is cast in an iron mould.

After my tramp about Impruneta I found my way into a little country
inn where a provision of bread, eggs, and sausages was after much din
brought out of the darkness. My guide ate with me and had the best of the
appetite as he had of the conversation. It was wonderful to see how he,
though a little man, could do trencher work while he lectured me on all con-
ceivable things. A flask of wine and half a grindstone of bread went to support
his loquacity. With all his wolf-like hunger there was a certain grace in his
table-manners that would have been sought in vain among Northern people
of the same class. The landlord was a Garibaldian ; the only picture in the
house was one of this hero and when I took off my hat to it he almost em-
braced me. It is good to see the intensity of the devotion to this man of
the people. Unfortunately devotion to him means a separation from the
old rule of the church, and this rule, however evil in many ways, cannot
be destroyed without leaving their uneducated minds hopelessly adrift. . . .

My guide led me to his house, entered through dark and unsavory ways
and several ladderlike steps. The larger room was the place of abode, and
the shop where he earns a pittance in carving out little blocks of the beautiful
serpentines which I came to study. By the fireplace, where probably there
had been a fire some centuries ago, before the forest was stripped away, sat
two women, his wife and daughter. Both were pinched-looking and still,
except that their fingers were nimbly at work pleating straw, their morn-
ing's work, several yards in length, lying in bright yellow curls at their feet.
The walls black with the slow coloring that centuries give, the stone floor,

306 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

the sunless aspect of things, made it as forbidding a dwelling as one often
sees. The place seemed very old ; its present inmates may have been the last
of half a hundred tenants of its sombre space. The memory turns with
pleasure from these tomb-like dwellings, from the momentary prisoners
of the place, to the frontiersman's log cabin, or the New England wooden
cottage, that thoroughly belongs to its possessor, fits his momentary needs,
and is as much a part of his individuality as a snake's skin or the burrow
of a rabbit. All modern Italy is in the prison of antiquity.

After I had enriched my guide by purchasing a lot of his polished stones
we went again into the fields. . . . The serpentines at Impruneta are sin-
gularly varied in their structure and of wonderful beauty. In no small
acquaintance with stones I have never seen more beautiful bits than can
be found here. When polished they are natural mosaics. Yet they are and
always have been quite unused. This people have so little sense of natural
beauty that they would always prefer a Roman scarf to a rainbow.

Before the day at Impruneta was ended I climbed a hill that gave a fine
view to the southwest. Travelling in the valleys of Italy one is apt to con-
ceive it as a very fertile land ; such it is near the streams and on some of the
mountain-spurs, but from the highlands we look over vast wastes of sterile
mountains that give only a scanty pasture to little flocks of sheep and goats.
Even in this garden region of Tuscany the average fertility is less than that
of New Hampshire. On my walk I fell in with some woodcutters at their
mid-day meal, to which they were reclining on couches of brush; a loaf of
bread in the substantial form of a small grindstone, and Florence flasks of
the reddened water that does duty here for wine, was their diet. This three
times a day, with some bits of pork or mutton on feast days, makes the staple
of their food. Yet they are a capitally conditioned race. They are never tall,
rarely misshapen, but a remarkably even, serviceable-looking lot of men
and women. The women I met in my roving walks, which led us by small
households, were all busy with their straw-weaving and seemed to have no
household cares. The bread is baked by the baker and the wine is made once
a year. This is the staple of all meals that have been eaten by the peasant
since before the time of Rome. The warming of the household is carried on
by means of a pot of ashes with a live coal buried in it ; at the start it is urged
to its fiery course by means of a small paper fan. When well alight it will
give out about as much heat as a small kitten ; but by nursing it in their
hands and putting it under their garments the aged women seem to keep
warm enough to braid straw and gossip.

The next tramp of which there are notes is in the region
between Prato and Monte Ferrato.

TUSCAN MOUNTAINS 307

January 25, 1882.

. . . My aim was to see some masses of serpentine that lie near Figline, a
hamlet a few miles northwest of Prato. These make the mountain-mass cf
Monte Ferrato, or the iron mountain. Before noon I found myself shut in
the bushy valleys of this set of curious hills that have furnished the decora-
tive stone for the incrustation of the Florentine churches. Like all the other
mountains of Tuscany these hills were stripped of their woods during the
reigns of the grand dukes. When the Austrians came they set to work to
restore the forests, but the soil had wasted away so that it was hard to regain
what has been lost ; still in the splintered serpentines of these hills hardy spe-
cies of pines were growing in the ordered rows of a planted wood. Through
them I climbed to the summit, about fifteen hundred feet above the sea.
The only human interest I found was a new nunnery tucked away in the
shrubby trees. After the general destruction of all cloistered places by
the Italian government some years ago, a holocaust that left only a few of
the greater historic places and these shorn of their ancient grandeur, there
seemed for a time an end of their life in Italy, but now they are here and
there creeping back into a little vitality. At the gateway of this new cloister
were two figures, one of Christ and the other of the Virgin, which for artistic
abominableness exceeded any human images that I ever saw. Nothing is
more curious than the incapacity of the Roman Church to hold to its art
traditions ; when in this day, in this land, steeped for centuries in art influ-
ences, they try to present something artistic, the chance is that their work
is much more hair-lifting than what we should find in Arkansas. In the whole
field of human psychology I know nothing more puzzling than this utter loss
of power to retain the art training which we find here. From the contempla-
tion of this brutal Christ and stupid Virgin it was a luxury to escape to the
hillsides, though a walk through a pine brushwood is not more fascinating
here than elsewhere.

It is wonderful how hot a Tuscan winter noonday can be ; in the morning
I walked on ground frozen almost hard enough to bear up the feet, at noon
the south hillsides were as hot as of a summer day, even the earth felt hot
on the surface. On the top of the hill was the ruin of some very ancient build-
ing, quite tumbled to its foundations. On the old platform where it stood
there was a scant grass-grown soil, and here a score of ragged sheep were
nibbling while an ancient shepherd watched their hungry scrambles over
the mounds of stone. It was an epitome of Italy, an aged man and an aged
art, whose ruins gave a pittance to a dwarfed life. The old fellow gave me
a long history of the edifice, which amounted to this : it was an old ruin and
no one knew anything about it. He told his tale in a slow quaver of voice.
His speech was a pure ancient Tuscan, which I thought much more like the

308 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

language of Dante than that of the city or even the village folk. The most
wonderful thing about him was his cloak. These shepherd cloaks are of the
fashion set by Jacob. I believe that they may have existed as garmental
entities since the time of the CaBsars, renewed each year in parts, but peren-
nial as wholes ; their system of construction gives them no natural end, they
may outlast a race.

It is the time of carnival, and some special saint's day has doubled the
obligation to make a noise. All the while I was upon the hills there came
from the invisible villages which were crowded in the narrow valleys at
their feet an almost ceaseless ringing of church bells. These narrow valleys
carried a sound of bells for great distances. After you have walked for hours
in hills, wild and remote looking as those of Colorado, the rhythmic beat
of some church chime will start in the air about you and appear to come
from every side. The effect is singularly awe-inspiring, for the sound seems
ethereal, such as the skies might send down.

There are considerable quarries in these hills, but in them the modern
contrivances of cranes and tramways are unknown ; except that a little gun-
powder is used there is no difference between the present methods and those
of the most ancient days.

Descending to the east of the mountain, I came into a valley watered by a
swift, clear stream. I followed the stream toward the plain, passing through
the village of Figline, where there was a great crowd by the bridge, watching
with bucolic interest the process of butchering some well-grown pigs. In
this, as in everything else, the country people showed their utter want of
contrivance. The dead beasts lay sprawled in the mud while the butchers
were trying to remove the hair by wisps of burning straw, or to clean them
in the same uncomfortable position. I wish the social philosophers would tell
us why inventiveness increases with the latitude and finds its zero at the
equator. It is not a matter of willingness to labor, for I have never seen a
more devotedly industrious people than these Tuscans; they have quick
minds, are pliant and fertile in speech, fairly introspective, and yet they
meet the world of fact in a dumb, helpless way.

So intent was Figline on the pig-killing that I slipped through the crowd
without being observed. Neither my look of northern forests — all for-
eigners are forestieri, or men of the woods, to these people — nor my ham-
mer, bag, and maps caught the intent eye of the people, who usually per-
ceive the stranger afar off. Soon after leaving the village, the brook I had
followed for some miles and with which I had fallen quite in love ceased its
noise and began to creep silently over the plains. On either side were dykes,
at first low but growing higher until the stream stalked along on stilts with
its bed of rolled stones above the level of the grain-fields between which it

THE NEW ITALY 309

passed. This battle with the mountain streams makes the tillage of the Ital-
ian alluvial plains a costly matter — costlier than the Hollanders' fight with
the sea. The root of the difficulty lies in the want of protecting forests in the
hills. The rocks are soft and break to pieces rapidly, there being no mat of
roots to hold them fast ; while they are decaying into soil they are tumbled
down by the floods in such masses that they gorge the river channels. . . .
It will take centuries of forethoughtful labor to restore the forests to these
Tuscan mountains, and so restore the river-systems to their natural state.
I came back from Prato to Florence in one of the slow-coach local trains.
In the carriage I found a young Italian reading a German book. The sight
was sufficiently rare to lead me to seek conversation with my travelling-
companion, and he proved to be a very intelligent man, one of the new
Italy that is full of hope and gives one's confidence in the race a great lift;
keen, clear-minded, with a desire to have his country even with the world.
The young Italian, though not a frequent, is a very comfortable, spectacle to
those who desire the best future of his people. . . . Farther along I made
occasion to have parleys with some of the country folk I met upon the way.
They are the deftest people in casual rencontre I have ever seen ; they have
an ease in contact with a man of strange nationality that one rarely finds
among provincial peoples; in fact they are less provincial than any folk I
ever saw. My Italian is very bad and my looks excessively foreign to this
land, yet I never saw my strangeness mirrored in their eyes. I had a tilt in
politeness with one old clumsy-looking peasant; we bowed and exchanged
courtesies of grimace in which I did my best, but the ancient rustic went
me better in every effort to show mutual consideration, all with the gravity
of a Chesterfield. After every day spent with them in the field I come back
more convinced that there is a power under the hidebound life of these peo-
ple that will yet find its place in the world.

Above Certosa : —

February 3, 1882.

The Via Romana clings in the valleys for many miles south of Florence,
and most travellers pass through it because of its historic associations, but
they rarely take the steep zigzag roads that lead up from the banks of the
Arno to the beautiful rolling highlands that lie on either hand. The day I
took the road up on to this table-land was one of those when the Tuscan
winter lapses into spring. It was still February, but the violets dim and the
daffodils, which in England, Shakespeare tells us, "take the winds of March
with beauty," were known in earth and air. From a sheltered corner a
froward poppy looked out over the wheat-field that was still the soft grassy
tangle that precedes the shooting stems. For some days the permanent

310 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

leaves of the olive had been brightening their green. In the cold days of
January they looked very sere, but now they were getting the sap back ;
they were no longer curled and twisted by their emptiness, but were as full
of life as the plumage of a bird. At its best the foliage of the olive is
very beautiful ; the feathery, tufty masses scarcely dense enough to make
a shade have a certain domesticity and peacefulness of look I know in no
other tree.

On the thinner upland regions the olive replaces the mulberry. It is
never trained, for it is not such a vegetable donkey as the mulberry, but must
follow its bent; between these lines of trees the vines are planted. The work-
men are now at work, giving the twigs of the vine their appointed attitudes
in the branches. In the distance each of these binders of the vine looks like
one of Lord Monboddo's caudal men, for from his back depends a fringed
tail, which nearer inspection shows to be a bunch of willows for the work
of sustaining the vines. Wherever a stream makes the ground moist we
may see rows of willows, now very red, since the sap has given new life to
their bark ; each twig is as full-looking as a cow's udder.

If we look closely at the structure of the great villas that dot the landscape
we can see that they are built for this peculiar agriculture ; they have a vast
amount of open archways and finely ventilated lofts. I like these villas as
country places much more than the English country house. In the villa the
utilities, in its spacious clean courts, arched granges, and other offices, pass
by insensible gradations into the state and elegance of the mansion; and,
above all, the dark loggia facing the north suggests this perennial freedom
of the outer air. Yet there is one sore need in this nearly perfect landscape.
For some time I was puzzled that amid so much beauty there should be
a strange sense of desolation. This is because there is never a trace of a beast
in the open air, save in labor. I have walked some hundreds of miles in Tus-
cany and have not yet seen a cow. Where the mothers of these stately oxen
live is more than I can imagine. There is none of that charming sense of
domesticity in country life that comes with the sight of the passive flocks
and green pastures. We do not know how much we miss in its loss until
in this country we find its value by its absence. There are no pasture fields
in Tuscany. Where Nature denies everything but a few tufts of grass among
the stones, the shepherd drives his sheep, which eat the little there is, and
move on; the sheep go like grasshoppers over the ground, there not being
enough to keep them still. Even the donkeys are more than usually cowed;
their bray is a melancholy sound, and though there may be a dozen of them
together they never join their voices.

I find these high hills, with a russet undergrowth of bushy oaks that hold
their last year's leaves, and with their array of solitary pines, singularly

A NOBLE GROUP OF MOUNTAINS 311

charming. Every unnecessary branch is cut away and bound into faggots;
the cones are gathered for firewood. . . .

On my way back I was startled by one of those processions that in one
fashion or another tread all human ways. I was on the terrace of a villa,
gazing at the distant prospect, when from the door of a house there appeared
a boy with a banner surmounted by a cross; next after him an old priest
with his book ; then a bier on which was a slight uncoffined body, covered
with a white cloth. This bier was borne by four young peasant women,
dressed in their holiday attire, and each carried in the free hand a white wand,
which I suppose represented the usual candle. There were no other persons ;
the little train went away in silence toward the parish church ; their bur-
den seemed easily borne.

Monte Morello : —

February 27, 1882.

Northwest of Florence there is a very noble-looking group of mountains
known as Monte Morello. They are only about three thousand feet high, but
their steep slopes lead with noble lines from the plain, so that they are grander
than many mountains that labor up to thrice their height above the sea. . . .
In times of storm, when the clouds enfold them and their deep ravines are
full of abysmal shadows, they seem the very abodes of thunder. In the clear
day their gray masses rise above the plain, with its crowd of villages and
villas, an image of the stern, desolate eternity of space which wraps in this
little skim of life and merriment that is borne upon the surface of the world.
... I know no greater fortune that can be given to a city than the sight of
such a nobleness of unchangeable nature. The only thing is that few among
its people ever look from its ways up to the throne of the Infinite that stands
beyond the gates.

Alluding to a scene in a little schoolroom, where the children
were learning an arithmetic lesson and at the same time keep-
ing their fingers busy plaiting straw, the journal continues: —

This excessive laboriousness does not seem to be absolutely a thing of ne-
cessity : the children are all well clad, and outside of the cities and away from
the alluvial lands they look the picture of well-fed contentment. The land
system assures food even in bad seasons ; every farm, nearly every field, has
wine, wheat, and silk for its products, and out of these some one is sure to
succeed. This ceaseless toiling is partly due to the want of other diverting
activities; the mind of the people is not much occupied with politics, they

312 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

are without the least tincture of the reading instinct, so what force they
have goes to practical things.

I found my mountain hard to get access to on account of the wide fringe
of walled grounds around its base. At length despairing of flanking these
barriers, I asked my way at a farmhouse. At first I found only a boy of ten,
who, unlike Italian children in general, was afraid of the stranger ; he, how-
ever, was induced to seek his elders, and the mother, though evidently doubt-
ful, got rid of me by pointing the way to a footpath that led through the
barnyard and gave access to the hills.

The way for a mile or two was up a roaring brook, the bed of which was
immensely encumbered with the wreck of the rocks; its fall was steep, and
every few hundred feet there was a great masonry wall across it, some of
these walls superb engineering constructions. The view was singularly
perfect. Through the rocky jaws of the cliff I saw a foreground of olive
orchards, vines, and fine houses; half a mile off was a ruined little castle, its
single tall tower with half its battlements fallen away and its keep masked
with barns and out-houses. . . .

It is rare in Tuscany that we find a picturesque ruin to fill any foreground,
and the complete and abounding ruins of old castles that are so common
in all northern Europe seem quite unknown here. I am inclined to think
that the reason is that the nobleman, apart from the town, never existed
in Italy to the extent that he did in northern Europe. Here the lord was
the lord of towns rather than of castles. Individually, they were not such a
militant class as those of northern countries. The little cities gave the pro-
tection that they might have afforded, and so the ruins of their strength
and state do not so plentifully remain upon the hilltops. Something also is
due to the want of that change in the customs of life that has caused the
dominant class of the North to desire more comfortable abodes and led them
to betake themselves to modern dwellings. The castles that remain here fit
the fashion of the life; their darkness and sombreness do not in this land of
sun and heat unfit them for the tenancy of men.

After dinner I turned myself again to the hillside. It was very steep, but
a well-made though abandoned path crept for some way up the ravine.
Where a little earth had been held in a cranny there was a stunted tree,
planted in modern times, but for want of company it had refused to do much
to help itself. It was a relief to get above these forlorn and impotent efforts
of man to repair the waste of other centuries. Although the absence of vege-
tation gives a desolate look to a landscape, it has for the geologist much in
the way of compensation. I could now see in the bare steeps the architecture
of the mountain which I came to study. Looked at from the valley, the
structure appeared very simple; the clearly bedded rocks seemed piled one

CLIMBING MONTE MORELLO 313

on top of the other, and the whole tilted toward the northwest at a gentle
angle; up here I can see that the strata have been squeezed about, twisted
and overturned, until even the eye practised in dissecting such knots can
hardly discern how the whole is put together. My brethren of the hammer
are given to the notion that they can often make out the structure of a
mountain, where the rocks are well exposed, without setting foot upon it;
but they will be easily deceived, for it happens that in the mountain preci-
pices the rocks at certain angles will mark themselves by strong lines on the
hillsides, while those of other degrees of slope will be quite masked in their
own debris. Here was what seemed a mile or two away a perfectly simple
anatomy, turned into a problem that would require weeks to unravel when
seen with a closer eye.

As I rose near the summit of the mountain the strong gale, from which I
had been in a measure protected during the earlier stages of the ascent, began
to baffle me. The traces of snow were still on the rocks, and the air from
over the higher mountains was very cold and stifling from the force with
which it beat against my face. When I came within a hundred feet of the
top I could no longer stand against it, but had to grimp along on all fours,
dragging my satchel and plaid as I went. It required some energy to get
into a state for observation, for the wind was strong enough to blow pebbles
of a dangerous size up over the ledge of the mountain. The scene was noble
enough to overcome the discomfort. All around lay the mountains of Tuscany.
In the west lay the fantastic peaks of Carrara, the most thoroughly indi-
vidualized mountains in all Europe ; they do not look like mountains, but are
shaped rather like the curious frost work that forms on the moist soil of a
morning in early winter ; they do not belong to any of the recognized orders
of mountain architecture which are well determined.

The most beautiful effect is given by the deep gorges that scar all these
hills ; the sun, now oblique and near its setting, filled them with purplish-
black shadows, while all that lay in the sun was of a vivid reddish gray that
belongs to the limestone rocks. This gamut of color is one I have never seen
in any other land, and I suppose to its strangeness must be attributed the
unearthliness of the effect. The lonely, sharp peak, the desolate, strangely
colored landscape, the surging wind that seemed trying to sweep me off
into space, all tended to raise that deep sense of mystery and fear that ever
underlies our minds. The commonplace sense of our daily life usually pro-
tects us from this strangest and most terrible of all emotions, so that many
know it only in dreams. Sometimes, by night on the picket line, in the face
of an active enemy, when the darkness suddenly seemed to become all alive,
or when exploring alone in some newly opened cavern, I have felt this sense
of the terrible in the surrounding world ; but though I have climbed many

314 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

a score of mountain-tops I never before felt it in the face of day. Turning
from the serried world in the distance, I noticed that the peak on which I
stood bore a curious mark of man's work: the top, including an acre or two,
had clearly been levelled off and there was reason to believe that it had been
some sort of a stronghold. The wind was too fierce for clear seeing, so I only
note the possibility that this levelled summit had been the work of some
early people. I have never climbed an isolated hill in this region without
finding some faint trace of human occupancy upon it. Always before, how-
ever, these traces of man have been shown by some form of masonry however
rude.

I found the mountain longer in the descent than in the ascent, for, al-
though the Italians, like their Roman ancestors, are good road-builders,
they will not build direct ways in a hilly region, as their forefathers did;
even for footpaths they generally keep easy grades, and in their devious ways
there are rarely any of those straight cut-off paths that people more accus-
tomed to be in a hurry are sure to make. The result was that while doubling
to and fro I saw the train for Florence clear away from the station, and had
to make my way to the city in a tram-car. The Italians take greatly to street-
cars; walking is to them the opprobrium of life, and even the poorest con-
tadino will spare the two cents necessary to take him on the car. These cars
move with an endless tooting of tin horns and a complicated system of super-
vision ; still they move, and this slow world seems a little quickened as they
pass. They make rather a blunt point for the edge of civilization's wedge,
but I dare say in. time they will bring many another of our modern complica-
tions in their train; so that this archaic, simple life will be driven away into
history.

Vald'Arno:-

Marcli 9, 1882.

I left the train at the pleasant old town of San Giovanni, in its day one of
the southern bulwarks of the Florentine Republic. It seems to have been a
prosperous little city, as indeed were all those towns of the fat old lake lands.
The broad main street has homes more beautiful than those of most small
Tuscan cities. There is a curious old podesta, or town hall, with a loggia on
three sides of it.

I had to walk some miles to the country to find the guide who was to show
me the geological localities. My intelligent companion, the conservator of
the cabinet of San Marco, in Florence, did not know the ground we were
on in an intimate way, so we had to seek out a man who spent much of his
time in gathering fossils and who knew what could be found and where to
seek it. The road led into the intricate valleys of the low hills, and upon it

THE BEAUTIFUL ITALIAN OXEN 315

we met many teams of the splendid white oxen, always noble beasts, but
finer here than I have ever seen before. For beauty I am compelled to give
them a place above any other beasts. They are very long, their high shoul-
ders nearly as tall as race-horses, their bodies are not over large but made
as ships, their limbs are wonderfully long and clean, and their well-shapen
feet the perfection of a cloven foot, which to my mind is more beautiful in
form than that of the horse. Their color is creamy white, except the nose,
which is of a lustrous black. The head, set upon an arched neck, is small and
of a beautiful model. The eyes are large and have the same soft beauty we
often find in their masters'. Their yokes are better-shaped than our own
and do not seem to bear them down, — indeed, as they go along with a
swinging walk that differs as much from the dull pace of our American oxen
as does the step of a hunter from that of a cart-horse, they are the embodi-
ment of animal beauty. One sees why the ancients chose these white oxen
as their gifts to the gods. They are beautiful enough to gladden the heart
of Apollo as they come with crowns of flowers to his altars.

Farther on we began to meet teams of another and less pleasing sort.
Large two-wheeled carts laden with brushwood faggots were being tugged
over the rough ways by gangs of women and girls, some three or seven
making a team. The old women took the wheel-horse position; they were
generally unshod, and sterner, more weather-burned creatures I have never
seen. These high, toppling loads of brush, looking heavy enough for two
horses to draw, urged on by these harnessed, silent old women, through ways
that lay among prosperous farms and the stately villas of nobles, made a scene
that was more picturesque than pleasing. They were not ill clad and they
appeared well fed, but their faces had that hard, bitter look that labor gives
to old women more than it does to men. Here Michael Angelo might have
found the models for those stern faces of the Parcse, for they are the faces of
the embittered, yet noble-looking, type of poverty one sees so often in Italy.
Besides the women with wagons, there was a yet poorer class who bore their
burdens of faggots on their heads ; at a distance they each looked as if a
great part of Birnam Wood was on its way to Dunsinane. Sometimes their
heads were lost in the stack of brushwood, and from the clutch their feet
made at the ground it was evident that their burden was heavy. This is
the first time that I have seen Tuscan women at work that seemed too severe
for them, though elsewhere I have seen them spading.

I found my guide at his simple contadino home, of which he was the happy
master. Seeing me curious about it, he very gracefully asked if I would like
to look through it. This I was glad to do, so I gave the place something like
a military inspection. It was clearly an average specimen of its class. The
main building was about fifty feet square, two stories in height, with a ram-

316 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

bling"L" and a range of miscellaneous shed-rooms for threshing-floors and
for silkworm-culture : the larger part taken up by stabling for the cows and
oxen. These, all of the white variety, were amply and comfortably lodged.
The stable was very dark, and the silent creatures looked longingly at the
light of the open door ; there was no ventilation ; the air was so heavy with
their sugary breath that it soon made me giddy. They, however, seemed to
be in a perfect state of health. I fancy animals do not have the same im-
perative need of fresh air that men do, for they are not obliged to be making
nervous force while they are in the house as we are.

The upper story was entered by an external stone stairway, which led
to a spacious, low-roofed kitchen. At one end was a large fireplace ; on either
side of the fire was a space for the old to sit in, with their faces towards the
room. An old crone was seated in one, with the additional consolation of
a scaldino in her withered hands. The bedrooms, like all the other rooms, had
stone floors, and were furnished with large, well-made, clean beds, old presses
for the clothes, and long boxes of ancient but unbeautiful forms. These con-
tadini are admirably lodged and are well fed ; certainly no other peasantry
of Europe are so well off. There was not a bad bed in the house, nor an un-
wholesome sleeping den, such as one finds in the equivalent class in Germany,
France, or England.

I looked over the man's store of fossils, and spent an hour in making a
bad trade with him; these fellows are as shrewd as can be in such work.
When this was over we were invited to have a meal, but time pressed too
much. Our host then insisted that we should wash our hands, which we did
while he held the bowl with greatest civility.

We then went across the country to some mines of lignite that have
recently been opened on these lake deposits. The deposit is wonderfully
thick, being in many places as much as eighty feet deep straight through
the bed. . . . When this lignite is removed from the bed it coheres in large
blocks, which have, in fact, to be chiselled out of the mass; it is then full
of water and must be stacked in long heaps until it dries. The burning quality
of the material is equal to that of good pine wood.

Here, as elsewhere in Italy, one is struck with the absence of all the
machinery which in America is used in such heavy work. Everything is
done by hand with the simplest tools. In this pit there were no appliances
that might not have been in use at the building of the Pyramids. The trouble
is that the price of labor is so low that there does not seem to be the same
temptation here to save it that there is in other countries. All the work is
done by the piece, and the best laborers earn only about two francs a day.
Yet this gives them a fairly good subsistence. Their housing has been pro-
vided by the labor of other centuries, their clothing is nearly all homespun.

AN INTERESTING GUIDE 317

I do not think that the subsistence and clothing of these men cost on
the average more than fifteen cents a day. As far as I could see, the working
power of the men is excellent. Sometimes they seem to give trouble, for I
heard from my guide that the overseer had shot several men since he had
been there. This part of the Arno valley has a bad name for lawlessness ;
indeed I was warned to be on my guard, but, beyond a certain roughness
of mien that faintly reminded me of a Yorkshire mining district, I saw
nothing out of the way about the people I encountered.

After examining the lignite pits I had time to look about the country.
A good deal of the lowland is sterile : there are, however, many patches of
oaks that are valued for the mast. Every now and then we came upon a little
herd of swine gleaning along the roads, each under the charge of a woman
swineherd, who spins from a distaff as she goes. This is the long distaff;
it is made of what appears to be a cornstalk, the space of two joints at one
end being split longitudinally and forced apart so as to give a frame on
which to spread the flax or hemp fibre. I was much interested in the swine;
they are long-legged creatures and are curiously marked, the fore legs and
shoulders are white, while all the rest of the body is very black.

I found my guide an interesting fellow, very talkative, but with the
puzzling peculiarities of speech that begin to become apparent as soon as
we get south of Florence; every initial c is turned to an h, cara is hara,
cerico is harico, etc. The initial h's dropped in the air of England are all re-
covered here. The Italian language seems to have wronged nature in not
allowing the aspirate any place, while we English give it too much share of
breath. On questioning, it was clear that my companion and my guide both
thought they said cara when they said hara. My guide's rustic talk and com-
ments were entertaining. A certain grandee was building a house in the
neighborhood, making it three stories, while immemorial usage in these parts
made two sufficient ; this he thought a gross folly in the matter of palaces.
Happening while thus remarking to pass a cemetery he said, "Behold the
palace of the contadini."

Returning to San Giovanni I noticed a cart with woven rush sides, driven
by some women, and drawn by a pair of beautiful white cows that went
nimbly along together, looking happy with their bright burden. It struck
me that the turnout would make a good design for a coat-of-arms for the
woman's rights party. There were also many curious perambulating shops
in the streets; a two-wheeled cart carried a platform about twenty feet
long and four feet wide, on which the goods were displayed, one man easily
shoving it through the streets. The dames in the windows could be led into
temptation by having the shop brought before their eyes, while their ears
were tickled with the persuasive assurances of the shopman.

318 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

I came back at sundown. The whole of the majestic mass of Porta Magna
was taking the last of the day, making a golden crown of it. In the tram-car
was a Florentine man of trade ; he spoke a poor English of which he was very
proud, and he had cut his beard and his clothes in the conventional English
way. It is the fashion here to gird at the English, but there is a foundation
of vast admiration of that folk. The Florentine was surprised to hear that
there was any profitable lignite in this valley. He complained that every-
thing among his countrymen was done in a corner; that if a business man
found a good thing he kept it so secret that until his work was laid bare by
death no one would know he had made a fortune, and the business was likely
to die with him. There was doubtless some truth in this tale, for secretive-
ness and want of mutual action and trust seem to be the evils most com-
plained of by the intelligent natives. This does not seem to be the nature
of the folk, but the product of their long struggle with the oppression that
has been laid upon them. I noticed that all sorts of associations are spring-
ing up, and these seem to show by their general success that the power of
combination in action is latent in the people; that in their new life they
will not want for this element of power.

Having pretty well explored the immediate neighborhood of
Florence, Mr. Shaler set out on a journey to the south of Italy.
He writes in letters under date of March, 1882 : —

ROME, Sunday Evening, March 12, 1882.

With nothing to note save my loneliness I got here at 4.40. ... I have
fallen in with a nice old German scholar from near Hanover. He is bound
for Sicily and wants to travel with me. So if I go to Sicily at all I shall have
a very decent if rather dull company.

The old Rome we saw together is no longer here, in its place a half-Paris
of a city, boulevards, etc. Even the Pantheon has been shorn of its age
and looks less old than the British Museum Reading-room.

I walked up the Pincian Hill; met Miss H . Saw one or two other

familiar faces, but spoke to no one else. To-morrow at 6 A. M. I take train
for Naples. The next morning I shall go to Vesuvius, and hope to see all
that I need in a day.

NAPLES, March 13, 1882.

I came here this afternoon at one o'clock, too late to go to Vesuvius. I
hope to attack it to-morrow morning ; it is smoking like a great chimney, in
a dull, businesslike fashion. I shall not be able to fix the matter of JStna
until I find what its state is.

NAPLES AND VESUVIUS 319

The bay is as fine as ever, but it is a stage-curtain beauty, not the homely
loveliness of Florence. I had a long walk this morning, and saw a lot of geo-
logy of a curious sort, much that will count me hereafter. My German is still
waiting for me to go to JStna, but I have not promised. I shall be glad to
hear to-morrow that it had [word illegible] and burst, for I don't want to
go farther from my belongings.

This is a swell hotel, so I shall take myself off. Every knave "speaks a
little English " and will put it in the bill. The inn in Rome suited me, no Eng-
lish, French, or German, and low prices. I 'm tired and must to bed. . . .

P. S. March 14. ... Have just been at Vesuvius, so that is off for an-
other term of years.

Hotel Nobile, NAPLES, March 15, 1882.

Professor Guescard advises me not to try JEtna, as the things I want to see
may all be covered with snow. So I shall give that up. In place of it I shall
work up some problems here. I feel tired to-day; I have therefore done
nothing but work at the University and search for Vesuvian photographs.
To-morrow I shall be all right and shall do the Phlegraean Fields between here
and Baiae. The next day I go to Ischia. ... I wonder where my geological
eyes were fifteen years ago. It must have been some other fellow who was here.

Mr. Shaler's notes on Vesuvius and Naples were so hastily
written that in most instances they are undecipherable; it has
been possible, however, to make out some of them, though
perhaps not the most significant. The first relates to the ascent
of Vesuvius.

. . . Road to east and main observatory road, lava quite wide, yet covered
with thin sheet of cinders. Aloe at 1200 feet slightly frosted. Beautiful
to see the grass and flowers creeping over lava ; the rapilli fill crevices and
decay rapidly, because of large face and vesicular nature. Composite seem
to be the best plants to begin. . . .

The mode of explosion in the crater was exactly like a large quarry mine,
— the steam smelled slightly of sulphur, but was as easily breathed as or-
dinary steam, not at all suffocating when it thickened the air so that one
could not see a hundred feet. At the minute of uprush of stones (several tons
flying at once) the heat was great. At three hundred feet distance stones per-
ceptibly red in all their first flight, and partly so when falling, sometimes
splashing where they fell, again rolling up into a loop as they rushed down
the slope. . . . Saw no secondary explosion in stones; necessary to watch
the stones so as to dodge, notes therefore imperfect.

320 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

Darkness overtook me near San Giorgio and thence through a wilderness
of lava and villages I went on to Naples. Some fete was on hand, so I found
the people, save the very old, gathered in knots before small illuminations;
night and dust enabled me to melt into the crowd without notice. Only
one small boy found out my strangeness and announced it with a yelp.
After you have got so that you fool the dogs, the small boy still scents your
strangeness.

Now and then over the walls I could see the red glow of eruption on Ve-
suvius, but generally there was no light ; only the now solid darkness to show
its place. At length I got to the long sea-bound streets of Naples. The same
large crowds and music of bands between silent streets, with old folk within
crooning over a little fire, while I was sweating along in the tramontanes.
These people in their beautiful nature seem to me after all sad ; they creep
along with no fire in their eyes, in a weary sadness ; though noisy they are not
merry. I have never seen an Italian merry as a German, or even an Eng-
lishman. Here in face of this mighty nature man seems only a thin shadow.

John P [a Scotch gentleman at Naples who was very courteous to Mr.

Shaler] was with Stephenson forty years ago at Pompeii ; Stephenson meas-
ured cart-tracks and found them to be 4° 8', and said that time was with him

in his battle for the narrow gauge. Mr. P has been in Naples for forty-five

years, and is the owner of a very large machine-shop, employing seven hun-
dred hands ; they are, he says, physically weak, amiable, not interested in
their work, have considerable ingenuity in contriving easier methods of doing

things. Saints' days once a burden are given up. Mr. P saw Garibaldi's

campaign against the Bourbons; he says that the King's troops seemed
perfectly mesmerized by Garibaldi's name. If even five thousand of them
could have been held to act, Garibaldi's army could have been beaten.
The dependence upon the priesthood is gone; the family priest no longer
exists. Once he attended to all the household, married the daughters, and
saw to it that the souls of all were safely sent on their way. Once the priest
was saluted by kissing his hand, now the peasantry pass him in silence.
Mr. P gives a very bad idea of morals.

He has seen several great eruptions; he describes the roar of the lava
as it came against San Sebastiano as something dreadful. He says that in
the eruption of 1854 at Torre del Greco, the land rose so as to separate the
ends of the rails. . . . The lava ran from Vesuvius through the town to the
sea. The deaths in the Atrio del Cavallo in 1872 were from the lava sur-
rounding the people by a divided stream that reunited ; some escaped with
severe burns by running over the half-solid surface. In the eruption of 1850
toward Boscenalle, the saints and pictures were brought out of the churches
in the neighborhood and fixed to trees and walls to stay the flood. But it
swept on despite the images.

THE NEAPOLITANS 321

As I came out of Naples, Vesuvius was half hidden in a majestic army of
cumulus clouds that were lifting from the sea ; from one to three thousand
feet was hidden by this cloud that cast a vast shadow below it. The whole
mountain seemed strangely weird, a thing of speculation, the ghost of moun-
tains that had been. Vesuvius is constantly extending its lines; as it rises
higher the lava penetrates farther from the base. It will probably be not
more than a century before San Giorgio Borra and Ponticelli will be in dan-
ger, and at the rate of extension Pompeii and Naples will be menaced within
two hundred years. There is no reason why this great rock mushroom should
not gain the size of ^Itna and absorb all the region about as far as the
Phlegrsean Fields. The total mass of the mountain has about doubled in
eighteen hundred years, and its growth in the last two hundred and fifty
years has been more rapid than before. . . .

The generally good climate is shown in the ruddiness of visage and gen-
erally excellent physique of the natives. The people are small ; I did not see
a six-foot native nor one very brawny; the porters carry light burdens. The
women have comely faces, all on one type, flat, small heads, good eyes with no
brightness, small, short-fingered hands. Now and then there is a mark of Afri-
can blood, no trace of Greek. It is a low population, except the gentry, which
is very high. The gentry have beautiful manners; they seem to me the best
I have ever seen. I asked a venerable-looking old aristocrat my way; he laid
his hand on my arm and told it me in accents that were full of a certain
subtle sympathy. Now and then a grand face among the poor; one of a man
far gone in illness, which I saw in a window, haunts me still — a face out of
the past. Naples has had no art, architecture, music, religion, or anything
else. Nowhere else is nature so overpowering as at Naples, so charming and
so little inspiring.

In the car from Rome another patent American in the corner; all night
no sound out of him. A young fellow going away on a journey; four men
and three young women to see him off, a roar of lamentation, greater than
attended the going of regiments to the field. Thrice they kissed all around,
thrice he descended for another bout of kissing and wailing. He was a lean,
worthless-looking, dirty youth, with a large, ragged carpet-bag. When he
was seated he again and again went over some photographs ; when he fell
asleep he rolled on the floor but apologized with much grace. Dignified-
looking man of thirty-five, with a young woman of the harlot class, who
smoked, spat, laughed, and wept by turns. He was shy and seemed ill at
ease with his burden.

The Italian railway system belongs principally to the government, a large
part of their debt has gone to this important work. . . . About Naples the
soil is amazingly fertilized by the volcanic ashes that come upon it; the erup-
tion of 1872 put three inches over the land for twenty miles about.

322 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

The journey northward from Florence in March was through
the lands of blossoming delight ; peach, almond, and apple trees
with their delicate shading of green and rose-color made the
quickened earth a scene of enchanting beauty. Only near Paris
we seemed to retrace the season and began with buds instead
of flowers.

Besides revisiting old familiar scenes in Paris, Mr. Shaler
spent considerable time at the School of Mines and other homes
of science. In one of his rambles he knocked at Dr. Brown-
Se*quard's door. The eminent physiologist at that time was
engaged in making some interesting experiments on guinea-
pigs, producing in them, by artificial means, a state of epilepsy.
When Mr. Shaler was about to go, the savant asked if he would
be good enough to take one of the little animals to Huxley.
Since he expected to cross the channel in a few days he willingly
undertook the charge. The pig was done up in a paper bag and
thrust into his overcoat-pocket. On the way back to the hotel,
he stopped at a bird store to purchase a cage for his little charge,
and in an unguarded moment took his hand out of his pocket
to point to a small wooden one of about the right size. The pig,
seizing his opportunity, bounced out on to the floor : whereat
the proprietress and her daughter jumped up on the counter
and proceeded to scream at the top of their voices. Endeavor-
ing to reassure them, Mr. Shaler called out, "C'est seulement
un petit cochon"; the word cochon was all that they heard,
and since to be called cochon in French is a deadly insult, indigna-
tion was added to their fright. In the meantime the " subject "
was captured, and, its owner demonstrating his pacific intent
to the crowd which had been attracted by the screams, the
women were induced to descend and take their pay for their
pains.

Before leaving Florence, Mr. Shaler had suggested that his
family give Paris the "go-by," even offering the younger mem-
bers a considerable bribe if they would stay away ; but to Paris
they would go, and immediately upon arrival they succumbed

ADVENTURES OF A GUINEA-PIG 323

to the influenza which just then scourged the city. In the
stuffy rooms of a hotel the days passed gloomily enough ; so
when he entered with a merry countenance and exhibited this
prize there was much rejoicing. The pig was dubbed the
"General," and the attentions due his rank were lavished upon
him. He was fed and petted and for a couple of days flourished,
then languished, and finally died. When this happened, late
in the evening, his little body was put out on the window-sill,
and next morning the man who came to make the fire was told
to take him away. Instead of obeying he gazed at the puny
object, shrugged his shoulders, and exclaimed with uplifted
hands, "C'est d6fendu," and no persuasion would avail until,
as he explained, he had got the necessary sanction of the police
for its removal. Mr. Shaler, intensely amused at so great regard
for legal forms, put the pig in his pocket and sallied forth. In
the park he was about to deposit the " General' ' behind a clump
of shrubbery when a policeman, as if divining some flagrant
intent, fixed his gaze upon him, and instead of going about his
business continued to hover near by. Several efforts to get rid
of what had now become a veritable burden in some bushes in
other parts of the city proving equally futile, Mr. Shaler gave
up the job for that day.

The same evening at dinner by chance one of seeming author-
ity proclaimed the fact that French law was made for French
people only, and if once brought into the tribunal for any cause
whatsoever a stranger seldom escaped without suffering either
fine or imprisonment. Therefore, more than ever anxious to
elude, if there were any informality, the guardians of the law,
Mr. Shaler started out early the next morning determined to
free himself of his embarras. At last on one of the bridges,
seizing a favorable moment, over the wall into the Seine he
tossed the little creature freighted with its pathological message
which in his own person he was destined never to deliver. Ever
after with a merry twinkle in his eye, he spoke respectfully of
the ubiquity and vigilance of the French policeman — of his

324 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

alert eye for broken bottles, orange-peels, banana-skins, and
guinea-pigs.

At Malvern, where, as usual, Mr. Shaler stopped for a course
of water-cure treatment before sailing, the world was fresh and
green, but there was a desperate chill in the air and the heavily
laden sky hung low, so low that one seemed literally to walk
with one's head in the clouds. At Boston in the month of May
we found the arch of heaven had receded ; it was far off, cold,
and apparently unattainable: instead of leaves, icicles hung
from the branches of the trees, and the thin, shining snow that
covered the ground showed, though very nearly in the same
latitude, how far removed in climate Boston was from Florence.

CHAPTER XXII

SOME FAMILIAR LETTERS

1882-1888

THE ensuing summer was spent at Campobello. Mr. Shaler had
previously worked up the natural features of the island and
made a report upon it; he knew it well, therefore, and he was
charmed with its beauty. He thought to make a summer home
there, but after trying it for two seasons, the distance from
Cambridge was found to be against the project, for what he
had in mind was a refuge that he could easily reach and thus
escape, when it became too burdensome, the pressure of life in
Cambridge; indeed, he was in search of a place which at the
beginning would serve for a second home, but eventually might
be raised to the rank of the first in his affections and order of
living. This search was to be rewarded later.

The following letters from Mr. Shaler and others reveal to a
certain extent, aside from his regular Cambridge work, the
happenings of these years.

Mr. Shaler writes: —

NEWPORT, KY., June 2, 1882.

... I have been out into the country with my mother to visit some of her
nephews whom she had not seen for a long time. The visit seemed to cheer
her up a bit. They are all well-conditioned bucolic folk with comfortable
homes and well-bred families. A pleasant spectacle to one who does not see
much of his kin.

I have filled in my time with a novel of Trollope and Hamerton's " In-
tellectual Life." You will like the latter; it is a pleasant essay on the condi-
tions of culture.

OLYMPIA, KENTUCKY, Dec. 28, 1883.

I find there is a chance of decent weather, so I shall have to try my jour-
ney into the woods [he went to investigate some iron properties] much against
my will. ... I have never had an absence from home that vexed me so

326 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

much. I fear that my humor for the outside world grows less with added
years. ... I expect to close up everything here so that there will be no
need of repeating the journey.

MADISON, "WISCONSIN, April 18, 1883.

The appointment at Helena, Montana [the occasion of this visit was to
attend a mining suit], is postponed, so I spent the day here to complete
my task. I hope to start back about the fifth. Be sure I shall make good
fight with space and time. The people here have been most kind. Yet with
all my skill in dodging I have had to make three speeches and have been kept
in a whirl. Fortunately two days of silence are coming and of them I shall
make good use.

CAMBRIDGE, Thursday, , 1883.

The train (I came by way of Rutland, Vermont) was as usual three hours
late. I dined in the Vermont fashion, on a wet-flannel sandwich and a piece
of white-pine pie, all out of a brown-paper parcel. I have supped on some
bad ice-cream and a sort of degraded ginger-snaps (neither ginger nor snap).
You will know that I am well when I tell you I am none the worse for it all.
House seems all right. Cambridge, by contrast, as still as a mountain-top.

STAUNTON, VIRGINIA, June 19, 1883.

I have had two red-hot days in the woods and am over the worst part of
my task. I go to-day with Hotchkiss to a place called Roanoke to see some
iron properties for future consideration. ... I have found the woods very
restful despite the heat and bad food. If you were here I would gladly stay
all the summer. I am satisfied that in a camp one could have perfect summer
conditions in the mountains.

CAMBRIDGE, Sunday, July, 1883.

I got back here last night in time for the worst continuous cat serenade
I have ever heard. Summer war begins. I shall hope to extinguish the spe-
cies. ... I wish you were here, Cambridge never seemed so pleasant,
almost cold and, cats excepted, quiet. ... I am looking forward to some
sort of rest with great longing, for in fact I am very tired. I have my doubts
about finding it at Saratoga. If not there we will go elsewhere.

CAMBRIDGE, July 15, 1883.

... I shall have to stop over a day at the Livingstone mine. ... I
mind your caution not to rush things: an inward monitor, too, tells me to go
slowly that I may go surely. ... I am more than ever convinced that a
change of house is desirable. It is lonesome here. I dined last evening at
M 's. They seem as happy as two old parroquets. . . .

ACQUAINTANCE WITH GORDON McKAY 327

LICHFIELD, March 9, 1884.

I came back here yesterday as I am sure of something to eat and a room
to myself. I have made pretty good headway with the work laid out and
hope to paddle homewards on Wednesday. I go to-night to [word illegible]
and thence six miles to look up some matters. I shall have a trustworthy
companion, so you need not worry yourself about me. This section, though
settled for near a century, is still a pathless wilderness, with only here and
there an acre of better land. The people are incorrigibly lazy and shiftless.

I am keeping quite well despite bad food and a good deal of work on horse-
back.

My old coat is going like the parson's "one-hoss shay," all at once and
nothing first. So I shall be driven to shelter or shirtsleeves soon.

This is a [word illegible] land and a very uninteresting people, swampy,
saturnine fellows, no life, no sparkle except the effervescence of whiskey.
I really have but little confidence in any great future for our race in thi3
shape. It must mend or make itself into nothingness. . . .

To his mother: —

CAMBRIDGE, Sept. 22, 1884.

. . . You cannot imagine how glad we are to hear that you have really
had your profit from your dreadful siege with the doctors. God bless them.
I have been all day with my friend McKay, who has been enduring a fit of
the stone (kidney form). His agony has been frightful. I have given him
near two pints of ether in eight hours with only momentary effects. Now
he is over it, but exhausted. . . .

I am enjoying "hay cold." There is not much fun in the crop. . . . lam
much obliged to Anna for her kind letters; that I don't answer them more
regularly is due to the fact that the days are short and busy with me. It is
a chance to keep from under the wheels of time.

Since Mr. Gordon McKay was destined, at a later period, to
play so large a part in Mr. Shaler's life and in that of the Uni-
versity, the above allusion to him would seem to call for a word
of explanation. Mr. Shaler's acquaintance with Mr. McKay,
one of Harvard's greatest benefactors, began in 1865, and from
that time on he knew him intimately until Mr. McKay's death
in 1903. Indeed he somewhere says he never knew any man
so well or so long. For many years they were very close neigh-
bors, and at first were drawn together by the mutual interest

328 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

in inventions and mining problems. The side of his character
which Mr. McKay presented to his friend was one of great
dignity and kindliness. Moreover, his mind was constantly
reaching out to large enterprises and in these excursions he
sought for sympathy and suggestions from a source which he
well knew would never fail him. On his part Mr. Shaler found,
in many ways, great satisfaction in his business relations with
Mr. McKay, who could imaginatively project himself into any
large enterprise and grasp the possibilities of an unverified
hypothesis, whereas with prosaic men of affairs of the average
type Mr. Shaler's imagination was often a barrier. Because he
saw far beyond the immediate question, they sometimes seemed
to doubt his practical grasp of the concrete problem itself. Not
so with Mr. McKay ; he eagerly followed him in his scientific and
practical quests and showed an inspiring faith in his forecasting
power as well as in his capacity to meet the unforeseeable diffi-
culty. But aside from the advice which Mr. McKay asked in
mining matters, he especially sought Mr. Shaler's counsel with
reference to the best uses of money intended for the public good,
and particularly the conditions of his own proposed bequests
were the subject of continuous discussion. So far from having
a predilection for the College, he began with a serious dislike,
which it was Mr. Shaler's special task to overcome. Mr. McKay,
however, did believe very firmly that the men whose work
tended toward applied science had better be educated with
those trained in the liberal arts. This conviction remained fixed
in his mind until the time came to make his final decision. After
1891 there was no longer a shadow of doubt as to the destina-
tion of his fortune, and he always alluded to Mr. Shaler as the
one person of all others whom he looked to for the carrying
out of his wishes.
To his sister: —

CAMBRIDGE, March 26, 1885.

I have your two letters. Nothing could induce me to take the place of
Director U. S. Geological Survey. As Hosea Biglow says, " 'Taint a knowin'

THE U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 329

kind o' cattle that is ketched with mouldy corn." I should be a fool to give
up a life position to depend on worse than "princes' favors," the will of each
President and the whim of every Congress. Besides, Powell is doing very
well and should be kept in office. ... I am obliged to my friends for their
interest in my political or scientific promotion, but however I may lack
advancement I care nothing for it.

I proposed to come out to Kentucky this recess, but it only lasts six days
this year and I am very tired after a long and hard winter, so I may not gain
the courage to start. I dread the scamper out and back with only two, or, at
most, three nights, to rest between. If I did not feel that Mother was after
all pretty well I would certainly venture any risks to see her, but I shall
have to come in May to bring her here and those days are not far off. . . .
We have had a beautiful winter, except for the iron-hearted cold and endless
north wind. . . .

To the same: —

CAMBRIDGE, , 1885.

It is contrary to law to send dynamite by mail, else I should feel it to be
my duty to enclose a cartridge of that vivifying material for the use of the
family to be taken in tonic doses. I have a great deal on hand to entangle
me, but I will come out with pleasure and bring Mother on. ... Only two
weeks more lectures, then comes "blue book" and blue devil time with the
examinations. We are going to Nantucket soon after you come — warranted
warm and comfortable.

To the same : —

CAMBRIDGE, June 23, 1886.

I have been trying to escape from my multifarious duties here, but it now
seems impossible to do so until the next month. I only know how busy I am
when I try to break away from my affairs. On the first of July I am to be on
Mount Washington to give a lecture from that high pulpit. On the third
I am to go to Kingston, Canada, on a mining errand. On the fifth I hope
to be in Washington. On the sixth at White Sulphur Springs to do another
bit of mining work. On the seventh at Olympia or on train. On the eighth at
home with you all. Mother can then take her time to journey East with me.
We are all pretty well but waiting for the quiet that comes after the term.

To his mother : —

CAMBRIDGE, March 20, 1887.

Sophie and the children are good enough to write to you for me, thus
sparing me the grip of pen and you the trial of patience which comes when

330 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

I write myself. Of late I have taken an amanuensis who takes my work in
shorthand and gives me typewritten "copy," but this will hardly do for
family letters. We have won through a hard winter at last, and although a
cold wind is roaring about the chimney-tops the boys are playing marbles
on the dry spots on the sidewalks, the girls are buying summer dresses,
and the British sparrows, daunted for a time, have renewed their impudence.
These signs show that spring is upon us. Before we know it will be time for
regretting the comforts of winter, though at present we are mightily glad to
have it over.

We expect you on to see our flower-show. We put twelve hundred bulbs
in the ground and they need your advice about coming up. If you will not
come without me, you will have to come with me as soon as convenient after
May first. Don't think of trying to escape the fate. . . .

ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA, Jan. 1, 1888.

A happy New Year to you and the chicks. Found my way here this
evening out of the continental refrigerator and into the frying-pan. Ther-
mometer at 9 P. M. 80 and a sticky air.

This quaint old huddle of a town with some picturesque Spanish works
and wonderful new hotels nearly finished. The Ponce de Leon [he had gone
to see about sinking an Artesian well for its use] the greatest caravansary in
the world, so they say.

The air is to, me extremely unpleasant, like our southerly storms. You
would not like its lifeless quality; it tastes like a doctor's prescription. So
far I have felt no malaria and am well. To-morrow I start for Indian River,
as far as Lake Worth, probably the southernmost point of my wanderings.
The region is perfectly safe, inland navigation in small steamers. I have seen
Bradley's friend and gained much valuable information from him. So far
my journey has been profitable, not pleasant, for the scenery of the South
is indescribably dreary, drearier than the sea. The country has made little
gain in fifteen years. . . .

Steamer near KEY WEST, Jan. 6, 1888.

. . . We have had an easy passage from Tampa, a summer sky and sea,
and an American palace of a boat, " extremely elegant," as they say, but I
fear not very seaworthy. In two hours we shall be at Key West, where I
suppose we shall have to stay to-night. To-morrow morning early I hope to
be in a sailboat running up from Biscayne ; this will be pleasant as it makes
the beginning of my return journey. I may be subject to a detention, for
although the voyage to Biscayne is through the archipelago of reefs in water
generally so shoal that you can wade at any point, and, therefore, I

AN ADVENTURE IN FLORIDA 331

assure you, perfectly safe, there is a chance of dead calm. However, I
think that we shall get through Lake Worth, where we again find steam-
boats. . . .

My impressions of Florida are more favorable than at first. . . . The air
is extremely enervating, but has a curious quality of peacefulness. The
people are mostly new folk, very few of the Southern quality.

The country is a vast sand-heap (at least on the surface), a white, beach-
like sand; but it grows oranges in a wonderful fashion. I have seen 2500 on
one tree and 10,000 have been counted. So great is the area of gain that
we shall have to double our appetites for the fruit in order to provide a
market.

The principal crop is consumptives; quite half the population consists of
folk who have fled from that wrath. It is the dismal side of the business of
travel here. The nearer I get to the tropics the more I turn with pleasure to
our grim Northern clime. This is the worst of nature full of blandishments
and over-sugared things. There, it is a hard-fought field which I verily be-
lieve to be the better place. Please secure a first-class northeaster for my
refreshment when I escape from this land of ease and laziness. . . .

JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA, , 1888.

... I have lamented the duration of my journey each night and morning.
There has been but one consolation, that when it is over I shall have a long
breathing time at home.

I would write longer, but I am very very weary and have to rise again
to-morrow at dawn. I have seen the sun up for thirty days or so. ...

It was at this time, while carrying on some researches on the
Florida coast, that the boat in which Mr. Shaler and two of his
students were sailing was capsized in a heavy gale, and for
some hours, while clinging to the upturned craft, trusting to
the waves to wash it ashore, the party were in serious danger
amid the heavy surges, especially since one of the men was
unable to swim. It was the testimony of all who shared the
catastrophe that not for a moment did Mr. Shaler lose his head
or cease to cheer and encourage the others, helping each one
in turn as he seemed to need assistance. The shore was finally
reached, and, in a state bordering on exhaustion, without food
and almost without clothing, the party set out on a long tramp
for Lauderdale Station. The walk along the shelving, sandy

332 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

beach, for unshod feet, was exceedingly painful. Mr. Shaler
afterward said it was the most distressing of any experience he
had ever had. But at last the Life-Saving Station, in charge of
one Jack Peacock, was reached, and here they stopped for rest
and entertainment, — entertainment of mind and body; for
Jack Peacock, it seems, was a character, and at the moment,
having rescued a cask of sherry from the sea, which he had
buried in the sand, was engaged, as he phrased it, in running a
race with the worms to see which should get the better of the
windfall. His red nose proclaimed the fact that he was not only
holding his own, but outstripping all other rivals in the race.
Mr. Shaler used to give most ludicrous accounts of Jack's con-
versations and his philosophical reasons for keeping himself in
a state of constant booziness.

After the mishap, an old student who was then in Florida
wrote : —

NEW RIVER, Feb. 5, 1888.

. . . The first calm day after you left, I was at Hillsboro and, using the
mail-carrier's skiff, searched carefully for the things lost in the capsize, but
without success; nor has anything more drifted ashore except a coat and one
shoe. I spent nearly half a day drifting about the place of accident, as nearly
as I could locate it, but the surface of the reef at that point is so broken and
covered with sea-feathers, sponges, etc., that even so large an article as
your valise might escape detection.

My dory was smashed by the heavy sea a few days after your departure.
I am rather glad of this as it distributes the burden of the misfortune a little
more evenly than at first. I sincerely hope that neither yourself nor the
young men with you have suffered any ill effects from your ducking.

Very respectfully, CHAS. GORMAN.

CAMBRIDGE, April 3, 1888.

I arrived here this morning somewhat battered by the sleeping-car air.
Children well?

I feel so lop-sided in my unaccustomed condition of "grass widower"
that I shall get away to the Vineyard on Thursday, returning on Mon-
day. . . .

P. S. . . . Mr. Stilwell turned up and to my surprise was induced to stay,
so that I shall not go to the Vineyard.

LOWELL INSTITUTE LECTURES 333

I am offered a course of Lowell lectures next winter, probably eight in all.
It is a thousand dollars and not to be "sneezed at." I can use matter de-
signed for magazines and so kill two birds with one stone.

These lectures on "Geographical Conditions and Life" were
delivered in the winter of 1888-89. As early as 1871-72, Mr.
Shaler had given a course of twelve lectures at the same place
on "The Geology of Mountain-Ranges."

CHAPTER XXin

MINE PROSPECTING AND OTHER EXPERIENCES
1881-1891

AFTER Mr. Shaler's trip to Europe in 1881, the years that fol-
lowed, mostly spent in teaching and administrative work, offer
few external incidents for the biographer. The monotony of
his college duties, it is true, was often interrupted (that is, his
lectures were anticipated, or " packed " together, as he phrased
it, not "cut") by journeys, many of them undertaken, as we
have seen from his letters, in the interest of various mining and
other projects. During these times of travel he saw much and
overcame much, and if his experiences could have been told by
himself they would have added greatly to the interest of this
record.

He valued these outside contacts greatly, not on account of
the personal advantage that might come to him, but because
they kept him in close touch with the world at large and gave
opportunities for getting his students well started in business.
It pleased him immensely when his "boys" succeeded, as they
nearly always did ; and of late years he was still further elated
by the steadily increasing recognition, on the part of men of
affairs, of the worth of the Lawrence Scientific School training.
This was shown by constant applications for young men as
civil, mechanical, and electrical engineers, to take charge of
mines, and, as one of them stated, to dig coal, to wash gold, to
build bridges, and bring water to dry lands.

Mr. Shaler's own work in connection with mines, water-supply
for cities, phosphate-beds, mica-deposits, and so forth, took
him from Nova Scotia to Florida, from the Atlantic to the
Pacific Ocean. One of his chief uses as a mining expert, he was

AS A MINING EXPERT 335

accustomed to say, was to keep people out of wild-cat schemes,
and make them examine a "proposition" with cool and critical
eyes. This he did not always succeed in doing. He writes to one
of his clients : " I regret to hear that you are determined to pro-
ceed to spend money on but one test of your property. It is
evident that I cannot help you by wholesome advice. Let me
say once again that you are putting yourself in a position to
waste money that might readily be saved. With this I will close
my correspondence." It is noteworthy that his cautious, pains-
taking handling of the practical side of mining should so often
have been preceded by a brilliant theoretic conception of the
problem. The Alder Mine, in which Mr. McKay became inter-
ested and which is a part of his endowment to Harvard, was in
the first place an imaginary discovery, based on a theoretic
hypothesis. The minerals he had to do with chiefly were gold,
iron, — the prime metal of civilization as he called it, — and
coal ; with reference to their distribution he made many reports
for railway companies and organized surveys for the extension
of their roads. In his writings about these substances the state-
ment of facts is, as is usual with him, accompanied by general
and philosophical comments. In an article entitled "The
Exhaustion of the World's Metals," he says: "It is evident
that the economic side of human advance, as well as the greater
part of the contriving foresight which characterizes it, depends
upon the qualities of the materials men turn to account. The
story of the adaptation of substances to desires did not begin with
man. It is common among the bees and ants and other insects.
We see it in the nests of birds, in the hot-bed in which the brush-
turkey lays her eggs: these contrivances generally relate to
utility alone, yet often the sense of beauty guides the construc-
tions, so that the aesthetic as well as the utilitarian motives
appear to exist in the minds of many highly developed animals.
... In the case of man, each of his early and simple conquests
has given a sense of the powers of the outer world, so that even
the lowest savage becomes an inquirer, a man of science explor-

336 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

ing the world with his imagination of things possible and verify-
ing his conjectures by experiment."

His fees as a mining expert were absurdly small ; many of his
former pupils acting in the same capacity asked twice and often
three times as much as he. Indeed, it was repugnant to him to
make out a bill at all ; it was so much easier to give outright than
to put a price upon what he did. There were some features of
this outside work which he especially prized — the exercise of the
constructive imagination, the use of rich opportunities, the get-
ting things going, and the contact with keen and eager wits.
Besides all this, it enabled him to escape from what he con-
sidered the limitations of academic culture, from the state of
mind that keeps men in the department stage of development.
What he particularly wished to avoid was the one-sided experi-
ence that falls to the lot of most teachers and tempts them to
set up special training, syntax, and gerunds against vital human
needs.

Mr. Shaler had a great fancy for powerful, even though un-
trained, men, and gained singular refreshment from being with
them. " Personally," he said, " I value what I have been so for-
tunate as to gain of acquaintance with very diverse sorts of men
more highly than all else that I have won in the way of know-
ledge." He often spoke with pleasure of the long talks he had
had with a man employed at a mine he sometimes visited in Ala-
bama, who had reflected upon most things in the heavens above
and in the earth beneath, and had worked out a universal sys-
tem of his own. Mr. Shaler insisted that this type of strong
uneducated man, while he had little learning, often had more
light than those bred in academic places. Face to face with a
real man social prejudices vanished. Whereas, as Carlyle says,
Dr. Johnson bowed only to a man with a shovel hat, he bowed
to a man with any sort of hat or none at all. Excessive conven-
tion, to his mind, was like the process of tanning ; according to
the ancient sage, the skins of the tiger and leopard when they
are tanned are as the skins of the dog and the sheep. He was

A GREAT MAN IN THE ROCKIES 337

content to meet a fellow being on his own plane, — at the sea-
level, if he could not breathe freely in the intellectual climate of
the hilltops. On his part, the lowly person was quick to discern
the good and lovable qualities of his passing associate, for
whether known as doctor (the degree of S. D. was conferred in
1875), professor, geologist, or by other recondite title, he soon
learned that above all else Mr. Shaler was a friend of his kind,
having the dash of humor that makes comradeship easy and the
knowledge and tolerance that gives wide understanding. Mr.
Shaler was even indulgent to the "prospector," often a pestifer-
ous fellow with his shiftlessness and boundless hopes. By the
camp-fire he would treat him as the rich heir of all his dreams,
and when he had seen a mirage, the fortune over the divide, and
stated it as a fact, it was a fact then and there; but on the
ground, if necessary, the mirage was ruthlessly dissipated, and
the hope dispelled ; yet not for long, "for the miner," Mr. Shaler
writes, "is an inveterate hoper. Nothing dampens his ardor
and only a few things enrage him. He knows his temporal sal-
vation is awaiting him somewhere underground and is con-
tent to bide his time."

Nothing pleased Mr. Shaler so well during his visits to the far
West as to note, in the minds of the people he met, the gradual
recession of the despised "tenderfoot" and the "professor,"
and the emergence of the sort of man they respected : the
resourceful expert and student of nature, the man who could
manage a mule and get the wheels out of the rut when they
were buried to the hubs in mud. The fact is, his swift divin-
ing power, his fearlessness in the presence of danger, his dis-
regard even of the "bullet argument," his stories and outgoing
sympathy, made him an idol among those people. He used
laughingly to say that whatever he might be in Cambridge he
was a great man in the Rockies.

On one occasion, going for the first time to inspect a certain
mine in Montana, he was greatly amused, when the train
stopped, at being hesitatingly saluted on the platform by a

338 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

representativeof the company, — a " practical miner/'all swathed
in jet black, wearing patent-leather shoes, extremely pointed
and of preternatural lustre, and a tall silk hat. The astonish-
ment of the other party was no less acute at sight of a most
unacademic-looking person. The miner afterward confessed that
he expected to see a prim, starched gentleman who "put on airs
and used big words no fellow could understand." This keen-
eyed scout once came to Cambridge and much against his will
was persuaded to stay to luncheon with us. The excuse he gave
for his reluctance was that he was not used to ladies' society.
When the meal was over, thinking to encourage him, Mr. Shaler
said, "Why, man, you did splendidly." "Yes," he answered
reflectively, "but I had a hell of a time of it and I reckon I
won't try it again."

So far from using big words, Mr. Shaler's language was singu-
larly clear-cut and direct, and, as we shall see, his manner of
speech contributed in no small degree to his success in different
mining suits in which he was called upon to testify. Especially
was this the case in a notable legal contest at Butte, Montana.
He noticed that the experts on the other side seemed to take
particular delight in using difficult technical terms known to
the specialist, but Greek to the average man. Therefore when
his time came to address the court, employing none but the
plainest and most straightforward language, he was encouraged
while speaking by the look of illumination on the judge's face,
which hitherto had been the seat of baffled intelligence. After
the trial was over the judge came to him and said, " I thank you
for giving me at least a chance to understand the case. Up to
the time you spoke I was completely bewildered by the abstruse
statement of the geological facts which you have made so clear."

Mr. Rossiter Raymond, with whom he was associated at this
time, writes as follows : —

What I remember chiefly in connection with this case is not the lawsuit
itself, or Professor Shaler 's testimony in connection with it, but the oppor-
tunity which it gave to me for personal association with him. During its

RAPID TRANSITION OF THOUGHT 339

prosecution, we sojourned twice in Butte, occupying rooms in the
hotel, and enjoying, after our professional day's work was done, the oppor-
tunity of friendly communion. In these hours of free intercourse, I learned
much of his deepest feelings and purposes concerning, not only his contem-
plated contributions to physical science, but especially his responsibilities
and hopes concerning the moral, as well as intellectual, development of
the young men for whom, as the head of the Lawrence Scientific School, he
regarded himself as responsible. It was from these conferences that I derived
that sense of Professor Shaler's deep religious feeling and motive which will
remain permanently associated with my memory of him. In accordance
with his own request and initiative, rather than mine, we held many an
informal session over the old-fashioned Bible; and I feel myself warranted
in saying that, as to the eternal truths which it declares, we found ourselves,
after illimitable and thoroughly fearless and unconventional discussion,
not far apart.

In one of his letters, dated Butte, Montana, alluding to the
above case, Mr. Shaler writes : " The question is a difficult one,
but I hope to compass it without undue strain. I have had a
busy day in the mine and on the surface. I shall be very glad
to escape from this very tiresome place." And yet it was in the
intervals of his taxing professional work there that the second
part ("The Rival Queens") of the Elizabeth series was written.
His window at the time overlooked a street full of vulgar and
even depraved incidents of frontier life ; a stalwart Norwegian
working lustily at his blacksmith's forge was the only whole-
some human sight his eyes met. But, as he tells us elsewhere,
he was curiously independent of what are considered favorable
surroundings for mental work. The poetic impulse would often
come to him in a flash, even when suffering much pain, or bur-
dened with cares. Sometimes while engaged in ordinary con-
versation an almost instantaneous transition of thought would
take place.

This instantaneous movement of the mind in professional
and other cases, where apparently there had been no time for
preparation, enabled him to reach conclusions so swiftly, to
pronounce his judgment so decidedly, as to awaken doubt as to
its soundness. But it did not take long for the skeptic to find

340 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

out that he was right, and that intuitively he had divined the
truth, or that in his multitudinous experience he had met
the same conditions before. His readiness was undoubtedly
the stored-up result of persistent and almost unconscious study
of the actualities and problems of life. He might well have said
in the words of Daniel Webster, "There is no such thing as
extemporaneous acquisition."

To go back to his Western experiences, there were few phases
of mining life, camp or town, with which he was not acquainted,
and his descriptions of them remain fixed in the mind. Of one
of these dwelling-places, he writes : " It is curious to notice the
perfect forlornness of the mountain settlement : it is distinctly
a higher order of miserableness than any other region can
afford. A wide range of experience in the backwoods of lower
levels does not prepare one for the utter grovelling look that
hangs over these shanty towns." And again : " The dilapidation
that comes to these hut-towns is very rapid. Soon nothing
remains but a modern kitchen-midden of broken bottles and
crushed tin cans." Of the ranchers' houses, he says : " They are
mostly half underground, and are a sort of gopher-holes, gener-
ally with sod roofs and with a heap of empty tin cans excreted
at the only opening of the den."

Where the railways stopped and coaches took up the burdens
they discharged to carry them still higher in the mountains, the
caravans they formed, in Mr. Shaler's eyes, gave the most pic-
turesque aspects of mountain life. "The teamsters," he writes,
"are silent, indefatigable fellows, brutal in every outward ap-
pearance, yet, withal, patient with their difficulties and helpful
of each other, unless the other is a 'Greaser/ In two hundred
miles' travel, I did not hear a brutal word from one man to an-
other, and I was indebted to them for many considerate acts.
In his difficulties with his teams a man will lift up his voice and
address the Infinite in a diabolical homily that would befit
Milton's Satan, and then, subsiding like a geyser, remain silent
for the rest of the day. At night when they gather around the

WESTERN FERTILITY 341

fire in the low-walled, turf -covered ranches, they are perfectly
mute : they sit on the benches as still as mummies until they
slip down upon the floor and snore until morning. They often
camp alone by the roadside. One night I sought directions from
one of these solitary men. He was a huge grizzle-bearded fellow,
whom I surprised cooking his supper by a little fire in a niche in
the rocks near the team. His ugly visage stood out in the blaze
of his bacon, which he was toasting on a stick. He gave me suf-
ficient answer without looking up to see who was shouting at
him out of the darkness."

On one of his journeys westward, the fertility of the soil (com-
pared with the poor relation's share of the earth in the East)
seemed to him excessively gross. "The land," he says, "loves
the plow, or at least submits to it, as the ox gives himself to the
yoke. There is an almost painful monotony in this utter giving
up of the earth to the profitable uses of man. The soil grows
fatter and more fertile as it goes nearer the centre of the Missis-
sippi valley, until, in Illinois, it seems a perfect desert of tall
withered corn-stalks and wheat stubble that stretches to the
horizon. The towns have a look of squalid plenty. Corn is trod-
den under foot, and about the stations its grains often are as
thick in the mud as are pebbles in New England. Here and
there in wide fields a little rectangular patch of surface shows the
roof of the master of a domain big enough for a lord. The sky,
too, is prairie-like in its uniformity : it is a vacuous expanse of
clearness or cloud without the diversity that a varied surface
alone can give it."

Elsewhere he says: "The moon is full and the mountains
show almost as well as by day. Night quiets the winds here and
settles the mists and drifting snows, so that for seeing the time
is almost as good as day. The walls of the gorge stand as steep
as cliffs can, with their fantastic spired battlements a thousand
feet above the stream (the river Platte) that winds through the
ruins below. All the moods of architecture — spires, castle-
towers, and city- walls — are mimicked in their variations of

342 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

shape. . . . For four hours with the throttle valve wide open
and a steady panting breath, the engine toils up the steep
and crooked way, gaining about five thousand feet in height,
eventually escaping from the gorge into the vast mountain
plains called the South Park. ..."

And yet, notwithstanding his many entertaining and in-
structive contacts with men and things, — contacts such as only
fall to the share of one who is on the lookout for natural phe-
nomena and human qualities alike, — these long journeys over
great stretches of the earth's surface void of historic associa-
tions of an enriching kind, after the first novelty wore off were
tiresome to the last degree. There was one spiritual profit he
gained from them, and that was the enlargement of his sym-
pathies, although it scarcely seemed as if they needed further
amplification. Travelling, often alone, in far-off places and
lodging in strange inns served to arouse a feeling of compassion
for solitary people. The isolation of most human beings, as he
saw them in these wanderings, was borne in upon him, and he
pitied all who were driven, either by restlessness or by neces-
sity, from the shelter and affections of the home.

In the early days the little sleeping-cars were, as he says,
"crammed with a motley lot of humanity, supercivilized and
savage in all degrees." From among this miscellaneous cargo
of human beings he picked up acquaintances easily. A racy
character when found was a boon which served to quicken the
slow-going hours. The defenceless and incompetent he be-
friended, especially women travelling alone, or any creature
who could not well stand by himself. Often when he would fain
have passed the time in silence and repose, his peace was broken
in upon by people whom he had met before — old students who
turned up everywhere, vigilant young men, who, in the kindness
of their hearts, would make a point of keeping a close eye upon
their old master, lest he be lonesome, when solitude was really
the thing he most desired.

During this fruitful period of which we are writing Mr. Shaler

THE FIGHT AGAINST ILL HEALTH 343

did a great deal of literary work. Besides three separate books,
and an important paper on the Physiography of North America,
contained in the "Narrative and Critical History of America/1
edited by Justin Winsor, which appear on his list of publica-
tions, are a number of valuable scientific reports, among them
Reports on the Geology of Nantucket, Mount Desert, Cape
Ann, and Martha's Vineyard. There are also his annual execu-
tive reports of the Atlantic Coast Division of the United States
Geological Survey; a preliminary report on the Coal Swamps
of the Eastern United States, etc.; monographs on other scien-
tific subjects and magazine articles too numerous to mention
here. The investigations which preceded these reports exacted
much of his time in the study of the geological problems of the
localities and a great deal of travelling at all seasons of the
year. At this period he also was doing his full share of teach-
ing and taking an active part in the discussion of educational
questions.

Indifferent health, — sick headaches and other maladies, —
now as always, was something to be reckoned with, its thwarting
power dominated, and, instead of being allowed to take the first
place in his thoughts, was reduced to a secondary, or mere menial
position, wherein it served to keep his activities within bound
and enforced rest at a certain time of the day, usually just after
luncheon. It also prevented any waste of time, and one hour
or place under its discipline became as good as another for the
doing of a task. These were some of the spoils won out of the
battle. Indeed, by his skilful management of his foe, reinforced
by the wise counsel of his physician and friend, Dr. Henry P.
Walcott, it was in a way made to dig its own grave. And yet it is
impossible to reckon the inner suffering or the tax that almost
constant physical annoyance put upon his patience and endur-
ance. It made him at times exceedingly sensitive to anything
like confusion or noise in his surroundings ; his house, therefore,
was run quietly and methodically, and as far as possible all
opposition was withheld in order that no aggravating circum-

344 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

stance might add to his nervousness, for in the outside world
there was always enough to disturb the equipoise of one of his
ardent temperament.

In 1886 there came about a change of residence, and the
Bow Street house, now the site of Westmorly Hall, where he
had spent many happy years, was sold. The street, from hav-
ing been a quiet little side passage, had become the highway to
boat-house and students' lodgings. The purchase of this place
had been in a way the outcome of what is recognized as an ideal
state of society — the condition where every man owns his own
house. At least such seemed to be the case in Cambridge in
1867, for after searching vainly to find a dwelling for rent, hap-
pening one day to walk through the old part of the town, Mr.
Shaler noticed an auctioneer's flag hanging from the house
he was passing. Taking counsel at home, he returned in a few
minutes to the site and before the next half-hour was over he
had become the owner of the old-fashioned abode that for some
obscure reason had been put on the market. The big chimneys
were its chief attractions, built at a time when a hole in the
floor was not recognized as a substitute for the family hearth.
In re-introducing the open wood fire, Mr. Shaler felt that he
was doing good service ; the air-tight stove and furnace doubt-
less had their uses, but were not to be depended upon as sources
of joy in the library, or any place where good fellowship was
expected. He lived to see fires blazing on the hearths of most
of his friends, and insisted that the open fire and the open heart
were two things that naturally went together.

The Quincy Street house, overlooking the College Yard, was
charmingly placed. It was sunny, quiet, and nearer to his
office, especially when that was transferred from the Museum
to University Hall. And henceforth all that went on within the
College enclosure became a part of his life, from the ringing of
the early morning bell to the "rushes" on " Bloody Monday."
He had a keen scent for a fire and was always among the first to
appear on the scene. His quick response to the call of the fire-

THE QUINCY STREET HOUSE IN CAMBRIDGE

THE QUINCY STREET HOUSE 345

bell was a relic of his youth, when there were no paid firemen
and the alarm called out the active and daring young men of
the town, who vied with one another in chivalrous acts of rescue
service. President Eliot was also a prompt attendant at fires;
indeed one suspected an unconscious rivalry between them. At
any rate Mr. Shaler rather crowed over the fact that while the
President had "bossed" the fire that threatened to consume
the near-by Baptist Church, he himself had an active hand in
extinguishing the conflagration at the Colonial Club, while his
neighbor slumbered peacefully all unconscious of the lost op-
portunity; and so the account eventually was evened.

For many years the house, for a sober old town like Cambridge,
was a scene of comparative gayety; his daughters and their
young friends, animated by the protean activities of youth,
made it a cheerful place, and doubtless many who were young
then but are mature now, scattered over the face of the earth,
have pleasant memories of the old library, for in its retreats
some of them met their "fate" — their lovers, husbands, and
wives. Mr. Shaler enjoyed the Sunday afternoon receptions at
his house, which became a feature of its social life. On these
occasions he was most genial and solicitous that every one
should have a pleasant time — the students and other friends,
and also strangers who, knowing he was then at home, with or
without an introduction would come to see him. This free
entrance led sometimes to a curious grouping of people — a
Chinaman, an Englishman, and a South American being brought
into a close but good-natured juxtaposition. Between students
and what were known as "grown-up people" there sometimes
arose a slight feeling of antagonism, the latter maintaining that
they came Sunday afternoons for enjoyment and not to do mis-
sionary work — for such they considered talking to immature
youths ; but on the whole, animated by good will towards host
and hostess, the two elements did their best to get on amiably
together.

Mr. Shaler's courtesy to every one within his doors, from the

346 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

humblest washwoman to the most distinguished guest, was a
marked characteristic. This allusion to distinguished guests
reminds one of an anecdote he often told of Huxley. During
the great biologist's visit to Cambridge, Mr. Shaler invited him
and his wife to take a drive in the country. After passing the
market-gardens out Belmont way, Huxley suddenly called out,
"Stop, driver, stop. There, Shaler," he exclaimed, "is n't that
tobacco growing in that field? " Receiving " yes" for an answer,
he stood up in the carriage, waved his hat, and shouted three
cheers for tobacco, adding in an aggrieved tone : "And to think
that I should have lived forty years without knowing the com-
fort of the weed."

Mr. Shaler struck up quite a comradeship with Mr. Kipling
when the latter visited Cambridge. The novelist was capti-
vated by the professor's stories; those relating to Western
experience, he said, were just the things no writer of fiction
could ever invent. They first met at a dinner at Miss Grace
Norton's, and Mr. Shaler liked to tell the story of what hap-
pened there. On their way home he said to his wife, "What
were you and Kipling talking about at table? You both looked
as mystified as if you had seen a ghost." The substance of the
talk was as follows. In a lull of the general conversation she
heard Kipling say to his hostess, " When I was at Tisbury last
summer." The confusion of tongues made the rest *of his
remark inaudible. When the opportunity occurred she asked,
"How long were you at Tisbury, Mr. Kipling?" — "Six
weeks," was the answer. — "Six weeks," she repeated, "how
extraordinary!" Again something was said on the other side
which made him turn a deaf ear. A few minutes later he in-
quired, "Pray, madam, what is so extraordinary in my being
at Tisbury?" adding almost defiantly, "Yes, I stayed there
six weeks with my uncle and then went to Chilmark." — "To
Chilmark?" she exclaimed. — "Yes, to Chilmark." — "How
remarkable!" — "Why remarkable?" — "Because, to tell you
the truth, there are not many people like you who go to Tisbury,

CONVERSATION WITH MR. KIPLING 347

and if I must say it, there are not many like ourselves. I should
think, in a mere village, we might have met." — "A mere vil-
lage? Explain yourself." And then suddenly receiving a ray of
light, "Where is this Tisbury and Chilmark of yours?" she
asked. — "England, of course. Where did you suppose?" —
"Oh, I thought you had been at Martha's Vineyard," she an-
swered. "Our farm there is partly in the town of Tisbury and
partly in Chilmark." — "That's interesting," said Kipling.
" Some one from my part of the world must have given the old
names to those new places. I should very much like to see them."
— "Then come for a visit." — "It will give me pleasure."

CHAPTER XXIV

COUNTRY LIVING

IN 1888 Mr. Shaler bought a tract of land on the northern shore
of Martha's Vineyard, and then he bought another and another
old farmstead, in order, as he said, to keep undesirable people
on the farther side of the hedge, until he owned no inconsider-
able portion of that part of the island. And here for many years
he made his summer home, the idea gaining upon him that to
cultivate a farm was a large share of the duty of man ; in his
own case it undoubtedly became a large share of his pleasure.
The farm was a refuge from the life that cost so much in wear
and tear — that life which to the casual observer seemed far re-
moved from the feverish stir of the great world. Many a tired
man of business, coming to Cambridge to look after his son,
while sitting at the window in Mr. Shaler 's library overlooking
the college green, has commented upon the scene of beauty and
repose and upon the professor's freedom from care. He knew
little of the unending solicitude to make the education of his
boy a pursuit of knowledge and not merely a rush for the degree.
It was sequestered, but not restful.

Mr. Shaler was first conscious of the charm of the island of
Martha's Vineyard when as a boy he made a geological excur-
sion to it. Again, while doing some work for the Coast Survey
he travelled from one end to the other, gaining refreshment, as
he phrases it, "from the soft air, the broad, smooth fields, the
rounded domes of foliage, and the unusual green, together with
the drowse in which all is steeped." He learned to regard the
island as "an oasis of salubrity in our New England bad cli-
mate/' its average warmth being two degrees above Boston.
He was also pleased to regard it as a natural asylum to be
shared with worn-out sea-captains — "looking like the ani-

CHOOSING A COUNTRY PLACE 349

mated figure-heads of old-fashioned ships" — who came there
to end their days.

Since he never forgot the impression a place made upon him,
the memory of the island lingered in his mind until he was ready
to provide himself with a country home — not a half -acre lot,
but something of the nature of a farm. The love of the country,
with its actualities of animals and crops and the local inde-
pendence, touching the border of exclusiveness, was strong
within him ; indeed, it was a tradition in his region of the coun-
try that the good of life was only to be had away from the
crowded centres which hindered men from being wise and happy.
What he desired was a "civil wilderness" — that is, spacious
possessions tamed to comfort, but not made artificial, nor yet
closely packed with humanity. He used to say he loved his
fellow men — but not too near. He liked the stateliness of
uncrowded fields, the sense of freedom and security from the
intrusion of unsought companions while tramping over land he
owned. The seclusion of the place he chose was one of its chief
attractions, and the Seven Gates through which he was obliged
to pass when he first took possession of it were welcome bar-
riers between him and the dust and noise of the busy world.
There was also at foundation in Mr. Shaler's nature a feudal
leaning toward a large estate with numerous retainers, kins-
folk, and dependents. In the old days he would have made an
ideal master, asking little service and giving much reward. And
for this reason, he was never severe on the subject of abstract
justice, for he could not conceive in human relations of one
man taking unfair advantage of another. Slavery, therefore,
was not altogether repugnant to him. He considered it a good
fortune for the slave, but a taxing relation for the master. It
was an institution not to be perpetuated, but gradually to be
got rid of.

It was not, however, that he might pass his days in ease and
isolation that Mr. Shaler sought the country. He had the natu-
ralist's craving for contact with the earth in all possible ways;

350 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

for a chance to solve some of the problems of agriculture with
which, under his father's and grandfather's guidance, he had
been more or less concerned from his youth. More than this, he
had an almost sentimental affection for the earth, "knowing
earth for a mother," and firmly believed that the universe of
matter so far from being hostile, as the old view of nature taught,
was a close ally to the world of spiritual things. He somewhere
says: "With a bit of land any one may play the part of a god.
... In this day of experiments, when men see deeper in the
world about them, a new field of enjoyment is opened to those
who are privileged to possess the earth." In his opinion the tiller
of the soil, owing to his relations to the functions of the earth,
is preeminently a naturalist, and more than any other kind of
man is in a position to gain the spiritual profit which may come
from an intimate relation with the forces which control the de-
velopment of the world. He deplored in agricultural commu-
nities the influence at work tending to separate the youth from
the fields and turn his longings and ambitions away from the
occupations of the soil-tiller. He urged that the master who is to
teach the ways of Nature must be intimately acquainted with
the work of the farmer. " My own experience/' he says, "shows
me how a man with moderate labor and ordinary capacities
may keep himself somewhat familiar with the agricultural art
and at the same time know enough of natural science to be a
teacher in that department of knowledge. ... I have never
essayed the task, but I feel confident that I could take a class
of farmers' sons and daughters and lead them through a course
of natural science where every point and every illustration
would be taken from the facts with which they are intimately
familiar, without the least risk of loss of attention in the work.
I believe this could be done by any fairly competent teacher."
Fortunately for his own peace of mind, he undertook no
teaching while in the country. For several summers the en-
gineering class of the Lawrence Scientific School camped on his
grounds and made use of them for practice in their work.

MARTHA'S VINEYARD 351

Though nominally not in charge, he could not quite divest him-
self of responsibility, and the very presence of a body of students
so near at hand was a source of care to him, so that eventually
the summer station for this branch of teaching was transferred
to Squam Lake. The fascination which Martha's Vineyard had
for Mr. Shaler, aside from its restorative climate, was in part
due to its geological formations. There were the peculiar and
brilliant beds of clay at Gay Head ; on his own place, a long
stretch of seashore where he could watch the work of the sea ;
and everywhere traces of glacial action. Unlike most farmers,
he coveted the rocks as much as he did the soil ; and he bought
a special tract of land that he might have, as he said, a moraine
of his own. His feeling in regard to these features of the land-
scape was recognized by his friends. Mr. W. E. Darwin writes,
"There is nothing I should like better than to visit your
private preserve of kames and aprons at Martha's Vineyard."
Many other stretches of land, for various assigned reasons,
but mainly because he had the land hunger of his forbears, were
purchased from the widely scattered children of the old folk
who, in the intervals of their toiling with the sea, built bowlder
walls and scratched the sterile soil for a living. Most of their
houses, under stress of weather, had so fallen to decay that in
some instances only chimneys and foundations remained to
mark the spot where a home once had been ; or flowers, — these
in their season blossoming persistently in the lonely places.
Among them the old-fashioned daffies seemed best to have with-
stood neglect; and taking this hint of their hardihood, Mr.
Shaler and his companion planted thousands of new bulbs of
their kind, so that in the spring, when the east winds of March
invited to shelter, one was tempted forth to gather the yellow
blossoms that glowed alongside of the bowlders, the old founda-
tions, and stone walls. As the crop increased, the coming of
the daffodils and their distribution in Cambridge got to be a
floral event that was looked forward to by many friends. Mr.
Shaler was also very much interested in the planting of

352 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

trees, and loved to watch their growth from year to year. In
addition to tree-planting at the right season, during one of his
winter visits to "Seven Gates" he planted several thousand
nuts with a crowbar through the snow. These were put in dif-
ferent soils and exposure, to see where they would grow best.
He was very persistent in his efforts to acclimatize the English
primrose, at last succeeding marvellously on a hillside sloping to
the north and shaded from the direct rays of the sun. It was
thus that the interest of his "alleged farm," as he called it, in-
creased, and acquired a value of its own independent of being
a harbor of refuge which at first was its chief excuse for being.

At times the restraints and worries of his environment bore
heavily upon him and the longing for space and solitude be-
came overwhelming. Under this stress he would set out for the
country with the zest of one who scents afar the perfume of
green fields. The train was no sooner under way than he would
toss aside his hat, shut his eyes, and take a deep breath, every
line of his face showing the relief of one who had shaken off the
halter. The satisfaction grew as he realized with the passing
of each milestone that he was on his way to a studentless wil-
derness, an academic Sahara. He had frequent recurrent attacks
of the rural mania, and when they came it was difficult to per-
suade him that there was anything else worth living for besides
a trip to the Vineyard; moreover, it often required cunning
stratagem to keep him from making the venture when the
weather was bitter and the time inconvenient.

The visits to the farm which he enjoyed most were in the
autumn just after the struggles of the college year were over,
when things had in a fashion settled down to a semblance of
order, when students had temporarily at least been shaken into
place, the square peg got out of the round hole of elective be-
wilderment. In the country, also, the fervid time of reaping
was at an end and the fields, with their stacks of full-eared corn,
slumbered peacefully through the autumn days. Here, re-
moved from a veritable storm-centre of contending wits, there

LIFE AT SEVEN GATES 353

was nothing to tease him out of the repose he so much needed,
and gradually refreshment came to body and mind from the
night's sound sleep untortured by the noise of bells or street-
cars, and from the long morning's walk with hoe in hand over
the bare fields, where he made war upon the thistles. In these
hours of quiet and solitude life was to him a serene delight.
In the afternoon, after some writing, there was another tramp,
not companionless now, on the beach, or over the peaceful hills ;
lingering perhaps until the young moon was first seen mirrored
in the waters of the little pond at the foot of the hill, or until
the lamps in the laborers' windows emitted light enough to
keep the feet straight in the narrow paths the sheep had made.
On the way home Mr. Shaler would often stop at the spring,
beneath the tupelo tree, for a draught of its sweet waters; or
again, he would go out of his way to select with fastidious care
a hickory log that it might give the last touch of perfection to
the evening fire.

He liked to putter over the fire, having, as always, a theory
to put into practice, — a method which involved the proper
arrangement of the logs and the right amount of ashes to be
guarded as a store of heat, details about which in Cambridge
he was comparatively indifferent. Even in summer both here
and in Cambridge he kept a little fire burning, not so much for
the heat, but, it was suspected, that he might frequently light
his unsteady pipe with a live coal, — a Kentucky habit which
he cherished. To do this was undoubtedly a pleasure, but over
and above its ministration to the smoker's tranquil joy, a fire
on the hearth excited his poetic fancy. In one of his letters he
writes : —

By a fire I am never altogether alone, but have strange company in the
beings that pass as shadows are said to do in the magician's mirror; indeed
the fireplace becomes as it were another window which admits our vision to
the scenes of days gone by or into that dark profound we call the future. . . .
Eras ago these few black lumps were the gorgeous vegetation of the tropical
forests, plants stretching their luxurious foliage high towards the heavens,

354 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

making earth glorious with their beauty. . . . Step by step through every
variety of change that time can bring, even while they bloomed and flour-
ished, their present destiny was evolving, and now these dead flowers are
warming a creature of yesterday and lighting my room with the sunshine of a
forgotten age. I use no poetic license in saying the sunshine of long ago ;
for in all truth it is the light and heat of the days when the coal forests
flourished which comes to me now when these relics are burning.

The country was Mr. Shaler's natural realm. At times it was
difficult for those about him to realize what such a retreat meant
to him; but in the fuller knowledge that perspective gives it
is easy to see that it was necessary in order to keep his soul
resilient beneath the load of the commonplace that found its
way even into the academic world ; it was the need to escape
from the outer aspect that meets the eye to the inner light of
the spirit, and nowhere else were conditions so favorable for the
serene life of mind and spirit. It was thought by many that the
days must pass dully in a region so sparsely peopled, but he was
not of the dull-witted kind who suffer from quiet and demand
bustle as a substitute for thought. It was impossible for one to
be bored who sought, as he did, an explanation of the world
about him. The power and activity of his mind left little leisure
for ennui. With the good earth beneath his feet and the light
of heaven above, the ceaseless pulsing of the sea and the ancient
rocks to tell their story, he found himself elated. In truth, he
was never lonely in company with his great friend and goddess,
Nature. And yet he did not go out to her with the solemnity
of "a dedicated spirit." He sought by the active use of his
intelligence to interpret her truly and lovingly; but he never
yielded to the mawkish sentimentality that exalts grass and
stones and trees at the expense of the human interest.

But even in the remote place he had chosen for his home there
was always something going on to appeal to his imagination.
Vineyard Sound itself, which he looked upon from his window,
was full of happenings — all kinds of craft, from the noisy little
motorboats in which fishermen go to and from their nets; the

LOVE OF THE LANDSCAPE 355

great six-masted schooners with their sawlike sky lines; the
tugs followed by their chain of sluggish coal barges; and the
fast-sailing yachts that skim the water at stated seasons, all
gave a far-off animation that called for no expenditure of emo-
tion, yet at the same time kept the outgoing thought busily
travelling from the Azores to the coal-pits of Pennsylvania.

Not content with the purely scientific aspect of nature, —
there was hardly any such aspect for one whose province it was
to humanize a scientific fact as soon as he grasped it, — he ap-
propriated the beauty of the landscape superimposed upon the
skeleton of geological history, making it a part of his every-day
life. It was his habit to experiment as to the best way of gain-
ing a sense of the beauty and significance of any scene with
which he was brought into intimate contact. He believed that
"he who would become a lover of the landscape must accustom
himself to seek it alone, and must learn to know that his mere
presence at its doors will not make him free to its treasures."
As a result of experiment he further became convinced that
knowledge may vastly enhance the intensity of aesthetic im-
pressions. "The evidence of the slow changes which have
brought the bit of earth to its existing form, which have shaped
the face which it turns to the eyes of man, has to be gained,"
he says, "by deliberate inquiry, so that the reading is that of a
great volume in its difficulty and in the time it demands." He
thought much upon this subject, lectured on it to the students
in the Architectural School, and left many pages of unpub-
lished material relating to it. Able himself to bring an informed
intelligence to the observation of the ocean, hills, and plains,
his enjoyment of their beauty was proportionally keen. Grand-
eur of scenery, however, never took strong hold upon him. It
was the gentler scenes, linked with human interest, that pleased
him most — the places where homes had been or might be, or
where great deeds had been enacted. "There are," he says,
" many landscapes in the unhistoric wildernesses endowed with
a far greater share of purely natural beauty than that of the

356 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

Val d'Arno or the Plain of Marathon. It is the light from the
past which gives these scenes their abiding dignity; but this
light does not shine forth from the pages of the guide-book ; it
must come from the ancient wealth of the mind." The low-
lying hills and subtle gradation of outline on Martha's Vineyard
were a perpetual delight to him and furnished material for study
in the values of form and color. He somewhere says, " If a moun-
tain or hill goes about it aright, it can get an amazing dignity
without assaulting the heavens in its efforts." In one of his
note-books he writes, "No other landscape known to me has
so many contrasted slopes in an equal amount of profile; the
result is the impression of height and dignity totally dispro-
portioned to the actual altitudes : nowhere else in this country
do I know anything like the variety of scenic effect that is ex-
hibited in this hundred or so square miles."

Furthermore he discovered that, owing to the beneficent in-
fluence of the Gulf Stream, there was in southeast Massachu-
setts a seasonal condition akin to the Old World spring, and
that people there were justified in accepting the English tradi-
tion, embodied in verse and prose, concerning the vernal time
of the year. He notes the fact that on the island " spring begins
in February, — the ferns awakening to the uplifting noonday
sun within a month of the winter solstice. April the first always
brings the daffodils; on May 15th, however, the life is at least
a fortnight behind that of Cambridge. 'Seven Gates' has a real
European spring which is characteristically long, with arrests
which seem retardations."

Mr. Shaler might have been a good farmer, — for he was well
acquainted with all the processes, — had he undertaken to
supervise details. When, however, he visited his farm, he was
generally weary of practical considerations and longed to es-
cape from the application of theories as well as from the burden
of administration. The intense nature of his college work en-
titled him to a free play of mind untrammelled by the need of
looking too closely to the execution of ideas. He therefore called

MR. SHALER ON HIS FARM

AS A FARMER 357

his farm "the playground of his old age," and laid by a good
deal of youthful feeling and the results of varied reflection which
he proposed to make use of as a pastime when he had labored
long enough in prescribed ways. The writing he had in mind
would have filled up his leisure for the next ten years.

The danger of too much work of this kind was not overlooked
by his friends. The letter given below from his old cousin Elias
Stilwell shows his knowledge of his kinsman. In order to make
his advice acceptable while suggesting that he suppress his
energy in one direction, he diplomatically unfolds a scheme for
its outlet in another and, as he thinks, more wholesome field.

. . . And you are going to your farm to work? I don't like it! You should
go to reflect, and not to think. Thinking is only preparing rough, crude work
for sale. Reflection gives a polished, enduring finish that will preserve the
thought for centuries if well done. You are capable of it. You are doing too
much. Don't wear out the machine! Go to your farm. Don't touch pen to
paper. Spend the whole day in walking and breathing pure fresh air. ... I
wish you would send out West to some of our cavalry officers and obtain
a few select mares from those wonderful war-horses the plain Indians use in
battle. I would cross them with the fine Arab stallions General Grant
brought home. You could originate the finest cavalry horses in the world.
They could carry weight, require but little food, and have the staying quality
of a sea-bird. I can procure here a fine pair of tame young moose, male and
female. It has been thought they might be cultivated for meat production.

There was, nevertheless, one practical side of farming to
which Mr. Shaler devoted himself assiduously, and that was
the extirpation of weeds, especially the thistle, which genera-
tions of poor tillers of the soil had allowed to infest the fields.
This business of rooting out thistles was not only a practical
measure for releasing the land from a pest, but with him it grew
to be a recreation. In the course of time the work becoming
purely mechanical, his mind was left free to follow its imagina-
tive way. He found so much satisfaction in his efforts to exter-
minate these weeds that he almost ceased to regard them as
enemies or himself as an avenger. Their wide distribution led
him on to the breezy hilltops, along the rocky slopes of his so-

358 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

called "private moraine," and on the still farther uplands. On
these high places, in the vales and out-of-the-way nooks, he
found balm for his nerves and wisdom for his writings, as well
as the stillness his soul craved.

Under his leadership the pursuit of the thistle became a family
occupation and each mind was fertile in warlike invention. It
was variously suggested that the flower be touched with some
blighting poison ; the plant be mowed and burned. Again there
were those who waited, to use Mr. Shaler's own phrase, "for a
critical point" in the life of the thistle — the period in which
a new mode of action is suddenly introduced that will trans-
form it from a selfish cumberer of the soil into a life-sustaining
herb. The sight of one of these nuisances always provoked a
warm discussion. It was claimed that one had but to cut down
a full-grown specimen to evoke a circle of confident and lively
little ones equally voracious for earth, air, and sun. As evi-
dence of their possible subjugation, Mr. Shaler pointed to one
hill where with his own hands he had entirely routed them,
though they had strewn the ground as thick as autumn leaves.
In most places, however, they were simply held back, the will
to live baffling the will to destroy. The teaching value of the
thistle in patience became immense; its obstinate effort to per-
petuate itself the theme of acrid criticism. In love with all
nature, Mr. Shaler was opposed to this hostile attitude ; it was
well to destroy them, he thought, but not well to harbor
malice against them; they were, he claimed, expert runners in
the race of life and their monumental effort to propagate them-
selves was worthy of admiration. It was thus that he looked
off upon the universe with a sympathetic mind.

When friends, wishing to enjoy the pleasure of his company,
would arm themselves with hoes and offer to go with him on his
walks, the suggestion was greeted with a twitch of the shoulder
and a peculiar light in his eyes, and forthwith he would start
off setting a pace which he felt sure few could follow ; and know-
ing as he did every sheep-path that led through swamps,

CONVERSATION AT SEVEN GATES 359

thickets, and woods, he would soon be out of sight and hearing.
The fact was, he wished to be alone and to follow his own train
of thought uninterrupted by what he called chatter in contra-
distinction to good talk. Indeed what was said of another might
be said of him : his library was in the house, but his study was out
of doors. He preferred a companion who had nothing to say,
or, if he had, would keep from saying it. He liked the one who
was oftenest with him to remain within sight and speaking dis-
tance, but to guard the peace until on the way home. The time
for talking was at table, or in the evening just after supper while
he was smoking his long-stemmed pipe, which he filled and
lighted often as a sort of punctuation to the flow of speech ; at
these times he delighted to expend himself in conversation.
Not infrequently there were regular conversational orgies, when
for instance Professor Royce, Dr. James, or other congenial men
would come to visit him ; then these inspiring and indefatigable
talkers would only cease with physical exhaustion, for original
ideas in that circle never were lacking. These occasions could
not be said to be brilliant tournaments where men disported
themselves for display, but each spoke from the abundance of
his fertile mind to convince, to learn, or bring to light the
elusive fact. It was a dead heat with frequent returns to the
unsolved problem. Talks like these, and others in the library at
Cambridge, with many men of many minds for interlocutors,
would have made the services of a shorthand writer a desirable
thing.

Some of Mr. Shaler's best thinking was done on his place at
the Vineyard. Here, free from the endless interruptions of his
official life, he could carry on a connected train of thought with-
out the waste of energy that rallying the mind for fresh assault
brings. When he wanted a change he would turn from prose to
poetry, in this way practising a sort of mental rotation of crops.
To shed the practical work at Cambridge and enter the field of
speculative thought, or the stirring world of Elizabeth's time,
was leaving drudgery and soaring into the upper spaces. It was

360 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

like the view from his study window, the bare hills standing
aloof from the green fields. The act of writing was in itself
a soothing occupation, and it is for this reason doubtless that
one finds in his books a large and stately way of putting things
rather than the dash and verve one remembers in his talk and
actions.

No doubt his sojourns in the country were a solace and a
moral profit. The impulse which nature gave him towards the
large and noble aspect of creation was strengthened by the op-
portunity for peaceful contemplation. The serener air restored
the equilibrium of character that was sometimes perturbed in
the ardent pursuit of the projects he had most at heart. Re-
moved from the intenser struggle, he was able to sever the es-
sential and permanent from what was accidental and transient;
his state of mind thus became calmer, and his generosity of
thought and deed, his largeness of heart and tenderness, in a
more pronounced way came to the surface. Always sensitive
to the genial and gracious side of social intercourse, he sought
occasions for the practice of a still finer courtesy in the minor
as well as the more important acts of life. He could not pass
through a field without gathering a bunch of wild roses for those
at home, and every morning at each breakfast plate he would
place the flower of the season which he plucked with the dew
upon it. Often in his walks he would go out of his way to shake
hands with a lonely old man whose wandering days were over.
It may be that it was amid the reposeful scenes by which he was
surrounded, and in the silent places he sought, that he made his
conquests in the ample spaces of his soul, and fitted himself
more completely to become the free champion of all that was
noble.

CHAPTER XXV

THE TEACHER

1864-1905

DIFFICULT as it is to select the talent over and above all others
for which Mr. Shaler was preeminent, one is nevertheless forced
to fall back upon his teaching as the central point of his intel-
lectual achievement, the one which in a large way, though lack-
ing a lasting habitation, was productive of the greatest results.
Although the effects of teaching are elusive, its subtle influence
not to be permanently transmitted or set down in definitions,
yet in the words and deeds of some seven thousand men, forty
classes, there is abounding testimony to the effectiveness and
uplifting quality of his work in that field. As early as 1864 he
was assistant and lecturer in what is now known as the Agassiz
Museum. In 1869, at the age of -twenty-eight, he was made full
professor of paleontology (his title eventually changed to pro-
fessor of geology), and he continued to lecture with few inter-
ruptions until the end. For nearly forty years he might have
been seen walking at a swinging gait and with unfailing regu-
larity across the College Yard to and from his lectures.

Mr. Shaler chose the work of the teacher without other com-
pulsion than that which came from within ; indeed when a boy
he startled some of his college associates with what seemed at
the time the bold assertion that he meant to become a Harvard
professor. His father and others of his immediate circle were
disappointed at his choice. Without prescience of the large and
noble part he was to play in the role of a university professor,
it was thought that his talents required a wider scope : law and
politics were the accepted outlets for a man of his parts in his
region of the country.

362 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

For this reason but little elation was felt when he finally de-
cided to dedicate his life to a laborious and modest career, and
to take up his permanent abode beyond the borders of his own
state. The great compensation, however, was looked for in the
restoration of his shattered health. On his part, having volun-
tarily sought New England he cast in his lot with her ; she gave
him opportunities that he might not otherwise have had, and
he gave her the best and unstinted services of his varied talents.
Indeed, he embraced the new conditions in a whole-hearted way,
and if the old and new civilizations did not always mingle, they
lived amicably together : only as life neared its close there was
a strange longing for the one he knew first. Against the aca-
demic environment, against what was rigid, formal, and luke-
warm wherever these qualities found a home, he opposed the
land of passionate likings, unchastened aversions, and ancient
loyalties, a land where all the elements of life mingled pell-mell
and jostled one another with old-time Shakespearian freedom.
And because of this full life which had so deeply entered into his
being he must always have seemed to his comrades to have an
exotic strain in his blood. Yet, this unappeased nostalgia, this
reaching out for the other life, was more or less in opposition
to his better judgment, for he well knew that he needed for the
exercise of his best powers full swing in intellectual centres.

Even those who knew the conditions of his heritage some-
times wondered at the evolution of so rich a personality ; ques-
tioned what the preexistent souls were like that started on its
way a nature having the sensitiveness of the poet and the vigor
of the man of action. How he came by this and that spiritual
and intellectual quality only those who knew the community
in which he lived could in any measure grasp ; to the outsider
explanation is impossible, nor would the present transformed
society furnish a clew. One feature of his character, loyalty to
persons and ideas, may in a way be laid to the door of slavery,
for it was an institution immense in its force to unite and bind
together members of the ruling class.

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF CAMBRIDGE 363

The Cambridge of the seventies was a very different place fromj
the cosmopolitan Cambridge of the twentieth century. Socially, it
was a compact and solid little community, skeptical of strangers
and inclined to impose a period of probation more or less pro-
longed upon possible candidates for its favors. So far as the
newcomer was concerned, if he happened to be accustomed to
a certain military and social esprit de corps, there was little be-
sides a sense of duty, a contract to be fulfilled, to bind him to
the College. Outwardly, there were no close friendships among
the younger men, no friendly "College teas" for the women.
Notwithstanding much kindliness, nobody apparently felt him-
self in any way responsible for anybody else. Under these cir-
cumstances it was difficult to believe that precious friendships
were to crown the coming years. It may be that this sense of
social sterility — whether well founded or not, for one not to
the manner born is not always a sure judge — prompted Mr.
Shaler when, thanks to his natural gifts, he had made a place
for himself, to endeavor to render Harvard more hospitable to
the stranger within her gates; for to the stranger, as he well
knew, warmth of welcome is the sum of all social virtues.

He himself did not lack opportunities for meeting interesting
men. In those early days at one dinner in particular at Agassiz's,
among the guests, it is possible to recall the names of Emerson,
Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, Howells, and Bret Harte, besides
dimmer lights. While the meal was in progress the professor
descended to his wine cellar and brought up and uncorked a
cobweb-shrouded bottle which proved to be a precious, mirth-
provoking bottle of sunshine. On this occasion the number of
wine glasses at each plate was to some of the guests a source of
embarrassment. When the maid came round with the wine my
neighbor confidentially asked which glass he should present. I
avowed a certain traditional knowledge of port wine, native
catawba, and Bourbon whiskey, but ignorance of Swiss vintages*
"Then," said he, with a merry twinkle in his eyes, "you watch
Mr. Longfellow and I'll watch Mr. Lowell and we'll see what

364 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

they do." In those days there were no despotic butlers, in Cam-
bridge at least, to frustrate the somewhat dangerous initiative
of most Americans in the matter of beverages.

So far as the College was concerned, as one looks back upon
it, its educational opportunities seemed to run in a mere rill, com-
pared with the broad stream of culture set in motion by Presi-
dent Eliot, into which all the tributaries of learning now flow.
Mr. Shaler's connection with the College was contemporaneous
with its most expansive period. That he helped in a general way
to enlarge its intellectual and spiritual boundaries there can be
no doubt, and it is certain that in the departments with which
he was most intimately connected he vivified and uplifted them.
His personality filled a void in the University, and it has been
said that through him "the missing virtue of sympathy for the
student forced itself in." Also by means of his enthusiastic
efforts greater sympathy for the natural history side of instruc-
tion was gradually won. For many years the upholders of the
scientific spirit had to fight every mile of the march toward
acceptance. A stream of cold water, directed by the purely
academic element, played upon nearly all of his attempts to de-
velop and enlarge the scope of scientific teaching as well as to
make its approaches possible for any but the foreordained. With
the aid of his associates, a body of able men who in some instances
were his former pupils, he fought his fight persistently, passion-
ately, and so successfully that at length the value of the natural
history courses met with universal recognition.

If Mr. Shaler was a great teacher it was not due merely to the
accident of natural gifts. His success was also the outcome of
deep meditation, and a deliberate taking account of the re-
quirements of the vocation. In a paper entitled "School Vaca-
tions," he says: "Although the needs of the pupil control the
duration of our school terms, the necessities of the teacher's
work are also of a nature to demand much in the way of refresh-
ment. The true teacher, he who goes forth to his pupils, who
enters into their spirit so that he conceives their difficulties and

THE TEACHER'S VOCATION 365

helps them from near by, is called upon for duties which to the
inexperienced appear simple and easily performed, but are in-
deed of a perplexing and exhausting nature. All sympathetic
action is taxing to the strength of men. When we go forth to
another, making his life our own, we attain our end by ways of
exceeding difficulty, by paths which are not beaten, which can
only be travelled by patient ingenuity. The teacher must clearly
understand the nature of his pupil. He attains his end, if he
wins it at all, by vigilant and unceasing attention to every sign
which may guide his endeavors. No guide who seeks to bring
his charge up the most difficult mountain need be so watchful
of his actions as the teacher. He gives away his life to perform
his task if he be born to his calling. None but those who have
done the teacher's work know the cost of this free giving of the
spirit. It has fallen to me to do many things, but none seem
to take away so much from my share of vitality as the struggle
to gain a hold on the mind of some youth who, by nature re-
mote from human ways, must be firmly grasped before he can
be helped."

Mr. Shaler's lecture-notes, of which there are hundreds ex-
tant, although the merest outlines of subjects, are illuminating
as to the variety of topics and the philosophical and universal
way in which they are treated. He seems never to have been
satisfied with the mere statement of a fact, he must also make
the interpretation. By way of illustrating his general trend of
thought, a few extracts from his notes are here given. The first
at hand have the following headings : " Importance of Historic
Sense," "Importance of Conception of Energy in Operation/'
" Importance of Understanding the Relation of Earth to Man,"
" Importance of the Sense of Beauty." Others read as follows : —

Lecture on the Growth of the Study of Natural History : Importance of a
study of the growth of a science. Dependence of the growth of a science upon
the way the phenomena are exhibited. Dependence upon the mental char-
acters of the races. Close likeness of the Greek scientific spirit to our own,
utter diversity of Hebrew. Supernatural spirit opposed essentially to the

366 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

investigative. Absence of the supernatural spirit among the Greeks — the
cause of their scientific advance. Utter want of scientific spirit among the
Semitic peoples. With all the wisdom of the Bible there is no trace of scien-
tific inquiry — not so among the Vedas, etc., etc.

Kepler's view truer than that of him who thinks he is philosophical when
he excludes all idea of plan from his conception of the actions which have
made the earth what it is. The imagination and the religious instincts have
their place in the investigation of nature ; they give the light and show the
way to those fields where the harvest is gathered with the microscope and
the telescope. He who begins an investigation by excluding his imagination
and his religiosity begins a difficult search by shutting out the light. He will-
ingly gropes in the dark with the idea that he is more likely to grasp the
truth by chance than by guidance. I do not advocate the use of imagination
alone or the use of the religious impulse alone; I would have the whole
man given to an investigation. We are intellectually argus-eyed ; what folly,
then, to try to see by shutting all the avenues of seeing but one ! The world
is vast enough to require the aid of every faculty with which we are blessed
if we would read its riddles.

His tendency as a lecturer has been briefly summed up in the
following words : —

It was largely from the point of unity and continuity that he revealed
the order of nature to the thousands of students who attended his lectures
these many years; the interaction of the sun, winds, oceans, lands, and life
being the main theme in his presentation of geology, while his treatment of
paleontology was directed to describing the ancient forms of life, not merely
for themselves but as the ancestors of the present inhabitants of the earth.
He never limited his attention closely to one line of inquiry, but was always
keenly interested in a wide variety of natural and human phenomena ; and
one sign of this was the manner in which he would consult his colleagues on
unexpected topics. He was especially fond of tracing the connections which
bind together the various regions of knowledge, showing at once the natural-
ist's love of detail and the philosopher's fondness for large problems.1

As a teacher it was Mr. Shaler's good fortune to inspire as
well as to instruct, and intellectual contact with him seemed
to increase a man's capacity for knowing a fine thing whenever

i Minute on the Life and Services of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, Harvard University
Qazette.

HIS QUALITIES AS A TEACHER 367

it might present itself. There may have been others who stated
a scientific fact as well, but there were few of his time who gave
so wide an application or humanized as he did the subjects of
his instruction. "Under Professor Shaler," says one of his col-
leagues, "the student gained a kindling vision of pretty much
all the natural world " ; and one of his old students writes in
The World's Work : —

The dramatic points of his subjects were always brought out in his lectures
with great relish. To have heard him describe the movements of the ice-cap
over our continent, you would have thought he had been there, observing
from a mountain-peak : and, when he wound up with the fact that he him-
self owned "a patch of glebe on the very moraine piled up by the edge of
that creeping ice-sheet," you felt that the Creator had probably parceled it
out to him as his rightful share in the great land improvement.

Another of his former pupils, now a well-known teacher,
sets forth in the Journal of Geography his impressions of the
teacher : —

As youths, students were inspired by his wonderful exposition in the
class-room, and by his deep love for all that was noble and pure; as the
years went on they came to love him because of his breadth of sympathy,
his versatility, and his nobleness, which could not be appreciated in early
acquaintance because their knowledge was not deep enough. Those who
knew him longest loved him because of all these qualities and many others
that became deeper and richer as the years advanced. . . . The large major-
ity of students went forth from his classes broader in their mental vision,
more in sympathy with Nature, more keen to analyze the problems of sci-
ence presented to them daily, and with a deep conviction that they had
gained a mental altitude that gave them a more human outlook on the
world. Professor Shaler was a great teacher because he was primarily a
broad-minded, big-hearted man, vigorous of speech, keen of mind, quick
of action, versatile almost beyond belief, always interested in everything
about him however remote or seemingly trivial. He sacrificed his strength
in every way in the service of his fellows, but his influence will go on through
the generations, by his books and writings, but more especially by the teach-
ings of those he taught to teach by his example.

The mere mention of the course originally called Natural
History Five, and subsequently Geology Four, recalls to hun-

368 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

dreds of men — those of special scientific leaning and the mere
seeker after entertainment — hours delightfully spent, listening
to the wonderful tale of the world's creation. Indeed, there are
many who hark back to those lectures in the way men do to
the fairy stories of their childhood ; others, to whom nature as
yet had hardly been discovered, found them the open door to a
kingdom of light, to a magnificent and immeasurable universe.
His teaching was not confined to the lecture-room. The
geological excursions which he organized, generally known as
"Professor Shaler 's Field Days," were notable occasions. A
long line of motley-looking students, in costumes more or less
complete, embellished by collars and cravats according to the
morning hour when the train had to be caught, would be seen
moving along the streets, over hills and dales, through swamps
and across rivers, following their leader. These excursions were
usually in the immediate neighborhood of Boston, though some-
times Mr. Shaler was requested to extend his tramp to other
districts. The Boston Daily Advertiser's report of one of these
expeditions runs as follows : —

On leaving the cars at Quincy the party walked to the top of the high
hill just west of the station. Here attention was called to the widespread
view of sea and shore, and to the fine mountainlike scenery of the Blue
Hills. "They are called hills," said Mr. Shaler, "but in their day they
formed a part of a lofty mountain-range extending from Sharon past Boston
to Saugus. These now denuded and degraded mountains, presenting but a
trace of their former grandeur, are very interesting to the geologist. They
have not received the attention from scientific men that they deserve. ..."
Mr. Shaler then remarked that he had obtained more information concern-
ing their history and structure from a well-known Boston lady [Miss Eliza
Quincy] than from scientific works. . . . Gradually the character of
the rocks, and the wild, picturesque scenery they made, changed, till at
last, on the shore of Weymouth River, the blue-clay slate that crowned all
was reached. Here a visit was made to the only trilobite bed in New Eng-
land. "These trilobites," said Mr. Shaler, "are the stony remains of the
earliest life. They resemble somewhat the horse-shoe crabs so common in
Boston Bay." A specimen of this crab was picked up on the beach and the
two compared. Placing the dead crab fresh from the sea and his ancient

FIELD DAYS — SUMMER SCHOOL 369

cousin side by side, the professor said: "Here we have a fish from last sum-
mer's tide and his relation from the steaming, turbid waters of an almost
shoreless sea that flowed over this spot a hundred million years ago."

Mr. Shaler would often return from the day's tramp — severe
enough to tax the powers of men much younger than himself
— very tired. Walking and talking, explaining and reiterating
all the way were taxing occupations, and not infrequently
the luncheon which had been put up for one was shared by
several, thoughtless youths having forgotten to bring their
own rations. But severe as was the day's work, at the end
of it the young men had profound respect for their teacher's
athletic capacities. Late in life he was fond of telling the
story of his once having overheard two students talking to-
gether. "Where's the old man?" asked one. "Hush!" said the
other, "if he hears you call him old man, he'll walk your d— d
legs off."

As we have seen elsewhere, Mr. Shaler early became inter-
ested in "the idea of summer instruction" and was among the
first to undertake teaching at that season, making a modest
effort of his own in 1868 to unite teaching with his field work
in geology by taking a party of students from Cambridge to
Virginia. In the summer of 1875 he organized the first course
in geology at Camp Harvard, Cumberland Gap, Kentucky.
The scheme in its general application was not warmly welcomed
at first, and the evolution of the Harvard Summer School as
it now stands with its hundreds of ardent students was some-
what precarious. In 1886 President Eliot appointed the first
committee to have charge of summer courses, naming Mr.
Shaler chairman, but it was not until five years later that
formal recognition was given by the Faculty of Arts and Sci-
ences to summer courses. Of the first committee appointed by
the faculty Mr. Shaler was again made chairman. For nearly
twenty years he gave himself with untiring devotion to the
development of this phase of college work, using unstintingly
his keen and vivacious intellect for the furthering of its inter-

370 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

ests ; even assuming, in times of stress, financial risks, and fur-
thermore burdening himself with a great deal of additional work
without compensation either as teacher or as chairman. Yet in
spite of many hindrances his enthusiasm and zeal never flagged,
and he persistently advocated the continuous utilization of the
college plant — its laboratories and museums, as well as a part
of the time given up to the long vacation — for the benefit of
graduates, teachers, and others of both sexes.

In the paper on School Vacations, already referred to, is found
the substance of his argument for summer schools of natural
science. "It may be asked/' he says, "how the student weary
of his school year can be expected to devote a large part of his
holiday to this other form of schooling ; how are we to avoid the
evils of overtaxing the pupil if we put a large share of his labor
into the time we have found to be required for refreshment?
Experience gives a satisfactory answer to this question : for it
shows us that the character of the true scientific work so far
differs from the labor done in the school-room that he finds a
large measure of diversion in the change in the nature of his
employment. ... In the laboratory or the open field work
of nature the memory is no more taxed than in the ordinary
occupations of men, but the constructive imagination which is
generally unemployed in the tasks of term-time is actively
aroused. In the class-room the pupil is tied to print, in labora-
tory work he deals with natural objects and finds in his contact
with them the quickening of spirit which to be conceived needs
to be felt. My own experience with vacation schools shows me
that ordinary students may, without suffering any tax upon
their vitality, year after year devote six weeks of the summer
vacation to hard work in natural -science schools/'

He further believed that "a well-trained young man in college
may with general advantage devote a small part of the year he
consecrates to literary studies to some easy course in natural
science ; or in case his devotion is to science he may find refresh-
ment in following an elective in music or metaphysics. . . .

VIEWS ON SCHOOL VACATIONS 371

The same mind I am convinced finds profit from both these
educative agents. "

Another consideration he urges is "the waste of time after
each vacation in getting adjusted to school routine, for the rea-
son that the work of the student is of a nature to derive little
help from inherited usage. It is therefore always difficult if he
be a wholesome creature to build in him habits of study ; after
each break in his schooling he returns to his work with a mind
disused to the tasks of the school-room, nearly half of the year
is spent in recovering from the return to the primitive desultory
life of the savage or half-civilized state."

In regard to the lack of inherited aptitude for study in con-
trast to the accumulated ancestral habit of muscular activities,
he says, "the youth wrestling with the elements of language or
mathematics is engaged in the same class of exhaustive labor
as the author or the athlete. We cannot expect of him the
persistent toil he could well give to mechanical employments
which lie within the common inheritances of the race ; few of our
children inherit even for two or three generations the intellect-
ual habit. School work is the creation of yesterday, while the
normal energies of mind and body have been transmitted to us
from the geological ages. ... In our schools we are dealing
with minds and bodies which have, perhaps happily, a vastly
greater inheritance from brute and savage than from civilized
life. ... In the matter of our teaching-system, as in many
other of our social problems, we seem to be always 'between
the devil and the deep sea ' : on the one hand we have the sav-
age and barbaric man whose lusty strength and simple nature
we need to keep alive, but whose clumsy, unthinking ways
we must better; on the other side, the bloodless, half-human
creature which our schooling breeds. Our task is to make a
middle kind of a man who retains the good of savage and
scholar alike."

These views, new when he first stated them, have since be-
come the truisms of the profession. From the beginning he

372 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

worked with a far-seeing eye for the advancement of the Har-
vard Summer School, and through it for the advancement of the
University. In the administration work he was greatly aided
by the men who at various times acted as his secretaries : Mr.
Montague Chamberlain, Professor J. L. Love, 'and others, who
likewise spared no pains to bring the school to a high plane of
efficiency. It was not the intellectual bide only that was well
looked after ; the comfort and happiness of the students, men
and women, were in every way considered. While disliking in
such a connection anything of the nature of a picnic quality,
Mr. Shaler was in favor of promoting social fellowship. At the
reception given each summer byway of greeting to the students,
he was present, whenever possible, to welcome them with a cor-
dial shake of the hand to the ancient halls of learning. On their
part, although he was unconscious of it, their attitude toward
him was almost reverential. He was often greatly pleased with
the delight in the attractiveness of the old surroundings ex-
pressed by those who came from the newer parts of the country ;
he particularly enjoyed the air of proprietorship shown by some
of these scholar pilgrims, and would laughingly say, "These
six- weeks students think they own the University : the women
especially."

At first it was difficult to get just the men he wanted among
the University corps of teachers to assist, but of late years the
oldest and most distinguished professors have lectured to the
large classes composed of unusually serious-minded listeners.
Mr. Shaler considered the Summer School a vast instrument
for the extension of Harvard's influence and the methods of
teaching adopted there. Its present flourishing condition is a
monument to his sagacity, and to his fostering care during times
of great discouragement.

Mr. Shaler was always opposed to getting up things with too
much preparation and formality — the thing was to get itself
up. He often cited the Summer School as an instance of an in-
stitution coming into being almost without official authority,

MR. SHALER IN 1894

THE FOUNDING OF RADCLIFFE 373

of its doing its work and gradually winning its way to success
without much avowed sympathy or encouragement, indeed
against a certain hostility. He would add, " The Bible grew,
the Koran was made."

It may be said here that Mr. Shaler presided at the council-
meeting held at Mr. Arthur Gil man's house which took the
first steps for the founding of Radcliffe College. He never
taught there, for the reason that he was already too heavily
burdened with his University work. While he believed that
women should enjoy the most liberal educational advantages,
he was not in favor of co-education, or of anything, indeed,
which might take away from the poetic side of social life. He
feared that matter-of-fact, commonplace contacts might do
this. He never cared to have women clerks in his office, for the
reason, he said, that "if there were occasion for blowing any
one up for neglect of duty, he preferred to blow up a man
rather than a woman."

In his teaching of teachers who came to the Summer School,
as well as with his College students, so far from wishing to keep
them in leading-strings or subordinate to his will he aimed to
render them able to walk by themselves. He believed that the
usual efforts to obtain discipline and attention through habits
created from the will of the teacher impressed upon the youth,
were wrong. In his opinion these essentials can be profitably
won only through the exercise of the will of the pupil. If the
exercise of this power arises from the mere dominance of the
teacher the effect is to repress development. He sometimes
reproached the kindergarten methods for fostering a limp and
dependent attitude, for building up a state of mind that re-
quired perpetual amusement. He said he could always tell a
victim of the system by his inability to fix his attention long
on any subject or to work alone. He had far less patience with
such students than with men who were simply stupid, or with
those who could not even think of thinking. In the one case
he trusted to a belated awakening, in the other to some kind

374 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

of automatic response that might involve the heart even though
the brain were benumbed. At any rate, stupidity he reckoned
as something firmly established in human nature that had to
be put up with. The confirmed in dulness he often counselled
to seek their strength in manual dexterities. He by no means
despised a small talent if it fulfilled its task. Nor did he over-
emphasize attainment. He used to say *'it was not worth while
for humanity to be bumptious about what it had accomplished,
for the little that is done seems nothing when we look forward
and see how much we have to do." This conception of the vast
and unattainable field of knowledge came to him at an early
age as will be seen from the accompanying extract from his
journal.

Sept. 18, 1859. When one appreciates the shortness of life and the vastness
of nature every moment lost to study and contemplation seems a loss irre-
parable; the days, weeks and months, as they glide by, are each bearing in
its course a portion of our life without adding to our store of wisdom. . . .
Like a wanderer in a labyrinth trying first one path and then another and
hurrying with eager steps to reach the goal, one finds himself at length at
the place of his departure. ... To many this view of all the end of philo-
sophy might be discouraging, and indeed it would be if the end of all study
were to gain the object of our search. But the true philosopher has more than
mere curiosity to tempt him to give his life to contemplation and research,
for although at last he but gains a knowledge of his own insignificance, his
studies have brought him nearer his Creator.

The truth is, as time wore on, mere intellectual distinction
unaccompanied by high character was held in only moderate
esteem ; to his mind the supreme excellence consisted in being
a gentleman. But in whatever shape it presented itself,
whether able-minded or dull-witted, he had great reverence
for the organism called man, and was ever conscious of the
immense struggle the ages had witnessed to bring him to the
place where he now stands. He not infrequently quoted Em-
erson's saying, that it was something for man to have got up
on his hind legs and shuffled off some of his animal propensi-
ties. It was this historic sense that enabled him to see the

HIS RELATIONS WITH STUDENTS 375

latent significance that lay beneath the smooth-faced vacan-
cies of the youths that passed before him, and to such of these
as would submit to his guidance he was a born director of
souls. How many did submit is shown by the hundreds of
letters from students acknowledging the help he had given
them, the perverted ways abandoned at his stirring call to
lead the clean and wholesome life. His willingness to bother,
up to a certain point, with men of crooked ways, is all the
more remarkable since there was no one who had less call
for indulgence than he. Nevertheless, his long experience had
taught him to weigh a man's errors against his temptations,
and these he felt were to a certain extent involved in the pre-
vious conditions of the man's life. He therefore looked upon in-
dividuals tolerantly, with a discriminating eye as to their values
and their needs, and without being sermonic he sooner or later
imparted to them a sense of what was dross and what was gold
— a lesson which he himself had so well learned. The fact is,
his influence for good was great because he lived on the plane
of right doing to which he directed others.

Mr. Shaler 's relations with his students were the most vital and
interesting of the contacts that came to him. Young men of
all degrees and temperaments liked him, not because he spared
their faults, was truckling, or sought to be popular, but because
he met them on the broad level of humanity ; and if in his esti-
mate of them he sometimes gave them credit for what they
should be, rather than for what they were, in the long run his
judgment was as true as it was generous. The foundation of
the attractive power that drew men to him was his manliness
and outgoing sympathy ; he had a kind word to bridge the deeps
that lie between most human beings. Furthermore, when
he commended a student it was with whole-hearted liberality,
when he condemned him it was in a broad and catholic way.
Detesting anything like mechanical treatment of a human soul,
he refused to be hemmed in by rules or to raise authority to a
system of oppression. Each individual was to be treated with

376 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

reference to his capacities. "The business of the true teacher,"
he says, "is like that of the gardener who is dealing with
hybrids, where the product of each seed is a problem to be
studied at every step of its development, to be fostered by all
the resources in the way of soil and climate which can be
applied to it through all the resources of art."

The rough classification of men, with the assumption that all
who fall within each category are alike, he regarded as gross
injustice especially in the treatment of the youth. To illustrate
the difference in men's capacity, he often cited the tests of the
mathematical examinations in the University of Cambridge
(England). Reckoning the mathematical capacity of the or-
dinary intelligent man at one in the scale, it would have been
found that the ablest from among about a thousand youths is
something like one hundred times as great.

In any difficulty he was always willing to hear the boy's story
twice told and oftener if necessary, for he knew that truth some-
times has the face of falsehood ; and not infrequently he exulted
in snatching a boy from the punishment that had been meted
out to him as he proved on misapprehended evidence. It took
a great deal to blunt the edge of his sympathy, but the student
who presumed upon the fact that he was tender-hearted learned
to his cost that he was also tough-minded. There were some
offences he would not forgive — lying, cheating, meanness, and
cruelty ; and to the one steeped in deception he was a terror.
For the thoroughly intractable there was but one sentence:
" Take him to the edge of the earth and drop him off " ; or again,
when a worthless man was condemned he would say, "He's
nane the waur of a hanging." To have "a talk" with the Dean
in his office sometimes produced a hair-lifting crisis, his ener-
getic statement often affecting a decided betterment in a young
man's future career. The man of innate and fixed evil pro-
pensities caused him bitter disappointment; he contemplated
him sadly, free will and determinism struggling in the ac-
count he took of him. At times he seemed to grasp the whole

HOSPITAL VISITS 377

meaning of a student's life ; in his presence he became blind to
the grace and beauty of youth, seeing only the unregenerate
man he was to be, pitying him for writing his own sentence in
the book of fate.

His solicitude for the students' welfare was not confined to
the precincts of the College Yard; when they went abroad he
still kept an eye upon them. He often said, " I hold it a part
of my business to do what I can for every wight that comes to
this place." When they got into scrapes he went to the police
courts and watched the proceedings to see that justice was done
them, or to give what evidence he could in their favor. He
confessed that it was his habit after public days in Boston to
take a look in at the Cambridge police court next day to be sure
that his boys, if in any trouble, had fair play.

The hospital was also the scene of many of his beneficences.
During the fifteen years that he was Dean he never failed to visit
a sick student belonging to his department. In cases of serious
illness he called every day ; and in his afternoon walks to take
in the Stillman Infirmary was almost a daily occurrence. Going
the doctor's rounds in his youth with his father, his studies in
anatomy, as well as his ample experience in the ways of ill-
health, made him an excellent adviser ; he had passed through
so many phases of physical misery and come out fairly whole
that he was a cheerful and encouraging friend to the sick. His
very presence brought comfort to many a forlorn boy; the
down-hearted he encouraged and the one who complained he
rallied, telling him "to grin and bear it." During his own
last illness he said with a grim smile one day, when suffering
acutely, "Perhaps I have been hard on the boys inclined to
whine a little after this diabolical operation for appendicitis ;
it is n't pleasant after all." There was no home so poor or
hospital so well equipped that he did not enter, and, if any-
thing was lacking for the comfort of the sick boy, make a
vigorous protest and find the means of getting it.

In the hospital, as one of his students writes, he would pull

378 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

up beside a bed, feel a pulse, diagnose the case, tell the boy
that he heard good reports of his work, and then fall into dis-
pute with the doctor on the effects of anti-toxin on diphtheria.
He inaugurated a system of sick reports whereby a student's
illness might become immediately known to the authorities
and his condition promptly looked after by competent phy-
sicians. He disliked anything like haphazard methods. He
urged that supervision in this and other regards be pushed to
the military standard of inevitableness, for which he had a great
respect, his early hauntings of a military post having given him
an understanding and appreciation of order, regularity, and
•system.

If he was thus concerned for the sick body he was still more
solicitous about the sick soul of a youth. There were few occa-
sions when he was not accessible to a student. It is told by
one of them, now a man of distinction, that time and again when
he was in trouble, or when feeling the need of stimulating talk
and counsel, he would go in the evening to Mr. Shaler's office
and, since the door was fastened against intruders, attract at-
tention by throwing pebbles up at his window. Not only was
he never refused admittance, but, on the contrary, was cor-
dially welcomed and given the best of fellowship and advice.
Mr. Shaler's courtesy at that place and time is especially note-
worthy, for he particularly enjoyed the peace of the empty
building and the sense that, free from interruption, he might
get on with his work.

He had intense sympathy for the lonely youth who for the
first time had left behind him home and friends. He remem-
bered the time when he too had been a stranger in a strange
land and had somehow got the impression that a man from
outside of New England did not count, indeed that the rest of
the country was in a way superfluous. He therefore exerted
himself to fortify the youth's good opinion of himself and to
hearten him up as to the value of his locality, even if it was in
the far West. One feature of the College administration which

THE UNIVERSITY TEAS 379

had his active support was the Students' Reception Committee,
whose object it was to assist the newcomer to adjust himself
to his new surroundings and give him the feeling from the first
that the College was directly concerned in his comfort and suc-
cess. Out of this committee, or rather because of it, there sprang
up among the wives of the professors an association for giving
the students a chance to meet socially their teachers and their
teachers' families as well as any distinguished men who might
happen to be in Cambridge. The entertainments they set on
foot are known as "The University Teas," and are held in the
parlor of the Phillips Brooks House every Friday afternoon dur-
ing the winter months. It was realized that the afternoon tea
for students, to be anything else than an exhibition of unsuccess-
ful conscientiousness, must be entered upon with hope, faith,
and verve. There were at first gentle hints that except for the
concrete fact of chocolate and sandwiches this form of socia-
bility was all moonshine, but by and by a different sentiment
prevailed. The "teas" grew to be a success. The eagerness
with which the students gathered about their favorite teachers
showed that they did care for social fellowship with them, and
the geniality of all who came, from President Eliot to the
youngest usher, gave sign that the end for which they were
initiated had been attained. Mr. Shaler was intensely inter-
ested in the idea, and rarely failed to go to the "teas," though
he was not a friend in general of this form of entertainment.
Standing before the large open fireplace, he was sure to be the
centre of a group of young men who stood about him eager to
grasp his hand and listen to his stories. Many doubtless have
well fixed in their memories this picture of him.

In the early days, when students of natural history were few,
it was easy to invite them to dinner or to a Sunday evening sup-
per, and in this way establish some friendly relations with them ;
but in the course of time the numbers so increased that it would
have taken almost every day of the college terms to entertain
them at table, especially since Mr. Shaler would allow no pick-

380 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

ing and choosing, all must be asked or none at all. Receptions,
therefore, had to be resorted to, a very imperfect and, to many
a shy student, a formidable device, for recognizing his social
existence. On these occasions Mr. Shaler tried to make his
guests feel at home, and doubtless succeeded, for they seemed
happy, — and youths as a rule have n't the power of making
believe in such matters ; on the contrary, they are pitilessly in-
different to well-meant efforts that don't happen to please. At
any rate, the welcome to the home was not altogether barren
of results, as is proved by numerous letters and the kind words
of men scattered all over the country who seem to remember
with pleasure even so slight a courtesy.

Among many amusing experiences involved in the entertain-
ing of students there was one in particular which Mr. Shaler
used to relate as a sort of family joke. One Saturday after-
noon he mentioned to his wife that he had invited three young
men to supper the next evening. When the hostess, somewhat
belated, reached the library, instead of three there were four
students. In the introduction that followed the names of all but
the fourth were distinctly uttered, but his somehow seemed to
linger on Mr. Shaler's tongue as if he thought she ought to know
it, as belonging to one whom she must have bidden to the feast.
This hesitancy and presumption of superior knowledge on the
part of the other was not remarkable in the academic world,
since a Napoleonic memory only could successfully associate
names with the constantly changing faces of the youths who
formed the moving procession. One of the young gentlemen
was a Japanese, and since he hailed from the farthest East he
was given the seat of honor. With the usual politeness of his
race he took whatever was offered him, but apparently with-
out interest. His interest in fact had almost instantaneously
become fixed upon a Japanese picture, a silk, transparent,
flowery thing fastened with thumb-tacks on the wall opposite.
From its contemplation neither oysters nor chicken salad had
the power to allure him. At length, as if endurance had reached

ENTERTAINING STUDENTS 381

its limits, he exclaimed, "Madam, will you permit me to arrange
that picture? It is upside down and wrong side out." It is
needless to say, those were the days before Mr. Denman Ross
had taught his fellow citizens the meaning of Japanese art ; to
the average Western mind it was a plexus of incomprehensible
design, the lettering even giving no token; therefore the more
outr£ the disposition of a decorative piece, the more in keeping
it seemed with the Oriental plan — if plan there were in so
great confusion.

The picture made right in his eyes, our young friend resumed
his seat and like a Christian proceeded to eat the food massed
on his plate. Still there was a sense that something yet was
wrong. At this juncture the youth whose name had been dis-
creetly slurred suddenly asked, "Shall I see Mr. P to-
night?" Assured that it was possible but not probable, he re-
lapsed into silence, only violating it a little later to inquire if

Miss was likely to appear. Informed that it was not likely,

"Well, then," he exclaimed, "where in the world am I?" En-
lightened as to his whereabouts, he begged to be excused, add-
ing that he had been invited to take supper at Mr. P 's.

After his withdrawal we once more subsided, hoping to finish the
meal without further upheaval; but it was not to be. A few
moments only had passed when the furious ringing of the door-
bell sent Mr. Shaler in alarm to see what was the matter. He
found the same youth back again. "I'm sorry to trouble you,"

he said, "but Mr. P 's family have gone to church; so I

thought I would return and finish the evening where I had
begun it."

It must be confessed that at times the student who called
in the evening was a trial. To quit his books and comfortable
seat by the fire and talk to a lad of no particular parts, seemed
to Mr. Shaler's family a great waste of his precious time; but
he seldom was willing to refuse the visitor ; nor was he willing
to have his wife do so either. One evening when an unusually
dull youth was announced, her perverted heart inclined her to

382 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

find an excuse. "I think," he said, "you had better see him,"
and when she further remonstrated he added, "Remember his
uncle" (a charming and gifted gentleman). "I do," was the
answer; "his uncle wouldn't have tolerated his nephew's
company for five minutes, much less for the whole evening."
"Then so much the worse for the uncle," was his final reply.

Mr. Shaler had some curious experiences in his efforts to get
money for deserving students. Once he wrote to a wealthy and
influential friend, Mr. Forbes, who had made a fortune in the
Eastern trade, asking him to aid a young Chinese to finish his
education. The choleric gentleman promptly replied that he
would not give a cent to a Chinaman or to any other student,
that education was being run into the ground, and so forth.
Application was about to be made elsewhere when another letter
came containing a liberal check with the words: "I send this
money to your student with the greatest pleasure. The truest
gentleman and best friend I ever knew was a Chinaman."

It was Mr. Shaler 's privilege and pleasure to be much con-
cerned with this problem of helping men to attain their educa-
tion, and in the effort he spared neither time nor money. Much
is said of the rich man at Harvard, but few knew, as well as he
did, the dire poverty of many who entered its halls : of the close
calculation in families to meet the expense of tuition, or of the
outside labor of students themselves to eke out existence. Often
in his visits to their homes for the purpose of seeing them when
ill, or to consult with their parents, he saw much that was
pathetic. Sometimes he was convinced that ambition outran
capacity, and regretted the unprofitable strain to furnish a col-
lege education where manual training seemed fittest.

The Russian Jews in their desperate fight for advancement
often awakened his profound admiration and sympathy. There
was one student of whom he sometimes spoke as typical of
many others. Observing that this young man was pale and
thin, he sought to know something of his circumstances and
found that he was actually suffering from the want of food.

RUSSIAN JEWS AS STUDENTS 383

Moreover, in addition to keeping up with his own studies he was
teaching at night a class of young Russians so that they too
might grasp an education. Some money was given him with the
injunction that every cent should be spent for nourishment.
The answer came, " Upon these terms I cannot accept it. I give
to my family half of all I get." Of course he was made to take
the money and for some time was carefully looked after. At last
he disappeared, but, having his address, Mr. Shaler went to look
him up. The old man who opened the door insisted in broken
English that no such person dwelt in the tenement. His stolid
negation indeed was so persistent that the visitor was about to
leave the house when a little girl who had loitered in the back-
ground exclaimed, "Why, grandpa, what do you mean? You
know he does live here. Come, mister," she said, "I'll show you
the way." Following his guide through a labyrinth of dark en-
tries, he finally reached a small, badly ventilated room where
the sick student was lying upon his squalid bed. After a few
minutes' talk, encouraged and cheered by the presence which
always brought hope and comfort into the sick room, the
young man began talking of his life in America. He said:
"Hard as it is in many respects, it is a paradisiacal life com-
pared with existence in Russia." And when asked the meaning
of the old man's denial, "Ah," he answered, his face flushing,
"you can have no idea of the tyranny we lived under. My fa-
ther could not conceive of a stranger coming to see me without
some evil purpose. He undoubtedly thought you were a spy,
or a policeman in disguise. He has not been long enough in
America to get rid of his torturing fears, or to have the faintest
idea of what freedom means. My little niece, now, was born in
this country and is as fearless as an eaglet."

Another Russian student was asked to find out, if possible,
why it was his young countrymen stood so well at school. He
returned after a few days with the answer: "The Russian Jew
needs no amusement, he does n't waste his time with games,
they're nothing to him, his studies and his manual labor furnish

384 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

all the play he wants." This account was later confirmed by
a very intelligent American teacher in one of the public schools
in the Russian quarter. Mr. Shaler frequently walked through
this part of Boston and spoke of the sturdy looks of the children
and the strong maternal aspect of the young married women.
He also commented upon the change for the better in the
appearance of the streets: the gradual recession of squalor
before the march of the intrepid, strong-willed immigrants.
One day he returned from his office much amused by the naive
remark of a young Russian from this same neighborhood who
wanted to enter college. When questioned as to his means of
support, he said that his mother kept a clothing store run on the
instalment plan. "But," asked the professor, "doesn't she
lose a great deal of money selling her goods in that way? " " Oh,
no," was the prompt reply ; " she only sells to Jews." Mr. Shaler
was on very good terms with many of the Jews in Boston. He
was sometimes invited to their social entertainments as well
as to speak at the annual dinner of the Purim Association.

There was another class of persons with whom he got on well,
and this was the class known in college circles as "Mothers."
With them he was always patient, even with the one who felt
when she paid the tuition fee that she had bought the entire
University, also the time and devotion of the teacher, to be
dedicated exclusively to her son's interests, mind, body, charac-
ter, and estate — for the finding of occupation for the young
man when he was through with college was often an implied obli-
gation. Mr. Shaler used to say when he wanted to get down to the
bed-rock of a youth's nature that he would go to the mother;
that she knew the boy infinitely better than his father, and if
she would she could lay her finger on the weak spot of his char-
acter. Once, in a state of perplexity about the evil courses of a
young man with whom he had to deal, he went to the mother,
and, after stating certain facts, put the question, " I shall be
greatly pleased, Madam, if you'll tell me just what's the matter
with your boy." "Oh," she answered, "there's nothing special

MASTER AND APPRENTICE 385

the matter with John, except that he 's got no soul." " I believe
you're right, and now," said Mr. Shaler cheerfully, "we must
set to work to make one." And, strange to say, after a while
there did appear the faint glimmerings of a soul — stirred later
to warmer life by the call to arms ; and then through the gates
of death this feeble soul, doubtless, elsewhere won its happier
chance.

Hundreds of letters from Mr. Shaler's students and their
mothers show their attitude of mind toward the teacher. It is
very clear that in many cases the way to knowledge was through
the gateway of affection. No one knew better than he the ad-
vantages of the naturalist method of instruction. But in this
instance, whatever the system, it was the man himself who
drew his students near to him. The method of instruction by
experiment, he says, " consists in the close relation which it
secures between the teacher and the pupil and the more sym-
pathetic nature of their contacts. . . . Very soon the student
finds himself dependent upon him. Such are the depths of the
phenomenal world that this mutual relation may indefinitely
continue and always afford beautiful opportunities for sym-
pathetic contact between men who are united in the work as
master and apprentice."

That these "beautiful opportunities" were so freely made
use of is a noble tribute to the master's outgoing sympathy and
to the generous response of the apprentice.

CHAPTER XXVI

ADMINISTRATIVE WORK
1891-1903

IN 1891 Mr. Shaler was made Dean of the Lawrence Scientific
School. He accepted the office reluctantly, although he had
for some years been actively engaged in furthering the develop-
ment of the School ; indeed, according to one of his associates,
its revival after 1886, when there were only fourteen students,
was mainly his work. While foreseeing its possibilities he also
had a keen sense of the labor their realization would cost. It
was a task, however, which he scarcely felt justified in refus-
ing, especially since Mr. Gordon McKay had determined to
leave the bulk of his fortune to this department of Harvard
University. As they had for so long a time mutually instilled
into each other's minds ideas as to the kind of institution it
would be well to foster, Mr. McKay naturally turned to Mr.
Shaler as the person best fitted to guide it along the lines he
had laid out. Therefore, weighing carefully all these consid-
erations, Mr. Shaler found strong reasons for taking up the
duties of the deanship, and, having once assumed them, with
his accustomed zeal he set about making the most of the
opportunity.

Under Dean Shaler's leadership the Lawrence Scientific
School — a large and shapeless problem, one might almost say
a "mortifying failure," when he took hold of it — rose from
a more or less despised part of the University to an efficient,
prosperous, and commanding position. During the fifteen years
he was at the head of it the number of students doubled twice
within the last decade and increased to a total of five hundred
and thirty, notwithstanding the gain at times was temporarily

MR. SHALER IN 1900

DEAN OF THE SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL 387

checked by higher requirements for entrance, this leading to the
transfer of men in "general science" to the College. Surmount-
ing great difficulties, the resources of the School were diversified
and strengthened on many lines. The development was espe-
cially marked in engineering, mining, metallurgy, architecture,
landscape-architecture, and forestry. In addition there were
four-year programmes in chemistry, geology, biology, anatomy,
and physiology. These four-year programmes under the new
organization are things of the past, as also the old name, the
Lawrence Scientific School giving place in the University
Catalogue to the Graduate School of Applied Science. These
changes are embodied in the plan of reorganizing the work of the
School which Dean Shaler announced as his last official act.
While in charge of the School Mr. Shaler lifted its scholarly
and moral tone, as well as its numbers, to that stage of advance-
ment where Gordon McKay's magnificent bequest made possi-
ble a brilliant and expansive future. It was, therefore, a sur-
prise and bitter disappointment to him, upon his return from
Europe in the spring of 1904, to find that negotiations were on
foot between the corporations of Harvard College and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology for transferring to the
latter institution a large share of the income of the endowment
which Mr. Shaler, through his friendship with the giver, had
been instrumental in bringing to the service of the Lawrence
Scientific School. More than this, there was the provision, as
Mr. Shaler states in an address delivered before the graduates
of the Lawrence Scientific School, that the institution which
Mr. McKay called "his School" should disappear, and that in
place of it there should be benefited another institution, not
a constituent part of Harvard, but a supplement to the existing
Institute with some slight semblance of joint control on the
part of the governing boards of the University. The discovery
of this strange and unexpected danger at the moment of fair-
est promise, when, by sound accomplishment, the School had
reached the gateway of a great future, "perhaps," as he said,

i

V

388 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

"the noblest that ever opened to a School of Science/' filled
him with the most profound chagrin.

His endeavor to maintain the integrity of the bequest brought
him into collision with the authorities of both institutions. He
made a strong appeal to the Board of Overseers of Harvard
College to reject the project of handing over three fifths of the
income of the McKay gift to the Institute. In this appeal he
set forth in clear language the disadvantages to the Lawrence
Scientific School and the University which would follow such
a division of the fund, as well as the moral breach of the tes-
tator's purposes; for the carrying out of which he had given his
personal pledge. In fact, he said, it was mainly because of Mr.
McKay's request that he had accepted the post of Dean.

Besides the immediate question involved, he believed that
other important problems of the higher education would be
decided by the issue of the contention ; foremost among these
were "the respective rights," as he phrased it, "of the three
estates of the School realm — the Corporation, the Faculty,
and the Board of Overseers." What gave special emphasis to
this question of authority was the statement that the decision
on the "merger" project would be determined by the Corpora-
tion and Board of Overseers, who would be pleased to hear the
opinion of the Faculty, but, whatever the opinion might be,
it could have no authority whatever. In the address already
alluded to Mr. Shaler called attention to the fact that the Fac-
ulty was steadily losing power.

The vote of the Corporation of the Institute and the action so far had by
the Corporation of Harvard College will mean, if it be not checked, that the
shaping of our great schools is not hereafter to be in the hands of experts
in the science and art of education, but will be determined by men who are
necessarily without other than the amateur's smattering of such learning.
It means that institutions having for their province the development of ex-
perts and the extension of their high functions on which civilization depends
shall in their very government deny the essential value of such training.

The meaning of this action goes yet further : it makes a radical change in the
nature of these trust-keepers of our public schools. Gifts bestowed upon

THE "MERGER" CONTROVERSY 389

them have been made not to trustees as bodies separate from the institution
as a whole, but with the tacit supposition that the faculties were integral
parts of the structure, able to make themselves felt in the important questions
of education. To assume that the one board, because it has the legal power,
may suppress or transfer or otherwise profoundly alter the constitution, is to
change the position of these schools in our societies. If these self-renewing
bodies of business men are to be the sole keepers and administrators of these
trusts, stolidly uninfluenced by the protests of the other and more vitally
important estates, the Faculty and the Alumni, it cannot be expected that
they will hereafter command the confidence of those who would send their
good purposes on from generation to generation.

I have thus briefly, and most inadequately, suggested some of the consid-
erations which are to be discussed in the debate which is before us. You see
that they go far and concern questions of great pith and moment. ... I
beg of you and all the participants herein that the debate be kept to the high
level of its importance. We need always have in mind the fact that those
who are opposed to us are ardent, even as we, for the betterment of the
institutions which they love even as we love them. . . . We are brethren,
strong for the betterment of our common house: let us remember that we
have in the end to dwell together under its roof and abide in its memories.
This counsel of perfection need not lessen, however, the energy with which
we resist to the uttermost what we hold to be evil.

The controversy which followed the "merger" proposition
was bitter and determined, for upon its result Mr. Shaler be-
lieved hung the life or death of the School which he had labored
so earnestly to advance. It called forth on his part a vast ex-
penditure of force and emotion ; for when he once espoused a
cause he threw himself into it with passionate devotion. There
is no doubt that this trying episode, this opposition to his most
cherished and disinterested schemes for the development of
the Lawrence Scientific School, told seriously upon his health.
While petty squabblings bored him, a good big fight aroused all
the powers of his mind ; bold and resourceful in debate, he fought
his battles with tremendous and unflagging verve. In these
intellectual encounters, mercilessly hard as he hit his opponents,
he hit fair, and for this reason, although in the course of his life
he had many antagonists, he had few enemies, his great-hearted
manliness bearing down the hostility disagreement usually

390 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

engenders. All these qualities he showed in this particular
controversy, upholding with inexhaustible fervor the material
advantages and the moral right of his cause.

When at last the legal decision was delivered which made
the sale of the land owned by the Institute in Boston invalid,
and thus put a stop to the merger scheme, the controversy
ended. Since the gift about which it had arisen was left to
go where it was intended to go, Mr. Shaler in a measure was
satisfied with the result, although he would have preferred to
have the question fought to the end on its ethical merits.
After this disturbing controversy, during which he had been
warmly upheld by a large number of his colleagues and Har-
vard graduates, as well as by a part of the Technology fac-
ulty and alumni, he subsided to a state of quiescence and was
disposed to forget the unpleasant features of the debate as
well as the sometime feeling of personal injustice ; this it was
possible for him to do, for while he was capable of being in-
tensely angry, he could be neither sullen nor resentful. Yet,
although many of the objects he had labored to bring about in
the development of the School were accomplished, or were on
the way to fulfilment before the end came, it was pathetic
that so near the close of his long and untiring service to the
University untoward circumstances should have made him
feel that perhaps after all he had built his life's work on insecure
foundations.

The administrative work of the Lawrence Scientific School
was laborious to the last degree. It called for unremitting at-
tention, and was constantly present to Mr. Shaler's mind, urg-
ing him to seek in every direction opportunities for its expan-
sion. To do justice to this one phase of his activities would
require more space than can be allotted here. It may be said,
however, that his object was, as far as possible, to incarnate in
the students the ideals of the original founders of the Lawrence
School, "who," he said, "were the first educators in America,
if not in the world, to set up the ideal of the man of enlarged

IMPORTANCE OF LIBERAL CULTURE 391

and enlarging training made as far whole in all his parts as
a good general education could make him, that he might
have adequate foundation on which to build his professional
work." With this end in view he diversified, grouped, and so
arranged the courses of instruction that they might not only
yield a thorough technical training in the different branches of
practical knowledge, but give also a share of culture — at least
a taste for the humanistic side of learning which might be a
haunting memory, a memory that would perhaps deliver men
from a sordid and too exclusive devotion to business. That his
aim was not wholly without result, that there was at times the
sting of conscience, if not the benefit of conduct, is shown by
the following anecdote, which Mr. Shaler liked to hear.

It so happened that once while waiting with a friend in the
corridor of a New York hotel I was introduced in a casual
way (neither one catching the other's name and I wearing
rather a thick veil) to a gentleman whose appearance denoted
worldly prosperity. A moment after, my friend remarked to
him, "I'm sorry to hear, old fellow, you are not feeling well —
overworked, I suppose?" "How is it possible," I interposed,
"to be otherwise than overworked in a place like this?" "That's
just it," said the stranger. "I'm ashamed to confess it, but
one does get submerged in the current. Yet there was a time
when I had other ideals. I remember once when I was a student
at Harvard, now a good many years ago, while I was calling at
the house of a friend the talk turned upon the possibility of
combining business with some form of liberal culture, and as
an illustration of the possibility, Sir John Lubbock, the success-
ful banker and man of science, was cited. Listening to the con-
versation I then resolved, young and vacant-minded as I was,
that I would cling to some intellectual interest outside of the
field of money-getting ; but alas " — and he shrugged his shoul-
ders. "At whose house was it?" I asked. "At Professor
Shaler's; that kind of thing was a hobby of his, you know.
And it was his wife who lent me the Life of Lubbock."

392 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

But it was not alone for the benefit of his own department
that Mr. Shaler strove to find the right education. He also took
an active share in the discussion of every question that came

^before the faculty. His desire that young men should get all
that the College had to give, either by voluntary appropriation
or by a process of absorption, that, indeed, no chance of time
or place be lost for broadening their minds on every side, led
him to oppose the three-year degree. Another burning ques-
tion in its time was the elective system ; to this he was also, in a
measure, hostile. Doubting the wisdom of allowing youths un-
restricted range in the choice of courses, he advocated instead
the group system as illustrated by the four-year programmes

i in the Lawrence Scientific School.

In regard to the part he played at faculty-meetings, where
all these questions were deliberated upon, Dean Briggs writes :
"... In all the years in which I have been a member of the
faculty, I have seen no one so alertly interested in every sub-
ject that came up : nor indeed have I ever met a man so quickly
and so warmly interested in every person and everything,
great or small. Though there are many of us, our meetings
often seem entirely different without him." Professor Wendell
likewise has been good enough to set down his memories of his
late colleague and of the spirit he carried into that same king-
dom of debate. This is what he says : —

BOSTON, November 10, 1907.

During these past days, when I have been trying to gather together my
memories of Professor Shaler in the faculty, I have found myself more and
more aware of how deeply my relations with him there were at once of the
essence of our friendship and among the chief reasons why faculty life
often seems to me less professional than human. It is human, no doubt, in
a very comprehensive way: it has its quarrels and its tribulations, as well
as its joys and kindnesses: the very familiarity of it sometimes makes its
importance seem to dwindle. But, reviewed through a vista of years, it
shows itself, like the student life which came before it, a beautiful memory
of fellowship.

The whole heart of this fellowship Professor Shaler embodied beyond

PROFESSOR WENDELL'S MEMORIES 393

any one else. My own experience can hardly have been exceptional. It was
in 1884, I think, that, most unexpectedly to myself, they gave me an in-
structorship without limit of time. This made me a member of the College
faculty — a body of which, until that time, my impressions had been the not
completely cordial ones prevalent among the students of thirty years ago.
I shall never forget the immense contrast of two consequent greetings.
One of our elder members, with whom I had long had some manner of ac-
quaintance, expressed the candid opinion that although I had now a right
to attend faculty-meetings it was highly improbable that they would have
any interest for me. Professor Shaler, whom I had never really known before,
and whom I supposed hardly to have known me even by name, came straight
toward me, the moment he first caught sight of me. He held out his hand,
with his own wonderful heartiness, and said some word of his gladness
that I was "one of us." It was almost, if not quite, the next Sunday when
you both welcomed me to your house, and when we had the pleasure of meet-
ing you for the first time. I was not yet thirty years old. The self-distrust
which has beset me all my life was at its strongest. What such a welcome
meant, at such a moment, it is hard to tell. The true encouragement of it
sank deep — lasts still, stronger than ever now that the friendship which
thus began has passed into the ideal security of almost cloudless memory.

If I had written cloudless alone, I should not have been quite true to the
full humanity of its breezy vitality. There rises another memory of a few
years later when in some discussion, the facts of which I have forgotten,
we found ourselves at variance and each expressed his own opinions with
somewhat unparliamentary freedom from reserve. At the end of the meeting
where this incident occurred, he looked angry, and I felt so. What is more,
I felt so for two or three weeks. Then, one day, his face broke into a smile
and he held out his hand again : " Wendell," he said, if I remember the words,
"my head used to be as red as yours." After that, the friendship on my
side stayed more delightful than ever, through the years that have grizzled
my beard into something far less fiery than his was then. There were mo-
ments when each of us failed to sympathize with the other; but they passed
as swiftly as clouds that are only to make the sunshine warmer. There
was never a moment when I could doubt for an instant that we could always
understand each other ; nor yet that if any need for friendship should arise,
there was no living man to whom I would turn more confidently than to him.

Once, I remember, he found me somewhere in a state of obvious depres-
sion, and asked what the matter was, in a manner that might have seemed
almost blunt if it had not been so obviously kind. "Bills," I told him can-
didly. For the moment he said nothing. A day or two later he came to me
with a sympathy fraternal — or paternal, if you prefer — in its fulness of

394 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

heart. If the trouble was serious, if his advice or his resources would help,
let him know what he could do ; whatever the matter was, be sure of him.
The matter proved in no wise serious, and I needed no help at all. This does
not alter the gratitude which has glowed ever since that visit. He was one
of whom you would always be sure.

Our last meeting was a happy climax of this constantly strengthening
fellowship. You will remember how I was giving some public lectures at
Cambridge — incidents too frequent there to invite, in general, much alertly
cordial interest. At the close of one, you both gave a little tea-party, in my
honor. He never seemed brighter, happier, more his marvellous self than
he seemed that winter afternoon, telling with his vividness, which no one
else could quite equal, some of his experiences in France. In the middle of
his narrative something called me away from him. I never saw him again.
But the last memory is so like the first that they blend for all their twenty
years of separation, — big, vital, exuberant in the certainty of their helpful,
inspiring humanity of friendship.

These personal memories of mine are memorable only because what was
true of me was equally true of all the younger colleagues whom he welcomed
throughout the years of his service to Harvard. Such stories could be told,
such sentiments confessed a hundred times over. Without expression of
them, without insistence on them as the chief part in one's memory of him
as a colleague, the truth of this memory could never be made clear.

The more obvious phases of this memory are almost a matter of record.
He prided himself very justly in punctilious performance of duty. This
involved regular attendance at the meetings of the faculty, no matter how
slight the business in hand ; and I can remember hardly a single night meet-
ing, when he was in Cambridge, from which he was absent. The eagerness
of his temper and the alertness of his mind combined to make whatever
was the subject of discussion appear for the instant paramount. So he spoke
oftener, and with more energy than most of us. This habit, which rather
strengthened with the years, involved a somewhat unexpected result. Above
the custom of most men he thought aloud concerning whatever problem was
before us. His remarks were often rather a statement of his current mental
process than an assertion of his deliberate conclusions. Yet, often, I had
almost said always, he expressed himself with that concrete precision of
momentary finality which was so characteristic. In consequence, particularly
during his later years, he sometimes impressed the younger men as not quite
stable, as prone to perplexing inconsistency. To understand what this
really meant one had not only to know him affectionately, but also to experi-
ence that gradual enlightenment which reveals the true office of debate in
the Harvard faculty. We are an unwieldy deliberative body with consider-

RELATIONS WITH HIS COLLEAGUES 395

able party legislative powers, and wholly without party organization. The
incessant speeches there have very little, if any, persuasive effect ; they are
essentially expressions of sincere intelligent opinion, to be taken at the mo-
ment for what it is worth. Each year, young men fancy that they are ad-
mitted to something like a parliament ; each year, we older ones understand
better that we are really sitting in something more like a Homeric council.
So the young fail to comprehend the old, while the old begin to forget what
their dreams and fancies were in the days when they were of the young.

And yet, through it all, there springs to memory one of his utterances
there, ten years ago. Just what his own words were I have quite forgotten,
except that they were so completely characteristic of his peculiar bravery,
and some note of just that spirit was what I most wanted, at that moment,
for the verses which I was trying to write. So here is the form they took in
my "Ralegh in Guiana," where — as I told him more than once — his
remarks concerning himself and ourselves gave my forgotten play a touch
of such spaciousness as makes inspiring that old Elizabethan world he loved
so well : —

"This cloudy monster, circumstance,
Affrighting common folk, doth melt to air
Round them that, plunging in her maw, dare vex
Her misty bowels."

Mr. Shaler's heart-felt desire that the doors of the Univer-
sity should never be closed against one who showed any dis-
position to profit by what it had to give, sometimes led to mis-
apprehension and the charge of shielding students from merited
punishment. The truth lies in the manly statement contained
in the letters given below from one of his colleagues. Although
these letters belong to a later date this seems in a way a fitting
place for them. The first is addressed to President Eliot.

CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 19, 1905.

Dear Sir: — In the brief word which I had with you after the meeting
to-day, in regard to the administrative board of the Scientific School, I was
conscious of not having made my meaning clear to you, and in justice to
myself I beg you to allow me to add a word of explanation.

My object was merely to correct one misapprehension in regard to a matter
of fact about which I have had ample opportunity for observation. In the
course of your statement to the faculty you said that complaints had come
to you from members of the Board to the effect that the Board had felt

396 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

obliged to admit certain students this year, against its own judgment,
merely on account of representations previously made to those students
by the Dean of the Scientific School. I have attended every meeting of the
Board this year, and I can state positively that no such case has arisen. The
Dean has been exceedingly scrupulous to avoid bringing any pressure of
this kind on the Board. I remember one case at least in which the Board
rejected a student who had been very properly granted " provisional registra-
tion " by the Dean — and this action met with absolutely no protest from
him. In the only case in which the student was "given the benefit of the
doubt" in view of possible misunderstanding of certain correspondence with
the Board, the Dean had nothing to do with the case, and expressly stated
to the Board that the Board should not feel in the least hampered in its
action.

It is true, Mr. President, that the Dean often moves the Board by elo-
quent, sometimes personal, appeals on behalf of some boy ; but it is not true
that he has ever, since I have been on the Board, based his appeal on the
ground of previous representations made by him to the boy. I am as sensi-
tive as any member of the Board to the unsatisfactory character of much
of our action ; but in respect to this one item of your statement to the fac-
ulty there seems to have been some misapprehension, which I trust you will
allow me, in this manner, to correct.

Respectfully yours, EDWARD HUNTINGTON.

From the same to Professor Shaler, after referring to the
letter to President Eliot, a copy of which he sent : —

I am free to say that I have often disagreed with your side of a case pre-
sented to the Board, and voted against it; but the idea that you have ever
exercised any "discretion" in admitting students — other than the per-
suasive force of your own eloquence — is certainly devoid of foundation, and
I hope the President will pardon my telling him so. If the members of the
Board have yielded more often than we think we should have yielded to
your persuasion, that is surely our fault and not yours! For myself, I regard
it as one of the privileges of my academic life to serve on the Board under
your chairmanship, where the fight, when there is a fight, is at least a fight
in the open.

Other administrative work outside the faculty room and
Mr. Shaler 's office, which was run with great system and punctu-
ality, he had at this time in abundance. The different state
boards (the Highway, the Metropolitan Park, and the Gypsy

HARD WORK AND LONG JOURNEYS 397

Moth Commissions) upon which he served, and the mining or-
ganizations with which he was connected, filled up most of the
hours left over from his college duties.

That Mr. Shaler was working too hard at this period of his life
was evident to those immediately about him, as also to others
who saw him less frequently. In a letter relating to some ques-
tion in which he was interested that had come up for discussion
at the National Academy of Science, his friend Professor N. M.
Storer writes : —

May 10th, 1894.

. . . You should not, ought not, must not work so hard. No one can say
but that you made things merry in your time; but there are those who wish
to have the sweetness long drawn out. . . .

Various mining enterprises continued to call for long journeys
which, as we shall see from his letters, became each year more
burdensome. He writes from near Cleveland : -

9 A. M., Saturday, '97.

One of the days of exile is over; the train is on time and will, I trust, put
me in Newport to-night. And the evening and the morning will be another
of these cursed days.

I had a fairly comfortable night, a lot of baby music in the next section,
but it seemed rather familiar and domestic. It rained into my window and
made me sloppy, but the air was fresh and even the water refreshing. This
morning the land is a deluge and streams hurrying about in a crazy way,
apparently bewildered in their new-found freedom. The grass is growing and
the wild ducks are going north. The people are waxing grimier, and now
and then an old hat in the window ; all of which means that I am getting on
towards the sunny South.

Near CHICAGO (on the road to VIRGINIA, MONTANA).

One more of the days is done. It is the same old West in summer, hot, dry,
and dusty, rich in all good things, but a weary land to the wayfarer. I have
been paying for my continued spree with coffee, but a bit of starvation
promises to set me right again. Mr. B. is with me; as he is a silent man I
have some rest.

Near SALT LAKE CITY.

This is the fourth day of this dusty furnace. Since yesterday noon it has
been a monotonous desert, as hard as original sin. Here and there a patch

398 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

of Mormons and of cultivation, or rather crop-getting, for the Mormon is
only a higher kind of Digger Indian.

The thermometer has been near a hundred every day, but we have kept
pretty well in a dirty, miserable way. The time to come is June. Page joined
us at Denver and goes to Virginia. He is the same dear boy, though he is
becoming gray-headed and solemn. . . . Fine as these mountains are, they
are very mechanical things, no grace in them. At this season the land is a
dusty circle in the Inferno.

Junction near VIRGINIA, MONTANA, July 30, 1897.

I find that I stand the work well, better than do my companions, who
appear to suffer from the heat. The conditions are rude, but there is enough
to eat of a rough kind, and a chance for a bath in the ditch, good mountain
snow water. A splendid landscape, but one that is curiously uninviting from
the lack of the human quality.

BUTTE, MONTANA, July 26, 1898.

I am pretty well through with the blessed underground, with its dirty
business, and am now doing the surface, trying to extract information from
the [word illegible] of dust which wraps this wealth in. The place is a dry
hell, but far away are the snow-tipped mountains. . . . The task is interest-
ing, so too, in a way, are the people. A Britisher who is my guide is a good
fellow. The mass is Irish and the civilization inexpressibly so. Every shanty
has its back yard in the front street. A priest-ridden, labor-ridden, politics-
ridden horde of laborious vagabonds.

CAMBRIDGE, 1899.

... I had to go yesterday morning to Nashua. This promises to be my
only divagation until we go to the island. . . . We are waiting the arrival
of the Sunday afternoon contingent. We hope there will not be many to be
disappointed by your absence.

Later. The people have come and gone, a bare dozen. The new were a
lecturer on irrigation from the West, an able man. Another, an English-
woman, a patent crank. She is not permanent. And a gentleman from South
America. ... I would there were some news to tell you, but the town is
like us in being dull.

Friday, 1899.

After lecture I had to go to town, to see McKay on business ; to vary my
walk, I came back through Charlestown, — a rather long way — so I am
tired, having had no rest. I shall, therefore, take the sleep cure upstairs early.

There is no news except that the I s' boy, I have been looking after,

WRITING POETRY AS A RECREATION 399

seems to have a rather better chance of life, and there is a lunch at the
Pickerings' to-morrow. I shall go, to meet Prof. Young of Princeton.

The Brooks House "tea" seemed more successful than the last, more peo-
ple and merrier.

As the years sped on, in spite of remonstrances Mr. Shaler
kept up his activities to the full extent of his powers. In the
hours left over from his prescribed tasks, to be sure, he took a
share of recreation, — as much, at least, as he wanted. Indeed,
it was only an imaginary line that divided his work from his
play. This consisted now, as always, in long walks, and visits,
sometimes; concerts also, but the theatre rarely. His chief est
delight was found in writing poetry.

The return to this ideal realm, which he had so long forsaken,
was a happy inspiration. It gave a momentary pause to per-
formance; sweetened his life and opened up a retreat from
discouragements and vexations. Even during the "merger"
controversy, which stirred him profoundly, he was still able to
create his own Utopias. In his work-room in the third story,
away from interruption, he could throw himself at will into an-
other world. There his battle with dulness and the common-
place was over ; the irksome tasks of life, if done at all, were done
vicariously. There, too, he could conjure back lost loyalties and
virtues and all manner of nobleness; not that he was a corn-
plainer of men or of the present times : in fact, he was rather
persuaded that the golden age lay not behind but before us.
In this shelter from the din and stir of competitive life, as
he said, he could consume his own smoke — that is, get rid
of nervousness. As an aid to this process his long-stemmed
pipe was an invaluable resource; also, at times, a few minutes'
sleep. Half an hour spent in this peaceful atmosphere was
usually sufficient to compose his mind and smooth out of his
face any lines of irritation.

Not the least of his cares after 1902 was Mr. McKay's un-
happy physical condition. Besides the need for business con-
ferences with him, the old gentleman leaned upon Mr. Shaler in

400 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

many ways, and not infrequently summoned him by telegraph
at most inconvenient seasons — at the end of a hard lecture
day, or of other appointments of a taxing nature. These hur-
ried visits to Newport were exceedingly depressing, for, with a
failing body, Mr. McKay could not be other than a devitalizing
companion. At these meetings his mind grasped eagerly at
business details, or dwelt upon the future scope of the Lawrence
Scientific School. To talk about such outside matters freed him
for the moment from the gloomy consideration of his decrepit
state.

Each year, Mr. Shaler hoped to break away and give himself
a rest, but the seasons, as they came and went, brought ever new
responsibilities, so that the time never seemed just right for
taking the much-needed holiday. As the following letter shows,
he thought seriously of going to Europe in 1901.

Sept. 22, 1900.

Dear old Shaler: — It 's either post-cards or nothing with me, so you will
excuse the shabbiness. I have thought of you almost daily since July 15th,
1899, when I left home, and longed for your inspiring presence, as the myriad-
minded and multiple-personalitied embodiment of all academic and extra-
academic Kenntnisse and Gemuths bewegagen. For Heaven's sake keep alive
till I get back, and don't embark on your own sabbatical year just as I shall
be returning, early I hope next summer. To stop the gap, I send you this
greeting at the beginning of the New Academic Year, which I hope will be
replete with happiness and activity for you and all of yours. It's a good
thing to have a place to belong to, and not to leave it for too long. I regret
to say that I am still laid on the shelf and don't know when they'll take me
down to use me. Send me a post-card some time. Warmest regards to Mrs.
Shaler.

Yours sincerely, WM. JAMES.

Although utterly indifferent to many of the honors that men
so eagerly strive for, — such, for instance, as honorary degrees
and offices in learned societies, — indeed shirking the latter
whenever possible, — his heart was warmed by the storm of
applause from students and visitors that greeted him when, at
the Commencement exercises in 1903, President Eliot conferred

PORTRAIT OF MR. SHALER BY JOSEPH DE CAMP

OF THE

UNIVERSir

OF

PUBLIC SPEAKING 401

upon him the Harvard degree of LL. D., with his usual felicitous
characterization addressing him as "naturalist and humanist."

At all times Mr. Shaler was flooded with invitations, especially
during these later years, to speak at colleges, schools, institutes,
societies, and clubs; but, though the list of his addresses is long,
aside from subjects relating to his profession, touching world
interests as divergent as those which appealed to the Congress
of Religions and the Military Historical Society of Massachu-
setts, only a comparatively small number of these invitations
did he ever accept. Speaking in strange places and before
miscellaneous audiences was never agreeable to him. On the
occasions when he attended the Harvard Club dinners in dif-
ferent cities he always said afterwards that he had had a "good
time" with the boys.

Twenty-one years after he gave his first course of lectures
before the Lowell Institute, Mr. Shaler delivered his last
(1902-03), on the subject of "Dynamic Geology." All of these
elements of work and play must in a general way enter into the
picture we would give of the busy years included within the
dates of this chapter.

CHAPTER XXVII

LAST YEARS

1904-1905

IT had been nearly twenty-three years since Mr. Shaler had had
other than the briefest vacations; he therefore resolved to
take a "sabbatical," and early in January, 1904, set sail on one
of the Mediterranean steamers for Egypt. He was very tired
and longed to rest his eyes upon new scenes in regions that he
knew only through his readings. He was not, as a rule, a good
sailor, but the seas were tranquil and he reached his destination
without much physical discomfort. Knowing as he did its geo-
logical and human history, he found every bit of land that he
passed in the Mediterranean mentally stimulating. The landing,
however, at Alexandria, that ancient seat of schools and philoso-
phies, was such as to banish all feeling of reverence. The scuffle
among dragomans and boatmen, the sort of Donnybrook Fair
at the station where belated luggage was weighed and mislaid,
the general demoralization of officials, a legacy doubtless of the
"unspeakable Turk's " misrule, filled him alternately with mirth
and indignation. Nor was he specially moved at Cairo. The
grandeur of the Pharaohs was veiled behind the veneer of
Western civilization. Even the sight of the Pyramids failed to
arouse any great emotion in him. Somehow he did not seem
able to get en rapport with these aged landmarks of vanished
aspirations. Indeed the antiquity of Egypt, which to most per-
sons is so overwhelming, to the naturalist, whose considerations
are based upon eons, — from eternity onward to eternity, — is
of no great moment ; a few dynasties more or less add little to
his conception of the element of time.
The whole life of the past as represented in the temples and

VISIT TO EGYPT 403

symbols seemed alien to Mr. Shaler's spirit. Rameses the Great,
bragging his way down through the centuries in stone and
graven images, became actually repulsive to him. Yet when he
afterward gazed upon the well-preserved face in the Museum
at Cairo and observed its strong resemblance to the portrait
busts of Caesar, he was more inclined to take him at his own
exalted valuation. Nevertheless there were times, while trav-
elling up the Nile, when he regained his imaginative power of
projecting himself sympathetically into far-away scenes and
transactions. The burnished mountains that had melted into
the sands of the desert, the swarthy fellah at his immemorial
task of lifting water from the Nile, in his changeless work and
attitude to Mr. Shaler's eye apathetic link in Egypt's immutable
chain of custom, the ancient idols and superstitions, — all set
his fancy spinning. The story told of the weeping and wailing of
men and women on the banks of the Nile when the mummies of
their great kings, disturbed in their long rest, were conveyed
down the river to Cairo, was a picture of spiritual desolation
that lingered in his mind.

The great irrigation works that the English were constructing
interested him immensely, while the geology of the banks of the
Nile and the neighborhood of Cairo offered a profitable field for
study. The results of his observations he afterward made use
of in his lectures at Cambridge.

Yet in spite of a lack of enthusiasm for the land of Egypt,
the slight touch with its spiritual motives gained in some weeks
of travel could not fail to affect one of his receptive nature. The
ages during which these people warred with death, seeking sal-
vation of the memory of the individual to himself or his kind,
was to him exceedingly impressive. Under the influence of this
persuasive and elaborate effort at self-perpetuation he began
while there to write his autobiography.

Greece affected him very differently from Egypt. It was like a
smiling return to an intellectual home. He had much the same
feeling that a graduate has when he goes back to his beloved

404 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

Harvard. For while by accomplishment Mr. Shaler was no
classicist he had to the core the humanistic spirit. Moreover, he
was thoroughly familiar with Greek history. As a boy he had
studied Grote from beginning to end, had made notes and ab-
stracts of the "History," so that every inch of the land and the
deeds that had been enacted thereon were known to him. His
Xenophon he knew almost by heart and the great tragedians
he had read in translations.

, While at Athens he spent a part of every day at the Parthenon.
The weather was fine so that he could sit indefinitely, taking in
from every point of view the beauty of its surroundings. The
study of the Parthenon was not wholly an artistic exercise.
The fallen pillars that strewed the ground suggested a practical
engineering feat for Harvard men. German archaeologists had
seen to the lifting and putting in place, with considerable ex-
penditure of time and money, it was said, of several of these col-
umns. From his examinations and from all that he could learn
of the difficulties of the task, he was convinced that it was not
beyond the power of Scientific School students — of an Archi-
medes of the West — to reinstate quickly and economically, by
the use of labor-saving devices, these dismembered parts of the
great temple. Firmly persuaded of their capacity for this work,
he resolved upon his return to America to put the case before
some rich man in the hope that he might make the gracious deed
possible. So many other matters, however, pressed upon him
when he returned, that it is doubtful whether he ever made any
effort in this direction.

In modern — fatally modern — Athens, where the small
present dwindles beneath the weight of a great past, it was often
difficult to lead the dual life that its historic associations called
for. Mr. Shaler would sometimes stop abruptly and say:
"Perhaps it was at this very corner that old Socrates stood and
asked his vexing questions. Bless his ugly mug!" Or, "Per-
haps it was here that the so-called ' vain and chattering Aris-
totle' looked about him with the piercing eye of inquiry." It

GREECE AND SICILY 405

was thus that Athens was repopulated and that the naturalist
by keeping him well in mind paid his long-accumulated debt to
the greatest of all scientists. Other torchbearers he kept in sight
as he wandered in and out among the streets of Athens. Mr.
Shaler became deeply engaged in building up to the mind's eye
out of their ruins a picture of the ancient splendors of temple,
Areopagus, and theatre; succeeding in an unusual degree, for
the constructive imagination so constantly exercised in the
field of natural phenomenon served him in this world of sus-
pended art and human glory.

Deviating from the usual line of travel, Mr. Shaler visited the
Peloponnesus and other parts of Greece, seeing enough of its
charm to make him wish to return and go all over it at his
leisure. Indeed, he thought seriously of a camping-expedition
under the guidance of Miss Stone, the archaeologist, who already
had smoothed the way and made light much that otherwise
would have been left in darkness. With charts in hand they
studied out the details of ancient structure. As for the new
ones, he was able to judge for himself; the new Stadium — built
of dazzling marble, the offering of a native who beyond the
boundaries of his own country had prospered well — Mr. Shaler
frequented, sometimes making comparisons that were not alto-
gether favorable to the Stadium at Cambridge. The public
spirit of the Greeks was a surprise and a pleasure to him, for
he was not prepared to find an almost American generosity in
the giving of libraries, colleges, and other buildings for general
use.

From Greece to Corfu, thence to Naples, to Sicily, and finally
a visit to Rome, were included in this itinerary, ^tna was the
chief call to Sicily. At his earlier visit, more than twenty years
before, Mr. Shaler had given up the journey because of the snow-
sheet on the volcano, and even now in the month of April its
cone was white ; but the lower portions and the extinct craters
were uncovered for observation, so that he was able to make
the long-coveted study of this great mountain. While at

406 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

Taormina he got much pleasure from long walks up the sheer
mountain-sides on roads that tapered off into zigzag footpaths,
seldom trod. He was loath to turn away from this paradise of
natural beauty, this library of human history where almost
every tongue in its time had been heard ; but each day the snow-
cap on ^Etna was growing less, the grateful warmth had turned
to heat, and the body had begun to feel a warning languor. He
therefore turned his face to the North.

At Rome Mr. Shaler began again his old habit of long tramps
into the surrounding country. More than once he went to Rocca
di Papa to study its geology, its fortress, and Hannibal's old
camping-ground; to Monte Cavo; to Nemi and Subiaco, and
there met good company at the albergo, where he and a Catholic
bishop exchanged ideas on the cardinal virtues, Mr. Shaler
paying his tribute in coin to the chief est of all, charity : its sym-
bol at the moment a new church just then mounting heaven-
wards in the bishop's diocese. Other points of interest tempted
him abroad. Probing for the heart of humanity, he hobnobbed
with the simple people, ate with them in the village trattoria,
talked with them on their own level of interests, and trusted
them in every way. And yet for all that, he fell among thieves,
and a handsome gold watch and chain which he valued was
stolen from him. Still, it must be said, this happened not in the
country, but in Rome itself.

The city had little persistent attraction for him. "The pot-
shards of a great world flung around " were too closely pressed in
by flimsy new structures. It was too populous, and its life
pitched on too strident a key. All this shut down on the per-
spective. In the uproar he found it hard to put the breath of
life, as he would have liked, into the great past. He could better
patch together the fragment of ancient glory, recall to the mind
"the great free people, the voice of the orators, the procession
to the Capitol," outside of its walls than within.

In the month of May roses and nightingales were everywhere
ambushed behind the garden walls, the one loading the air with

THE RETURN — HEROISM UNDER PAIN 407

perfume, the other with a great "din," "poor stuff," as Mr.
Shaler phrased it. The "din" kept him awake at night and
lowered his opinion of this European nonpareil. To his mind
the Philomela of poets was not worthy of his reputation. He
claimed that in America we had songsters whose notes were far
sweeter — that we had the bird, but we had n't the poet to cele-
brate its music in words still more melodious.

As the train drew off into the country, a glimmering glory of
sunlight rested on the Imperial City, and for the last time Mr.
Shaler looked upon Rome. Travelling to Naples, he took a
farewell view of Vesuvius, and thence sailed for America. Cir-
cumstances had shortened his vacation and made him anxious
to get home. England, which he counted upon visiting, was
left for another time, and along with it many other undertak-
ings, for as yet no warning voice had spoken, and life, so far as
planning was concerned, might have been in its first quarter,
as always the waxing, not the waning time of things was what
he oftenest thought of, such being the privilege of his energetic
soul.

Within a few days' sail of New York, while taking his daily
"constitutional," — so many times the length of the vessel, —
he lost his footing on the slippery deck and broke his left arm
just above the wrist. The ship's surgeon set the bone, but from
the beginning there were signs that the work was not well done,
and therefore, with the sense that it would have to be repeated
when he came ashore, the pain was less easy of endurance. But
from the very first he refused to yield to the infliction and en-
deavored to do everything for himself. And this, it may be said,
was a characteristic that often gave pain to those nearest to
him ; he would not allow them to do for him what their love
prompted. This strong motive of self-reliance was founded
upon the heroic element of his nature which, at all hazards,
would beat down and dominate whatever was soft and feeble ;
la mollesse was the quality of all others for which he had the
greatest contempt. Therefore to those who knew how much he

408 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

often suffered and overcame, in spite of the proverbial disillu-
sionment of the valet he grew by nearness to be more the
hero, rather than less.

If there was any perceptible physical change during these
later years, it was perhaps an increased tendency to vertigo, the
old enemy with which he had struggled for a large part of his
life. Even while lecturing it would sometimes assail him like a
flash of lightning, and but for his habit of holding himself well
in hand during any physical stress he might easily have suc-
cumbed. The only outward sign he gave of the disturbance was
a blanching of the face and a momentary interruption of the
flow of speech. He was accustomed to pull himself together so
quickly that few noticed the break. The attack, short as it
might be, nevertheless produced very painful sensations, and
he often spoke of it as "a living death." Sick headaches
which had tortured him from his youth were now less frequent,
though sometimes he labored through a day of hard work, even
a lecture, while borne down by them. The stress they had laid
upon his body and spirit all during his earlier manhood could not
be estimated, nor the firmness of will that led him to reject the
valetudinarian habit of life. He had sufficient cause to have
lapsed into self-indulgence and indolence had he allowed him-
self, but he set his face against these qualities, and at whatever
cost of will-power and suffering he lived a manly and self-
exacting life. To feel disinclined to do a thing was with him good
reason for doing it. He often said that his physical ailments had
strengthened his will and done more than anything else to make
a man of him, and for this reason he gave to pain a high place in
the work of spiritual education. Indeed, he was of the nature to
give the rack or thumb-screw a word of praise.

The summer of 1904 he spent much as usual, the Summer
School claiming in the early part its usual allotment of time and
care ; and later he went to Montana to look after the Conroy
Mine, of which he was the president. On the way to Montana
he writes : —

THE LAST TWO YEARS 409

Near CHICAGO, Aug. 3, 1904.

The first day is now over. Good weather — train not overcrowded. I
thought I was alone and so wrote you yesterday, but as I went to mail the
letter, behold two of the " old boys," and since then others ; so that it has not
been so still as I hoped. At 6.30 this evening I shall be off for St. Paul and
the further distance.

I like the plan of the balcony to the new part of the house very much.
On the whole the plans seem to me good. See that Willoughby [his son-in-
law] rests a bit. The train is about to start and the road is too rough for
writing. . . .

The plans alluded to in the above were some which he had
seen in Boston for the remodelling of the house at the Vineyard.
The balcony was intended as a surprise ; it was made to connect
with Mr. Shaler's upstairs study so that he could at any time
when weary of writing go out upon it and refresh his eyes with
the sight of the Sound and the near-by woods, of which he was
very fond.

The two succeeding years were spent very much as usual;
mainly in the discharge of college duties, which were neither
more nor less exacting than heretofore ; but even if they had been
Mr. Shaler would probably not have cared very much, for, hav-
ing about made up his mind to withdraw from teaching at the
first convenient moment, he was possessed of the calm that
comes with the sense of work almost completed. Only, as we
have seen, the merger scheme occasioned serious perturbation.
The reorganization of the Lawrence Scientific School also called
for the expenditure of much thought and care. After these im-
portant questions were disposed of he settled down to a state of
comparative repose. His daughters being married (the elder
to Mr. Willoughby Lane Webb and the younger to Mr. Logan
Waller Page) and gone to their own homes, the house was left
very quiet. The time of fervid striving had passed ; a serenity
seemed to pervade his spirit ; his engagements were less press-
ing, or, perhaps, it was that he was beginning to take things
more calmly. So the days passed pleasantly and peacefully.
The evenings he spent by the library fire, abandoning the habit

410 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

of going for a part of the time to his upstairs "den." He had so
much that he wanted to write about that he looked forward
with infinite pleasure to the unburdening of his mind at his
own choice of time and place. He hoped to spend more of his
days in the country, with an occasional dip each year into the
life of the great cities ; so he proposed.

On the twenty-second of February, 1906, according to an old
custom a reception was given to the Southern Club. He always
enjoyed these commemorative entertainments and commended
the arrangements for this one, into which some humorous feat-
ures were introduced, as more successful than usual. He did
not, however, seem as vivacious as was his wont ; indeed he com-
plained of not feeling well, but since he was suffering from what
was supposed to be a slight attack of indigestion, no importance
was attached to the circumstance. It was obvious, however,
that the passing days did not bring his usual vigor. It was not
many weeks after this that he walked to Corey Hill, in Brook-
line, to see a sick friend in the sanitarium there who had been
operated upon for appendicitis. After the visit the wife of his
friend insisted upon his driving home and lunching with her,
and later she commented upon the chivalrous feeling which
prompted him to say, "No, I would like to, but if I stayed
away my wife would be lonesome. " A hard crust of snow on
the ground made the walk more taxing than he expected, and
when he reached home he complained of great weariness, and of
other sensations worse than fatigue. The doctor was sent for
and discovered alarming symptoms. The next morning the
operation for appendicitis was performed. At first all went un-
commonly well ; but after a while pneumonia set in, and the
fight for life began. Along with those about him he struggled
heroically to keep at bay the terrible foe. It would seem from
the resisting power his body had always shown that he might
have had much to endure before death came ; such, however,
was not the case. The combat was hard and sharp, but it was
short. Then just before the end, on April the tenth, he dwelt

DEATH 411

for some hours in the twilight region. If life is great he might
have said, death perhaps is greater. He did say, "All things
do prophesy the life to come." More than this, the prayer he
uttered when a mere youth had been amply fulfilled : "0 Power
who has given me being, grant to me the strength to live as be-
comes thy creature. May I stand amid the changes that whirl
around me untouched and unbroken, and when it shall please
thee to end my* days, may I not have lived in vain."

The announcement of Dean Shaler's death awakened pro-
found sorrow in the whole community. By common impulse the
flags on the students' clubs and on the city buildings were hung
at half mast, and on the afternoon of the funeral the shops in
Old Cambridge were closed. At the meeting of the four under-
graduate classes it was decided that the entire undergraduate
body, both of the College and of the Scientific School, should
assemble and thus express their appreciation of the great and
noble work performed by Dean Shaler while connected with the
University. And in this manner, between two continuous lines
of undergraduates, his remains, borne on the shoulders of eight
students, were carried from his house to Appleton Chapel.
There Bishop Lawrence read the Episcopal burial service, and
immediately after interment took place at Mount Auburn
Cemetery.

Nothing would have touched Mr. Shaler's great heart — the
heart that burned with love and sympathy for them — more
than the sorrow of the young men who waited in line to give this
last token of affection to their true and valiant teacher, or the
grief shown by his associates and fellow townsmen among
whom he had lived "unsullied with his journey of the day."
Into his grave was poured the mingled love of youth and of
friendships old and tried.

CHAPTER XXVIII

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

PHYSICALLY Mr. Shaler was well made, lithe, and muscular.
The description given of him in a passport at the age of thirty-
two was correct. Stature five feet eleven inches, eyes gray, in-
clining to blue, nose aquiline, mouth medium and it may be
added, delicately moulded and sensitive. Face thin, complexion
fair. His hair, described as ' ' sandy, ' ' was unusually abundant —
so abundant that one naturally expected it to defy the thinning
touch of time. He disliked very much the idea of growing bald,
and the only regard for his personal appearance he ever showed
were some precautions which he took the last year or two against
this disfigurement. He was of such just proportions that few re-
alized how tall he was. He described an experience he had when
he first entered the drill class at Cambridge in 1861. The drill-
master, it seemed, spent at least ten minutes trying to place
him ; beginning low down in the squad, he shifted him step by
step until within two of the top ; he, knowing where he belonged,
enjoying the joke all the while. His body broadened with years,
but he had never an ounce of flesh to spare. He held in great
dislike the accumulation of adipose tissue and the physical
inertness that is apt to go with it. He regarded increase in girth
of waist as a mark of degeneration, a sign that a man was eat-
ing too much and walking too little. When he saw a comrade
getting pursy, he took it seriously and would exhort him to
more exercise. He commented regretfully upon the fact that
only one other teacher besides himself went regularly to the
gymnasium.

In youth, at least, his face failed to show what was in him ;
it was alert and sensitive, but did not bode the strong-willed,
dominant personality that time revealed. These qualities,

HIS EXPRESSION OF FACE 413

shrouded by evident self-consciousness, could be read neither
in the look nor manner of the young man. In the course of time,
however, his interest in his work and in his fellow men delivered
his soul of this burden, and he became the most self-forgetting
and self-sacrificing of men. The centre of his thoughts was so
successfully shifted from himself to the universe that he often
seemed to be lost in the vast field of time ; and again, he would
shelter himself in a sort of humorous detachment from the
paltry and commonplace, deeming them as part of the infirmity
of poor human nature — poor, but none the less lovable. More
and more he looked upon all the elements of life, however small,
as involved in the great whole, as different actors in different
parts. His mind thus occupied with large conceptions, his ap-
pearance could not fail in a measure to reflect his thoughts. One
saw in his face that his ideal of what a man should be and the
right way of looking at things had done their work there ; when
in repose its expression was lofty and noble; it showed both
kindliness and wisdom, that final crown of attainment.

Mr. Shaler had great power of endurance, and though often
assailed by sickness he was no example of "lamed misery." He
rallied quickly and went about his business as if nothing had
happened. This ready recovery was partly due to natural re-
siliency, but more especially to the will to be well. Recognizing
the danger of hypochondria to one gifted with an active imagina-
tion, he set himself against the impulse to yield to its manifold
suggestions of evil, and thus fought his way out of the Slough
of Despond — the borders of which he touched, though its
depths he did not enter. He did his duty thoroughly by his
body, except perhaps by overtaxing it at times, but even this
was in accordance with a theory and not the result of careless-
ness. He believed that it was well to use one's powers, mental
and physical, up to their full limit, and to vary occupations
when weary rather than suspend labor altogether. He exercised
regularly and persistently, preferring long walks off in the coun-
try, but if these were not to be had he walked in and out of

414 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

Boston when called there on business, or around Fresh Pond in
all weathers. A day without at least a six-mile tramp was bur-
densome to him. He was a good fencer, a good swimmer, and
an exceptionally fine horseman, having in his day mounted
every kind of beast, under all sorts of conditions, and yet never
been thrown. As for sports, he had taken his turn at the bat,
with the oar, and at football, but he cared little for them or for
any set amusement. Nothing made time pass heavily, he said,
but pastime. He got stimulus and diversion from so many
sources within himself that prescribed forms of entertainment
or violent efforts in that direction made no appeal to him. He
could take his sensations delicately ; it was not necessary to be
supersaturated with glaring sights, loud sounds, strong tobacco,
or highly seasoned food. He drank a glass of wine with the same
relish he would have shown for any other ingredient of a good
dinner. He did not need wine as a stimulant; it might have
been well had he taken it more freely as a sedative. He often
spoke of a delightful "spree" he once had with two congenial
spirits at the Cosmos Club in Washington which lasted from
eight in the evening till one o'clock, — the jollity sustained by
Apollinaris water and crackers. He was capable of becoming
thoroughly exhilarated with good talk and sometimes better
on an empty stomach than a full one. Coffee was his favorite
beverage; it was one, however, he could not freely indulge in.
It was his habit to have it for breakfast on lecture mornings and
in consequence these were regarded by the family as red-letter
days. On other mornings the cup of tea was not one that
cheered ; on the contrary, Mr. Shaler always found it too strong
or too weak, too hot or too sweet, until at last it would be
necessary to remind him that tea was not coffee. "Alas! that
it is not/1 he would exclaim, and without further criticism
empty his cup.

His youth had been spent much among men who in a way
were high livers; he therefore was accustomed to see both
whiskey and wine consumed freely. His father often sent him,

HIS CONVERSATION 415

when a student, wine from his own vineyard, and yet he never
formed the taste for intoxicating liquors. Indeed, sometimes
he was at a loss to know what to do with the strong beverages
sent to him from Kentucky. Especially was this the case with
some gallons of apple jack which proved altogether too potent
for his palate, and which would have remained unused had not
the housekeeper, seized with a happy thought, resorted to it,
instead of wine, for the flavoring of jelly. The success of the
experiment was such that this particular refreshment became
a feature of Sunday evening suppers whose popularity grew as
the season advanced, for however dull the meal might begin it
was sure to be gay after the jelly was served. The hostess was
flattered by requests for its receipt, and by the relish with
which the confection was eaten ; but alas, when the apple jack
was consumed, the complaint arose that while the mould was
the same, the sensation was different.

Whatever may be said of the lost art of conversation, so far
as Mr. Shaler was concerned it had not passed away, for he
was not afraid to say what he thought; and what others might
think had no terror for him. Overflowing with anecdotes and
reminiscences, brilliant and cheerful, his talk was an inspiration,
and the happy phrase which with most persons is an accidental
prize was with him habitual. He delighted in hearty intercourse
with people of vivid thought and feeling, with such as had some-
thing worth saying, though it might sometimes be difficult to
say it; for unless his interlocutor was unusually good at "tongue
fence" he was apt to get belated in the race. Mr. Shaler 's forty-
odd years of lecturing had doubtless confirmed in him the
habit of pretty continuous verbal expression. It has been said
that Lowell could talk in paragraphs ; with equal truth it may
be affirmed that Shaler could talk in chapters. His conversation
swung free, any subject serving for the deliverance of his versa-
tile mind. There was, however, no preaching, no "pontificat-
ing": what he said was spontaneous, epigrammatic, and in
accord with the occasion. With quip and joke he enlivened the

416 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

homely facts of life, or on easy wing ventured beyond the
bounds of the self-evident and prosaic.

In his contact with men Mr. Shaler seldom struck the minor
key; conscious of an underlying tendency to melancholy, he
encouraged himself in the practice of cheerfulness, shutting his
lips upon anything like complaining or self-pity. He had not
only accepted the Universe, but had become reconciled to it and
although no one at times was more alive to the tragic conse-
quences of man's deeds, his poetic imagination enabled him to
endow the hard facts of life with rich compensations. The unity
of all created things in the plan of the Universe was an abiding
thought — a thought which made it possible for him to believe
that society at large might become so united by sympathy that
the inherent isolation of the individual could to a certain extent
be overcome. As a consequence of his sympathetic outlook
upon the vast spectacle of ongoing life, his talk was optimistic,
— not the complacent sort that tries to drug laziness by good
humor with the times, but of the type which endeavors to master
difficulties, — cheerful and full of courage. It was this high-
sounding note of valor that made him so uplifting a companion.
It may be said here that while in the act of talking Mr. Shaler's
face wore a vivacious, half -amused expression ; when he listened
his look was intense and penetrating, as if he would allow
nothing to escape his attention.

With callow youths his quick insight in the choice of subjects
that would interest them — ranging from adventures by sea
and land to football tactics and baseball curves — held them
spellbound, while the absence of anything like professional pose,
his friendliness and his eager desire to see the good that was in
them, won their enthusiastic and abiding affection.

For all Mr. Shaler's unfeigned interest in his fellow men he
never descended to petty gossip, or encouraged it in others. The
truth was, a certain inner stateliness of soul made him not
scornful, but indifferent to the valet side of a man's life.

Mr. Shaler was neither clubbable nor lionizable. From good

HIS SOCIAL LIFE 417

nature he joined many clubs, but he seldom attended their
meetings. He went perhaps more frequently than to any other
to the Thursday Club, where he often spoke. But he cared little
for cut and dried social expedients; and as for the r61e of lion,
the artificiality of it was as repugnant to him as the iron cage to
the free-breathing animal from the jungle. He was nevertheless
very social, and although he growled at having to go to dinner-
parties, when once launched he enjoyed them exceedingly. Of
late years there was one house in Boston in particular where
he dined often — its mistress the daughter of an old Kentucky
friend. The warm-hearted hospitality of both host and hostess
made him feel very much at home, and the talk about old times
and the friends of other days rejuvenated him. To get into
simple, kindly relations with people without any fanfaronade
was what delighted him most. Much as he enjoyed meeting his
friends in their houses, nothing pleased him better than to see
them in his own. If a stranger brought a letter of introduction
he was most scrupulous in his welcome. Even when the individ-
ual was merged in a crowd, such as a learned society and so
forth, he could still meet successfully the collective demand.

The worst part of dinner-parties was the getting ready for
them ; he was so impatient a subject of conventional appearance,
or any form that failed to represent a worthy outcome of social
experience, that the tying of his white necktie was a serious
undertaking. And when several ties had wilted under his fiery
touch and his wife was called upon to finish the work, it was to
both a moment of extreme tension. When it was over he would
heave a sigh of relief and execrate the petty details of fashions
that stole a man's time from better things. He was careless about
his dress, but so far as his body was concerned cleanliness was
next to godliness, and two baths a day often were none too
many to meet his self-exacted requirements. He took heed for
a while to an admonition of President Eliot's, who, on their
way to chapel, good-naturedly reproached him for walking on
the wet grass while the morning's "shine" was fresh on his

418 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

boots. For several days after he was seen to pick his way care-
fully on the gravelled walks. In regard to his next-door neigh-
bor, whom he admired very much, although it was seldom they
agreed, he used laughingly to say : " Now Eliot is too much like
George Washington for us ever to be able to keep step long
together." Speaking of his other colleagues, many of whom he
loved dearly, he would often make use of the phrase "He's
a dear boy/' or "He's the dearest creature alive." This ex-
pression was oftenest on his lips with reference to Dr. James,
Professor Palmer, and Professor Royce; and in his lifetime
Professor Child would call forth the same spontaneous words of
liking. Like himself, Professor Child was of a testy nature and
they often disputed acrimoniously in faculty-meetings, but they
would no sooner get home than a note would fly from one to the
other full of contrition and tender atonement. So far as his
relations with the men in his own department were concerned,
they were cordial, liberal, and encouraging. Professors Davis,
Smyth, Wolff, Woodworth, and others had been his old pupils
and were endeared to him by long association. He was also
most considerate of the clerks in his office, and almost without
exception they adored him.

Mr. Shaler was a very constant friend ; for, after all, his im-
patience was rooted in patience, and he would put up with
the backslidings and misdemeanors of a person with whom he
had once had friendly relations beyond the usual endurance.
It was rare that anything could happen bad enough to shake
his loyalty to a tie once formed, and an appeal, however exact-
ing, was seldom unheeded. On one occasion when the discov-
ery that a German woman, who for years had been befriended
on account of her extreme poverty, had stored in bank six
hundred dollars which, she said, she was saving to pay her
son's gambling debts in case he had any, awakened indigna-
tion, he merely remarked, "What did you expect? Besides,
when you undertook to help her you should have realized
that it was for better or for worse." The friend who was so

HIS LOYALTY TO HIS FRIENDS 419

fortunate as to have him for an ally in any difficult situation
was sure to be powerfully and intensely sustained ; indeed it
would have been hard to find a better backer in a mortal
quarrel.

This was a characteristic feature even of his early manhood,
and was strengthened, not diminished, by time. In 1870 his
friend Professor Hyatt writes: -

Boston Society of Natural History.

... I shall never be able to express my obligation to you for the friendly
manner in which you worked for me. Perhaps no one was more surprised
than your humble servant at the sudden bold swoop with which you threw
the first bomb. I could compare the effect of your speech to nothing else. The
applause that followed was as astonishing to me as to our opponents. . . .

He often went far afield to help a friend, nor did he consider
that by so doing he was wasting time and energy, for the sym-
pathetic and human realm in his opinion claimed the foremost
place in the minds of men. "There were other things in life,"
he said, "besides beating a little learning into a student."

If it had been possible to spoil him in his youth, he certainly
would have been spoiled, for he was the constant object of pride,
solicitude, and affection on the part of his parents. In his turn
he was a devoted son, showing great tenderness for his mother ;
ready to go to her at all times, in the depth of winter or the heat
of summer, that he might give her cheer and comfort, especially
after his father's death. His resemblance to her side of the
house was strong — to her brothers in particular, two of whom
were brilliant men, witty, ready phrasers and much sought after
for their social qualities. In his own state of Kentucky the
tongue was almost as mighty as the sword and the man or wo-
man who could flash forth an aphorism or a quick repartee was
exalted. The witty retort was native with his father, but Mr.
Shaler's brilliant conversational powers came from his mother's
side of the house. His mother's love for him amounted to
idolatry. When he was with her she lived in his shadow ; every-
thing he did was right; every object about him was transmuted

420 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

into something fine and precious. Even the food at his table
had a better flavor than any other.

It may be said in this connection that his attitude toward
women was exceedingly chivalrous, and for the elderly of fine
character he had profound reverence. And yet, as a rule, his
affections having become early centred, so far as he was con-
cerned, women only existed in a generalized way and not as
objects of definite personal interest. There was a time in his
life when he was apt to take the absence of beauty in a wo-
man as a personal affront, and if one of his " boys " married
a plain girl he was indignant. Farther along, however, this,
in a measure, ceased to be the case, he was content to find
in their faces a good, motherly, feminine expression.

Mr. Shaler's well-recognized irascibility was partly owing to
physical causes and partly to an exceedingly sensitive nature.
His emotions, both pleasurable and painful, were singularly
acute, and when thoroughly aroused his tongue was sharp and
trenchant. But at foundation he was so noble and large-hearted,
so willing to pardon and forgive the offence which had aroused
his ire, that the sting, received and given, was soon over. Only
meanness and indirection he neither would nor could forgive.
He strove very hard to overcome his excitability. Yet, working
as he did to the full stretch of his capacity and a little beyond
(doing many things easily, he had little present feeling of the
amount of work he accomplished), the pressure under which he
lived was too great for one of his nervous temperament. No-
thing less than superhuman powers could have coped with the
physical and mental stress that his varied activities imposed,
or have allayed the nervousness for which they were indirectly
responsible. There were periods when his doing-power was ex-
traordinary. In contrast to it, do what they would, those about
him seemed to be mere cumberers of the soil. The last years of
his life, however, in this respect were somewhat calmer. The
unanswerable quests of the soul, the permanence of matter, and
the persistence of force, in other words, the profundities of the

HIS PIPE 421

natural world, a subject ever uppermost in his mind, taught
him at last a sort of belated patience as well as tolerance in
others of less strenuous efforts than his own.

The best antidote to nervousness he found lay in his long-
stemmed pipe with its small bowl, holding scarcely a thimble-
ful of the lightest and most delicately scented tobacco — a
mixture of his own, its aroma too faint for the nicotine-steeped
senses of most smokers. His friends often complained that in-
stead of smoking tobacco he smoked matches, so frequently did
he light the dying ashes. However this may have been, he
pulled at his pipe pretty steadily. With his pipe in his mouth
and his pencil in hand, he soon became lost in the large mental
territory he owned, where he ranged at will oblivious of all
vexing cares. This world of his thoughts grew to be more and
more sufficient, and therefore forced marches into remote geo-
graphical realms, instead of being recreative, were even thought
of with positive aversion. All he asked of life, in these last years,
was to be left alone by his fireside to do what he pleased, not to
labor necessitously, but only to draw his pension and to rest —
that is, to work in his own way. In fact, he was now willing to
let the struggle pass on to others, "holding himself in reserve
for an occasional onslaught if necessary."

Mr. Shaler's work-table was a heaped-up mass of papers — an
epitome of the world's interests. There were blue-books, theses,
manuscripts of his own and others, social letters, business let-
ters, maps, mining-reports, newspapers, and books of reference.
How he found his way through this chaos it was difficult to un-
derstand, but if his table was left unmolested, neither straight-
ened nor dusted, he got on very well ; a foreign touch, however,
produced distressing consequences, making him lose the thread
that guided him through the tangle. For many years during the
early growth of the Lawrence Scientific School, and even after,
he answered personally every inquiry, thus putting a severe
tax upon himself; but it was just these personal communica-
tions that made all the difference between failure and success.

422 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

His indefatigable performance of this dull clerical business was
pathetic to those who watched him thus engaged, and gave them
the impulse to throw (in many instances) the illiterate applica-
tion into the waste-paper basket, to save his precious strength.
Away from his work-table he was methodical to a marked
degree. He rose a few minutes before the ringing of the College
bell, took a short walk before breakfast, going for his newspaper,
possibly stopping at the fruit- vender's to exchange a few words
of Italian while selecting his oranges or grapes, and would also
look in at his office for a moment to see that the day was well
begun. After breakfast he went to Appleton Chapel. The
morning service there he regarded as a gate to better health of
mind; the reading of the Psalms and the short and pointed
address were as a spiritual bath, he said, which prepared a man
to run the day's course. From the chapel he proceeded to his
college appointments. The sequence of his acts was almost un-
failing. He kept his engagements with persistent punctuality ;
disinclination, sickness, or other solicitation to shirk the pre-
scribed task was treated as non-existent ; not unfrequently he
would get up out of a sick bed, find his way to the lecture-hall,
and by sheer force of will talk through the hour. The order of
his life in other directions was equally well maintained. On
election days he went to the polls early, his vote always being
among the first half-dozen that were cast. This political duty
he never neglected, and while a Democrat, when it was a ques-
tion of the better man, he did not stick to his party, but voted
for the one who promised to discharge his duties best. His own
sense of duty toward town, state, and nation was always keen.
In travelling, except for delays, he usually outran his schedule,
so that letters directed to be sent to different places at special
times were apt to be returned through the dead-letter office.
Furthermore the housekeeper who undertook to have repairs
done in his absence, or the house cleaned, was almost sure to be
caught with the task only half accomplished.

THE SUBJECT OF ANECDOTE 423

Nothing but the unfailing regularity of his days enabled him
to accomplish what he did. It was not, however, an inhuman
regularity that excluded the play of life ; he found time for this,
too. Owing to the habit he acquired of intense concentration, he
was able to make use of spare moments for reading or writing
when other men would have thought of nothing save their cares
and fatigue. In these fragments of time he would peg away at
his regular work or almost instantaneously lose himself in his
own world of entertainment. He was glad to have those near
him enter this world if they would, but he never thrust his com-
positions upon them, and while engaged in writing anything of
a serious nature he was averse to talking about it. On the whole,
he was singularly independent of criticism ; he wrote because he
had something definite to say and was content to say it once for
all and forget it. With his poetry it was different; he was less
confident and asked advice of some of his colleagues of reputed
literary judgment.

Mr. Shaler's personality was such that he became the subject
of a whole world of anecdote and reminiscence in the College
circle. These were communicated by word of mouth, or under-
stood by nod and gesture by the initiated ; as, for instance, when
students called him "Uncle Nat," the sobriquet suggested how
often they were saved by timely application to him from a visit
to the "Uncle" with the three balls for sign of willingness to
accommodate. But these current sayings and the performances
that gave rise to them, like all unrecorded things, even though
there were a cloud of witnesses, have gone or are going the
way of oblivion. The other side of his character happily lives
on in his books.

CHAPTER XXIX

LITERARY WORK

As we have seen, Mr. Shaler began to write in his youth. He did
so, however, without intending to make literature, in other than
a secondary way, any part of the serious work of his life ; in
truth long after he was fairly committed to the writing of books
he insisted that such work should with most authors be a side
issue, the spilling over of a full life ; a recreation rather than a
deliberate purpose. The hard drill which a man received in the
exacting field of his avowed profession would, he thought, do
away with amateurish results. Furthermore he believed that a
well-educated man could apply his talents as well to one thing
as another and could write on any subject of ordinary human
interest. Owing to his own varied intellectual activities it is
difficult to associate Mr. Shaler with a special branch of know-
ledge or industry, for there was hardly a subject on which he
could not throw an unexpected light; and for this reason his
literary work falls in with no ready-made classification either of
subject or intellect. Apparently no irresistible impulse led his
mind away from what seemed at the moment the thing best
worth doing, nor when accomplished could it detain him longer.
It was possible for him to enter into the floating interests about
him,1 and yet keep his energies in the steady stream of his
appointed tasks ; always faithful to the hour and minute of their
discharge, never shirking the fatigue or monotony of their
smallest detail. The different ideas which beset him, strange to
say, were not combatants. In passing they saluted one another
and went on their way, each patiently biding its time for fuller
recognition and development. In this respect his life was pe-

i As is shown by the multitude of magazine articles he wrote on current subjects of
interest, — such, for instance, as the Silver Question, the Negro Problem, Red Sunsets, the
Law of Fashion, Hurricanes, Immigration, etc.

HIS METHOD OF WRITING 425

culiarly rich, for in his mental house there were many mansions
into which at will he could enter. Whatever struggle there may
originally have been between poetic imagination and scientific
research, the two were not only reconciled, but during the last
fruitful years of his life fused into one in such books as "The
Interpretation of Nature" and "The Individual." It was not
only when his mind travelled into the realm of poetry that time
and eternity, the vast and the mysterious, were present with
him. These phenomena ever underlay his thought, and because
of this solemn undertone often there was a note of pathos in
what he wrote — markedly so in early manhood ; and later his
pen continued to obey the dictation of a subconscious sadness, a
sadness which in a measure was lost in the world of activity,
where he practised a self-sufficing stoicism, but which, in the
world of reflection, showed itself continually.

So far as the actual process of writing was concerned, Mr.
Shaler could write at any time and anywhere ; he was unfamiliar
with the coaxing habit indulged in by some authors. He knew
nothing of "moods" or "atmospheres," nor did he make osten-
tatious preparations for the act. All he wanted was his Morris
chair, a tablet, a lead pencil, and his long-stemmed pipe. He did
not care for what is known as "the frippery of erudition" and
was without the solicitudes of those who strive for faultless
lines; indeed he produced too rapidly to keep his mind for long
at the critic's level. What erasures he made were done at the
moment with the rubber end of his pencil, a labor-saving con-
trivance to which he was wont to sing a hymn of praise. His
writings are seldom cumbered with quotations, and if any came
to his mind he was apt to brush them aside in his effort to
express himself. He wrote freely and easily, but no amount of
talent, unsupported by his steady-pulling diligence, would have
enabled him, amid so many distractions, to fill out the long and
varied list of his writings.

Mr. Shaler's first published scientific works of any importance
were his list of Anticosti Brachiopods, and later, in 1876, The

426 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

Fossil Brachiopods of the Ohio Valley. His researches in this
field were warmly commended by Agassiz, and at once gave him
a place among his contemporaries in science. Although he early
began to publish in scientific journals, in Government and State
Geological Reports, a letter which he wrote to his father while in
England shows that he was by no means satisfied with what he
had already done.

LONDON, May, 1873.

S wrote you all the news Sunday last. We are all much as then. I did

too much last week and so am compelled to do less this ; but I am getting
along quietly. I do not expect ever to be able to do very hard work again ;
yet I think it is probable that I have a good deal in me yet which can be got
out with careful management. I shall always run the risk of setting up the
old irritations. My plan is to come back to Cambridge for the next year.
If my Nantucket scheme for summer school goes forward this year I shall try
to get there in July ; it will involve only a little supervising work and in ex-
change therefor I shall get two months' rest in the winter. I intend to have
two assistants, which will cost me $1000, leaving me $3000 from the uni-
versity. I shall do a little less than half my usual task for the coming year
and see how that does. I mean also to come back to horseback exercise,
which is more diverting and less wearing than foot exercise. In this fashion
I hope to live at least twenty years of useful work. I am anxious to have
some repose in order that I can begin to get my scientific results in order.
I have done a good deal of work which should be published, but have as yet
got very little on to paper and into print.

While Director of the Kentucky Geological Survey (1874-80)
Mr. Shaler's annual reports and other contributions, written by
himself or with the aid of his assistants, required a great deal of
his time. These writings relate to the natural resources of the
state, as well as to purely scientific subjects. The whole of
Volume III, new series, was written by himself. His first inde-
pendent book, "Thoughts on the Nature of Intellectual Pro-
perty," was published in 1878; "The Geology of Boston and
its Environs" (Memorial History of Boston, edited by Justin
Winsor), in 1880. "Glaciers," with W. M. Davis as collabora-
tor, appeared in 1881. His next venture, "The First Book of
Geology," was published in 1884, and "Kentucky: A Pioneer

BAS-RELIEF OF MR. SHALER

HIS BOOKS 427

Commonwealth," the same year. Thereafter his books were
sent forth in rapid succession and about in the order in which
they are mentioned here. "Physiography of North America"
(Narrative and Critical History of America, edited by Justin
Winsor), " Field Geology" (published serially in Popular Science
News), "Aspects of the Earth," "Nature and Man in Amer-
ica," " The Story of Our Continent," " Sea and Land," " Valor "
(a poem),"The United States" (edited byN. S. Shaler), "The In-
terpretation of Nature," " Domesticated Animals," "American
Highways," "Outlines of the Earth's History," "The Individ-
ual," "The Moon," "Elizabeth of England" (5vols.), "The
Neighbor," "The Citizen," "Man and the Earth," "From
Old Fields." In addition to the above list of his principal writ-
ings there are twenty-one long and valuable publications con-
tained in the United States Geological Survey Reports, also
others in the Reports of the Coast Survey, and a long list of
papers in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural
History, and in the Annual Reports of the Curator in the Mu-
seum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College. Mr. Shaler's
contributions to learned societies, to scientific journals, and to
magazines, and his book reviews alone would fill many vol-
umes.

The "First Book of Geology" was gratefully received by
teachers and was so well appreciated abroad that in the course
of time it was translated into the German, Russian, and Polish
languages. It was also embossed in print characters for the use
of the blind. From the hundreds of letters sent to both pub-
lishers and author after the appearance of this little book one
learns of the satisfaction felt in getting hold of something which
was untechnical in style, entertaining, and scientifically true.
One teacher writes : " The interesting way in which you treat of
all even the most abstruse questions would vivify a stone, to
say nothing of the receptive mind of an average pupil." This
book was the beginning of a series which he had in mind. Again
and again he was requested by publishers to write the more

428 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

advanced volumes. He, however, postponed doing so, meaning
in the end to give to it his ripest knowledge and experience.
Mentally he was entirely prepared — indeed he had written out
a large part of one of the higher text-books — to finish the
undertaking at the first leisure period, that is, when his life
should be disengaged from the cares of administration and the
actual work of teaching, to which he, in thought at least, had
already set the limit. In addition to a geological series he also
considered the writing of some science readers. " The Story of
Our Continent" is, strictly speaking, the only book of the kind
he finished ; nor was the scheme of a family library, upon which
he pondered a great deal, brought to fulfilment. Like most of
his conceptions, it was outlined on a large scale. Publishers
dwelt upon the subject with fascinated interest, only in the end
to abandon it because of the amount of labor and energy it
would have required.

Of Mr. Shaler's exclusively scientific writings there are others
more competent to write than I. One of these, who knows
whereof he speaks, has said, " He was always a thoughtful ob-
server, an independent inquirer, and a most ingenious specula-
tive theorizer." It may also be affirmed that in almost every
instance his scientific investigations were associated with the
literary charm which made them attractive to the lay reader.
There are at hand a dozen or more letters relating to a single
monograph on the "Origin and Nature of Soils" which bear
witness to this quality. A teacher writes from Trenton, New
Jersey : " I have read ' The Origin and Nature of the Soil ' in the
United States Government Report. For felicity of expression,
beauty of style, and rhythmic movement, as well as the insight
it gives into the operations of divine law, it stands unequalled.
It deserves an honored place among the classics."

The best evidence as to the interest of his scientific writings
is the following line from that fastidious author, T. B. Aldrich,
who perhaps exceeded even James T. Fields in his detestation
of "a damned instructive lecture" or article either: —

HIS BOOKS 429

Aug. 25, 1881.

My dear Sir, — I think that nothing of yours has ever escaped my reading
or failed to reward it; so I am very glad that you have consented to prepare
the paper on Hurricanes.

Yours very sincerely, T. B. ALDRICH.

His book on "Domesticated Animals," illustrated by Seton
Thompson, called forth many enthusiastic letters from people
having pets and pet theories, who overwhelmed him with anec-
dotes concerning the various animals that figure in its pages.
He himself always insisted that many of the attributes which
constitute a gentleman had passed over to the dog. "We may
look upon the dog," he says, "as affording the first step on the
path to culture which was to lift man from his primitive selfish-
ness to the altruistic state to which he had attained. In his
intercourse with this creature man first learned to develop his
altruistic motives beyond the limits of his own kind."

"Man and Earth" is the last contribution to human know-
ledge based on scientific inquiry that Mr. Shaler gave to the
public — the last of his lifelong efforts to interpret the facts
and mysteries of nature which he had so lovingly pondered. In
this volume he undertook to forecast the future of the globe from
the study of its past history. Among other important sugges-
tions its pages hold a warning against despoiling the earth of its
treasures. He believed that the present reckless use of nature's
supplies would eventually transfer to Manchuria and other parts
of China the opportunity to furnish the world with its coal and
iron, and that the state which commanded the mineral stores of
that kingdom might find its way to master the world even more
effectively than did Rome in her time.

In natural science, in short, as in all his work, Mr. Shaler was
an innovator and a pioneer, and this is no more markedly evi-
dent than in the field of his writing upon the preservation of
our woods and waters. His reports on Swamp Lands, and the
Origin and Nature of Soils, prepared for the United States
Geological Survey, are among the most notable papers bearing

430 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

on the conservation of our natural resources, and the lines of
action which he laid down in them have since met with general
approval and acceptance, while his reports on the Geology of
Roads and on Road-Building Stones have proved of great prac-
tical importance.

Mr. Shaler's earliest work in the field of general literature is
to be found in the Atlantic Monthly so early as 1869. He began
to contribute to that magazine with a series of five papers upon
Earthquakes, which attracted much attention; but as time
went on his writings for this magazine became less strictly
scientific, and passing from such subjects as a "Summer's Jour-
ney of a Naturalist," "The Moon," and "How to Change the
American Climate," he came in later papers printed in the mag-
azine in the course of the next fifteen years to the discussion
of such themes as the "Natural History of Politics," the "Use
of Numbers in Society," the "Negro Problem," the "Law of
Fashion," and similar topics of wide general interest when
passed through the alembic of his vigorous mind.

These papers in the Atlantic were greatly liked by the readers
of the magazine, and highly valued by its editors. One of these,
Mr. Howells, writes, " I have been reading the history of your
gipsying with greatest pleasure, — the whole most charming
and instructive." And in the correspondence which ensued
between them during the years of Mr. Ho wells 's editorship of
the magazine there were numerous expressions of cordial appre-
ciation that notably aided in stirring the literary impulse in Mr.
Shaler's writing. There are other letters, too, that came to
him as the result of these contributions to the Atlantic that
were both pleasing and stimulating, — among them this from
Oliver Wendell Holmes : —

May 16, 1879.

Dear Professor Shakr: — I have never thanked you for your article on
" Sleep and Dreams," but I do thank you at last heartily. I have read it with
much interest and have been struck with some of its ideas — especially with
the original suggestion of the possibility of the transmission of concrete

A CURIOUS DREAM 431

thoughts. I told my parlor audience at New York a week or two ago that
your suggestion would be an admirable one in the case of a clergyman who
had delivered a sermon just like a printed one of a famous divine. — His
father probably heard it and having a very retentive memory recollected it
and transmitted it with his virtues to his cruelly wronged offspring.

I may possibly have thanked you before, but no matter. My table is laden
with what the Western people call a " boom" of pamphlets, and I sometimes
forget whether I have acknowledged a particular one, as I mean to do with
the very best of them at least.

Very truly yours, 0. W. HOLMES.

Mr. Shaler was observant of his dreams and would often
entertain the family at breakfast with some fantastic experi-
ence of the kind he had had the night before. His dream about
the white elephant that he found in his bed would make him
laugh until the tears ran down his cheeks. Among his notes is the
record of the following curious dream. He told it to Sir Arthur
Sullivan when he was in London, and always believed that it
gave the musician a hint for the plot of his opera " Ruddygore."
He writes : " In the fancy which I shall tell as it came to me I
was sitting with a friend one evening talking of the portrait of
an old warrior which hung on the wall. Suddenly the likeness
became living and the figure stood upon the floor. He told us
that he was prisoned by enchantment in the picture centuries
ago, doomed to wait until some one should pronounce certain
words which would break the spell. These words we had
spoken. He besought me to make the sign of the cross upon his
forehead that he might go to his rest, for which he was the more
eager for his centuries of waiting. This I did, when at once he
was gone. On the wall still hung the vacant canvas — all of
one hue. This curious dream could be made the basis of an
effective tale. I do not remember ever to have read a story with
such an incident."

In other than scientific fields the first book by Mr. Shaler
to be widely read was the history of Kentucky in the Ameri-
can Commonwealths Series, which was published in 1884. This
was in a measure a labor of love, and it was an undertak-

432 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

ing for which he was peculiarly fitted. The knowledge he had
gained of the state and its people, during the years when he
travelled from one end of it to the other in discharge of his
duties as Director of the Kentucky Geological Survey, served
him to good purpose in vivifying the historical record. He knew
the people intimately, the wealthy planter of the blue-grass
region, the small farmer, and the poor mountaineer, finding
among all classes characteristics which awakened his admira-
tion. He had a keen sense of the reserve power, the unused-up
force that in many cases lay dormant in the different grades
of society.1

Furthermore, while a Union man himself, Mr. Shaler's under-
standing of the motives of those who cast in their lot with the
Southern cause enabled him to treat of the Civil War period
with larger comprehension than fell to the lot of the mere parti-
san writer. The proof-sheets of his book were subjected to the
criticism of some of the ablest men in the state, and as might
have been expected there was one point about which there was
a diversity of opinion, viz., the exact meed of praise due the
Union and Confederate soldier. One of his friends, Mr. John
Mason Brown, writes, October 24, 1884 : —

In reading over the estimate of the troops during the Civil War, it is diffi-
cult to resist the conclusion that your historical opinion is, that the Union
forces of Kentucky were composed merely of such material as were left after
skimming off the cream of the state into the churn of Morgan's cavalry.
This is hardly gratifying to one who thinks so strongly to the contrary as
myself and my friend Speed. It however suits Durrett and Collins to a dot.

It is barely possible that Mr. Shaler may have been induced
by the representation of his critics, whom he greatly respected,

i He was fond of telling of men whom he had met in out-of-the-way places, who had
interpreted, often in a wise way, the phenomena of nature. Others had the same experi-
ence. Mr. Edward Atkinson writes to him : " You once told me that you found an old
farmer up in the mountains of Kentucky who had worked out a true theory of erosion.
I enclose letters from a farmer in Henderson, Kentucky, who appears to have worked out
from his inner consciousness what would be substantially the theory of Quesnay and the
physiocrats. I wonder how many farmers of this type are to be found in Kentucky. They
ought to rule the state."

"THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE" 433

to modify his first estimate of the men engaged on the Union
and Confederate sides; but it is certain that he never materially
changed it. His judgment was based not alone upon the exploits
of Morgan's cavalry ; the record of the First Kentucky Confeder-
ate Brigade appealed strongly both to his reason and to his im-
agination. He felt that those men by their soldierly qualities
and endurance did credit to the race, and among the last of his
writings was a short poem called "The Orphan Brigade " cele-
brating their remarkable deeds. It was "arms and man" he
sang and not a political party ; nor war itself, for it was his firm
conviction "that all armed struggles are monstrous ills which
permanently weaken and degrade the states that wage them."

"The Interpretation of Nature" contains a course of lectures
delivered in the Andover Theological Seminary in 1893. This
book was in a way the forerunner of "The Individual," and
many of the considerations there presented in relation to the
critical points in the continuity of natural phenomena and the
resultant occurrence of the unexpected, were to be more fully
elaborated in the later volume. It also shows the same note of
faith in a continual progress toward a higher life as well as the
conviction that the world is governed not by blind force but
by purposeful intelligence. These conclusions, together with the
simplicity and directness of statement, made the book a delight
to many readers. Furthermore, in those parts which deal with
personal religion, it is in a fashion a piece of self-revelation.

He himself says in the preface to "The Interpretation of
Nature": "My first contact with natural science in my youth
and early manhood had the not uncommon effect of leading me
far away from Christianity. Of late years a further insight into
the truths of nature has gradually forced me once again towards
the ground from which I had departed." Indeed in his journal
there is a corroborative paragraph relating to this youthful
phase of experience which is not without significance.

I860. Time was when all the fearful doctrines of the so-called Christian
church were rooted in my mind. Great Nature 1 1 thank you it is no longer

434 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

so. I believed all that I now shudder at. I have heard ministers denouncing
pangs inconceivable to little children whose life had passed like the fading
of some springtime flower, promising woe of ten thousand deaths, all con-
centrated into one and lasting forever, to feeble and worn mortals tottering
on the change. While I could not shake off the toils which were knit round
me I still felt within that it was a lie; there was no answering voice that it
was true coming from my inner nature such as I have ever felt when truth
came to me. How I escaped from this net I cannot in detail say. Partly
my escape from what was called the "House of God" was accomplished
through the study of nature, no, study it was not, rather contemplation of
nature (a feeling which I am not sure is not higher-souled than the study
which came to me at this time; my age forbade deep study and I believe
that it was better so). Without the absolute severance which I made with
the dogmas of religion I never could have thought. . . . The church is op-
posed in its dogmas to the advancement of man whether it be through the
ways of science or agency of political changes. What the church of Rome
has been to Italy, to Spain, and to others of those most beautiful spots on
earth, so are the modifications of the same institution in its thousand names
in every land ; it makes men miserable or careless of those great problems of
existence which men are not born to solve but must strive nevertheless to
understand.

This feeling of revolt against the old hell-fire punishments,
as their letters indicate, was shared by others among Mr.
Shaler's associates. At that time, it is true, a youth often felt
called upon to work in a dash of skepticism to show that he had,
as it were, put on his mental toga virilis; but beneath this bra-
vado there was with them a heart-felt repugnance to many arti-
cles of the prevailing belief. Yet despite his inability to accept
many dogmas of the orthodox, his frank expression of his views,
his clear and candid thought, was found wholesome not only
by the laity but by many of the clergy. The Rev. Leighton
Parks writes : —

I have just finished reading " The Interpretation of Nature " and am moved
to thank you for it. My only excuse for bringing myself to your notice is
that as one of the preachers to the University I am profoundly interested
in the spiritual life of the young men of the day. I know what an influence
you have in the College and with what admiration you are regarded, and
I rejoice that you have been able to accomplish such work as this. If your

"THE INDIVIDUAL" 435

book did nothing more (and it will do far more) than to make the men with
whom the future of the country lies feel that religion is worthy the consid-
eration of thoughtful men, it would have been worth your while to write it.

"The Individual," "The Citizen," and "The Neighbor" form
a trilogy of scientific and philosophical thought which seemed
to meet the public need, one might almost say the public crav-
ing, for some such exposition of the eternal problem of man's
relation to the Universe and his fellow beings. These books
follow one another without any formal plan, the one growing
spontaneously out of the other, or perhaps it is truer to say that
the later ones were sent on their way by the letters which came
to the author after the publication of "The Individual."

In many instances these letters are pathetic in their revela-
tions of the comfort the writers extracted from its pages. In
the welter of modern thought so thirsty were these souls for
some spiritual staff to lean upon that they seized with eagerness,
and as if they were demonstrated facts, upon the hints and sug-
gestions of immortality so judicially expressed. Like much else
that he wrote, these books were partly the outcome of the
author's need to reduce to form the thoughts which thronged
upon him. The sympathetic motive upon which he so persist-
ently dwells in their pages was strong in his own case and was
of no recent origin ; from early manhood the subject had con-
stantly beset him. In some of his first letters he emphasized its
importance and often expressed surprise that it was so little
thought about and discussed. "Its light," he said, "had in the
beginning radiated from the family," and therefore the purity
and warmth of all family relations he especially cherished. The
curious thing about Mr. Shaler's mental work was that his dif-
ferent intellectual interests were never divorced from the actual
problems of existence, and that subjects like the above, although
removed from the practical questions of his profession, lived side
by side with them.

Letters written to an author sometimes reveal the various
states of mind awakened by his writings, — showing the good

436 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

as well as the stony soil upon which the seeds of his thought
have fallen, — and indirectly throw light upon his character.
Here are a few of the many he received about "The Indi-
vidual." The first extract is from a letter written by a
woman : —

. . . You can regard this merely as a word of appreciation, of gratitude
for the light and comfort I have got from your book "The Individual." I
wanted to talk with you and ask you questions, feeling that one, to use your
words, who sees so far on dark ways must be able to penetrate the mysteries
of life and death, and make the Universe plain. At least I was inclined to
feel that way. No doubt I shall get something from you that is not in your
book, as that is confined to the scientific, but what a wonderful outlook you
give. . . I want to tell you what comfort I had from the chapter on the
relation of parent to child — I don't know how you know about it, unless
you love a child not your own, but I know what you say is true. I have not
seen it or heard it expressed before — it has always been taken for granted
that no one can love a child as does its mother. I know I love my sister's
children as if they were my own. ... I have much comfort in the truth
that what we see is not all that is to be known. That " much may take place
in the revolution that evidently occurs in dissolution that we do not see
at all.''

Here is another that gave him pleasure: —

My dear Stranger-friend and " Brother Man": — I 've just finished reading
your exceedingly interesting "Individual." I feel sure that I, in a measure
at least, appreciate and "absorb" it. Will not the "solidarity" of organized
society in this century apply the peaceful, fraternal teaching of the Christ
to their daily life? What a vast theme it all is! I feel cheered, animated,
exalted and more full of myself, as capable of being uttered. Most heartily
do I thank you for this work.

Gratefully and appreciatingly yours, T. F.

But most interesting of all, perhaps, was this from William
James : —

Dear Shakr: — Being a man of methodical sequence in my reading, which
in these days is anyhow rather slower than it used to be, I have only just
got at your book. Once begun, it slipped along "like a novel," and I must
confess to you that it leaves a good taste behind, in fact a sort of haunting
flavor due to its individuality, which I find it hard to explain or define.

A LETTER FROM WILLIAM JAMES 437

To begin with, it does n't seem exactly like you, but rather like some quiet
and conscientious old passive contemplator of life, not bristling as you are
with "points," and vivacity. Its light is dampened and suffused, — and all
the better perhaps for that. Then it is essentially a confession of faith and
a religious attitude, — which one does n't get so much from you upon the
street, although even there 't is clear that you have that within which pass-
eth show. The optimism and healthy-mindedness are yours through and
through, so is the wide imagination. But the moderate and non-emphatic
way of putting things is not; nor is the absence of any "American humor."
So I don't know just when or where or how you wrote it. I can't place it in
the Museum or University Hall. Probably it was in Quincy Street, and in a
sort of Piperio-Armadan trance! Anyhow it is a sincere book, and tremen-
dously impressive by the gravity and dignity and peacefulness with which
it suggests rather than proclaims conclusions on these eternal themes. No
more than you can I believe that death is due to selection : — yet I wish you
had framed some hypothesis as to the physico-chemical necessity thereof,
or discussed such hypotheses as have been made. I think you deduce a little
too easily from the facts the existence of a general guiding tendency towards
ends like those which our mind sets. We never know what ends may have
been kept from realization, for the dead tell no tales. The surviving witness
would in any case, and whatever he were, draw the conclusion that the uni-
verse was planned to make him and the like of him succeed, for it actually
did so. But your argument that it is millions to one that it did n't do so by
chance does n't apply. It would apply if the witness had preexisted in an
independent form and framed his scheme, and then the world had realized
it. Such a coincidence would prove the world to have a kindred mind to his.
But there has been no such coincidence. The world has come but once, the
witness is there after the fact and simply approves, dependently. As I under-
stand improbability, it only exists where independents coincide. Where
only one fact is in question, there is no relation of "probability" at all.
I think, therefore, that the excellences we have reached and now approve
may be due to no general design, but merely to a succession of the short de-
signs we actually know of, taking advantage of opportunity, and adding
themselves together from point to point. We are all you say we are, as
heirs; we are a mystery of condensation, and yet of extrication and individu-
ation, and we must worship the soil we have so wonderfully sprung from.
Yet I don't think we are necessitated to worship it as the Theists do, in the
shape of one all-inclusive and all-operative designing power, but rather like
polytheists in the shape of a collection of beings who have each contributed
and are now contributing to the realization of ideals more or less like those
for which we live ourselves. This more pluralistic style of feeling seems to

438 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

me both to allow of a warmer sort of loyalty to our past helpers, and to
tally more exactly with the mixed condition in which we find the world as to
its ideals. What if we did come where we are by chance, or by mere fact,
with no one general design? What is gained, is gained, all the same. As to
what may have been lost, who knows of it, in any case? or whether it might
not have been much better than what came? But if it might, that need not
prevent us from building on what we have.

There are lots of impressive passages in the book, which certainly will live
and be an influence of a high order. Chaps. 8, 10, 14, 15, have struck me
most particularly.

I gave at Edinburgh two lectures on " The Religion of Healthy-Minded-
ness," contrasting it with that of " the sick-soul." I shall soon have to quote
your book as a healthy-minded document of the first importance, though
I believe myself that the sick soul must have its say, and probably carries
authority too. . . .

Ever yours, WM. JAMES.

Late in life there was a resurgence of the poetic impulse, so
well fulfilling itself that one is tempted to ask what might have
been the result, if, in the fashion of a Wordsworth or a Tennyson,
Mr. Shaler had set himself in youth deliberately to develop the
talent. But to such painstaking care as they lavished upon their
work he was altogether averse. Once when I repeated to him
Dorothy Wordsworth's answer to an inquiry concerning her
brother's health : "William is not at all well, he has been labor-
ing all day to find an adjective to go with 'cuckoo/" he laugh-
ingly exclaimed, "What a galoot ! He deserved to have his head
punched." There are passages in the "Elizabeth" and other
poems which give rise to the belief that if, instead of using
the gift merely as a pastime, he had employed it with serious
intent, a very great name might have been added to the list of
American poets.

But vain as are these speculations now, the fact remains that
the return to the poetic exaltations that beguiled the golden
hours of his youth gave him infinite delight. In "The Individ-
ual" there is a paragraph which may be construed as personal.
Writing of the latent capacities in people which in mature life

VERSE-WRITING 439

often assert themselves, he says : " To the oldish person who is a
bit weary with the repetitions of his days, to whom the best of
his profits have already a tiresome sameness, the effect of a new
accomplishment is magical. ... It brings again the joy of
youth, for the most of the pleasure of that time lies in just such
excursions into the great unknown of the self." He had so great
respect for the creative habit of mind that he urged those about
him to make an attempt at something of the kind, no matter in
how humble a vein. Such an attempt he believed would at
least lead to a keener appreciation of the art of those who had
won the great prizes of fame. —

Although few of his friends had failed to recognize the poetic
side of Mr. Shaler's nature, they had not suspected him of skill
in metrical composition. It was therefore a surprise when the
typewritten copy of the "Armada" was first passed from one
to another. The dramatic romance, "Elizabeth of England/'
of which the "Armada" is a part, — the first that was written,
—was begun, the author says in the preface to that work, "to
test the truth of a common statement as to the effect on the
mind of long-continued application to tasks such as occupy men
of science." Mr. Darwin's experience in the loss of the aesthetic
sense gave point to the argument, also the lack of literary skill
on the part of many eminent investigators. " These instances,"
he says, "have led to a general belief that there is something in
the quality of scientific work which inevitably leads to a loss of
imaginative power." This charge of the essential incompati-
bility of science and the humanities Mr. Shaler took very much
to heart. He believed, on the contrary, "that the work of the
naturalist in interrogating his world of facts differs in no essen-
tial way from that of the poet in elaborating his fancies — both
alike using the constructive imagination." With this convic-
tion he set to work to make a personal experiment which might
have some measure of critical value. He further states that it
was difficult to make a beginning, but after a few hundred words
had been set down in an automatic manner the writing began

440 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

to take shape, not in a kind of measured prose such as he had
thought to use, but as heroic verse, "which at once proved to be
an easier and more sustaining mode of expression than prose
- far easier to frame and more helpful to the mind than the
prose I am now writing."

The impression that developed into the impulse that pro-
duced Mr. Shaler's cycle of Elizabethan dramas is to be found
noted in his Journal as far back as 1858.

. . . The works of Charles Kingsley will often bear even the investigation
of the most hypercritical without danger; so clear, so healthy is the mind
of this author. It had been nearly a year since I had read a novel and it was
half my resolution not to read another when accident threw in my way
a single line from his "Andromeda"; it was a verse worthy of Homer.

"Boomed in their wave-worn hills as they champed at the roots of the
mountain."

Curiosity impelled me to read the poem whence comes this remarkable de-
scription ; then to seek some other work, " Westward Ho," from so admirable
a pen. The author has been fortunate in selecting for his plot an age more
than any eventful to the world. The reign of Queen Bess, the decline of the
Spanish power,, the Armada, the last struggle of an effete yet mighty nation
to retain the headship of the world. And then the impulse of "Westward
Ho" gives a wide scope to the imagination.

Forty years later, in "The Armada," his own imagination
reconstructed that age "more than any eventful to the world."

The success of the endeavor naturally produced a feeling of
elation, for Mr. Shaler was not one to be twitted with impunity;
as his associates must have known, he was ever ready in any
debate to give a Roland for an Oliver. But aside from the mo-
mentary triumph in the success of this essay he had found a
mode of literary expression that was to be a source of great and
unexpected pleasure, serving as an outlet for his own varied
emotions — enough at any time to vivify a five-act drama. The
characters he chose in which to embody his ideals became in-
tensely real and the hours he spent in their company a veritable
delight. The moment he dropped his serious labors he could at

"ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND " 441

once enter this kingdom of poetic imagination and there feel
himself secure from the aggressions of vexatious cares.

The choice of subject for his drama was thoroughly character-
istic ; for with all his love of humanity in its high and its low
degrees, the circumstances and motives of the aristocratic class
— men born to responsibility and leadership, having the old-
time grace of manner and spirit — most readily engaged his
interest and affection. But above all, aristocracy, for him,
meant that the strong should serve the weak, and should also
represent, as Aristotle explained, "ancient wealth and excel-
lence."

Imaginative work was to have furnished relaxation from the
more taxing tasks Mr. Shaler had planned for the future ; it was
to have been, so to speak, the musical accompaniment of his
declining years, for as yet his pen had but begun "to glean his
teeming brain." In his power to maintain his own world of
thought irrespective of the casual surroundings, he proved his
kinship with the poets of the Tudor times. Had there been the
right kind of a tavern — a Mermaid Tavern — or a coffee-
house in Cambridge, he might have written there, or wherever
vivid men crowded together. In a paper in which he describes
his mode of writing, he says : -

In my earlier experiences, as before noted, the lack of continuity was
marked, every suggestion came to an end in a few lines, rarely more than a
score. Now, with the dramatic purpose before me, the rush of conceptions
was almost baffling and their persistence such as to perplex me when engaged
in other tasks. To give an instance, one of many, showing the curious per-
sistence of these dramatic conceptions where they did not belong, I will tell
the story of how the picture of the progress of the Spanish Armada up the
British Channel came into the conscious field. I had written some days be-
fore the part of the third play of the " Elizabeth" up to the end of the scene
on Tilbury Field, and here put the work aside with no idea of what should
come next. I should have said that the whole business was quite as much
out of my mind as a chapter of the "Arabian Nights," for I was engaged in
looking after the affairs of a public dinner over which I had to preside and
act as toastmaster. In the middle of the feast, while, so far as I could judge,

442 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

my mind was intensely occupied with the matter in hand, the scenes of the
channel fight came out of the darkness. I had to do my toastmaster's busi-
ness with the preposterous din of that action in the background. This
disturbance lasted for about an hour; when the dinner was through the
scenes, though well remembered, were no longer present to sight and hear-
ing as before.

It is interesting to note that the persons who appear in the dramatic
conception come apparently in a sudden manner before the mind, in my
experience, even where they are historic personages about whom I have read
and formed opinions as to their appearance and character. When they
are visualized in action they are often quite unlike the images previously
formed of them. To take a leading example of this, that of Queen Bess
herself, what I had read of her led to a notion, not at all dramatic in its
intensity, but entirely clear, that she was a hard, calculating, cruel woman,
vastly vain, redeemed only by a large measure of political shrewdness. The
conception of her appearance was distinctly forbidding. " Old wooden
petticoats" I remember often calling her. When she appeared it was rather
as a tender lass with a self-sacrificing motive, and the other notion, formed
on reading and portraits, never returned to me. So with a dozen other of the
characters of the known people, none of them appeared as I had historically
conceived them or as I should have delineated them in prose.

The publication of the five volumes of "Elizabeth of Eng-
land" brought Mr. Shaler many appreciative letters from those
best qualified to measure his achievement, and the cycle was
widely recognized as a work of large significance, showing the
essential unity of the poetic with the scientific imagination on
its highest level. What Macaulay wrote of Bacon has a sin-
gular applicability to this other deep delver in natural lore : —

In truth, much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world, amidst
things as strange as any that are described in the Arabian Tales, or in those
romances on which the curate and barber of Don Quixote's village performed
so cruel an auto-da-fe, amidst buildings more sumptuous than the palace of
Aladdin, fountains more wonderful than the golden water of Parizade, con-
veyances more rapid than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more formidable
than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than the balsam of
Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent day-dreams there was nothing wild, no-
thing but what sober reason sanctioned. He knew that all the secrets feigned
by poets to have been written in the books of enchanters are worthless when

"FROM OLD FIELDS" 443

compared with the mighty secrets which are really written in the book of
nature, and which, with time and patience, will be read there.

Two other dramas, "Alfred the Great" and "Curtius," writ-
ten at this period, were never published. "Valor," a poem de-
livered before the Phi Beta Kappa, June 26, 1902, was warmly
appreciated by those who heard it. As to his manner of speak-
ing, the accompanying letter from the then teacher of elocution
at Harvard gives the best and most competent representa-
tion:—

You perhaps know that I hurt my knee a short time ago, and for some days
I was unable to walk. This morning, I am glad to say, I could hobble over
to Sanders Theatre to hear you. You were so real, and so entirely individ-
ual in your delivery, as well as in your matter, that I found myself thor-
oughly absorbed in your thought, and forgot entirely about your manner.
That to my mind is the greatest praise that can be given to a speaker. Your
form of speaking was indeed a true reflection of the man back of it, whom
to know is to honor. An old war veteran who sat near me said that you did
not fire Gatling guns in your talk, but you dwelt on the happy and peaceful
side of the relations of our people, which he said to his mind was the side
to dwell upon. This morning you quoted one of the Scriptural sayings that
I use a good deal in talking of my work — " What does it profit a man if he
gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? " Your soul was in the topmast
of your being.

"From Old Fields," the last volume Mr. Shaler ever wrote
(published after his death), took even stronger hold upon the
author than any of his previous poetic writings. This collection
of short poems is the record, in many instances, of personal
experiences. In writing them he lives over the grim days of the
Civil War, qualifying the youthful ardor by the sad reflection
time brings to the man who revives the dead passions, who
hears the voiceless call of the dead past. Of these last poems
Dr. William James writes: —

Dec. 25, 1906.

Dear Mrs. Shaler: — I have been waiting, ere I wrote to you, to finish
reading the Poems of the Civil War which you so generously sent. I read
the last line only night before last, so that my letter falls, most felicitously,

444 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

upon Christmas Day. I imagine that if Shaler had seen the whole thing in
proof, and revised it himself, certain little verbal and versical roughnesses
would have been smoothed out, but they make no difference in the grand effect.
It is a most moving and grasping work, with a great epic wind of sadness
blowing all through it in spite of so many lively individual touches. These
all seem to me cut on a vast background of landscape, and human multitudes
fulfilling what was fated, that dim twilight in which the memories of those
early 60's lie now in so many of our minds. There are " anecdotes " in plenty,
but they all swim in that atmosphere of landscape and historic fate, and moral
sadness in the life of man. It is very striking that Shaler, who had so many
notes in his mind, should have struck this note so strongly and (it seems
to me) so exclusively in these poems. They are entirely unique, copying no
special model, and their emotional atmosphere is unique too — it shows
how strongly he was subject to those sentiments of vastness. The mixture
of breadth of effect, of dignity and grandeur of tone, with vulgar realism
in much of the detail is very extraordinary. And of course the note of mag-
nanimity and humanity everywhere, so characteristic of him ! I am sure that
the six volumes of poems will outlast in fame all his scientific prose — espe-
cially this last one.

Affectionately yours, WM. JAMES.

A month earlier Charles Eliot Norton had written: —

You have given to me a very precious gift in sending to me a copy of
"From Old Fields." These poems would have extraordinary interest even
if one knew nothing of their author. But to us who knew and loved Mr.
Shaler they make a quite exceptional appeal. He lives in them. I see and
hear him as I read them. His heroic spirit, his tender heart, his quick
and generous sympathies, his nature full of reverence for nobility in
man and woman and quick to discern it under whatever disguise, his sim-
plicity and readiness to feel and express emotion provided only it became
a man, and his uncompromising resolution to see things as they really
are, — all this and much more is manifest in these poems. It is the work of
most poets that chiefly interests us, but here it is the poet and not his poems :
as fine as they are, he is finer. Hereafter, when I am asked, "What manner
of man was Shaler?" I shall reply, "You may know him by these poems."

This volume can draw no more fitly to its close than with a
paragraph from a letter from Professor George Herbert Palmer,
Mr. Shaler's neighbor and intimate friend for many years. In
it there is the phrase "the great powerful creature, " which, with

LETTER FROM PROFESSOR PALMER 445

the added words of "brave" and "generous," is, when all is said,
perhaps the truest key to Mr. Shaler's character. The facts set
down here, which lead us the general way he trod, reveal but a
tithe of his soul's adventures; in his nature there is still a large
territory that remains unexplored, and, though steeped in his
personality, it has been beyond my power to give the true
measure of the man who marched along under the sign of the
Universe, of one who was close to nature, close to the affairs of
the world, and deeply involved in the poet's realm of fancy.
This memoir therefore goes forth giving an inadequate picture
of the life of a great and good man. Mr. Palmer writes : —

Thank you for this delightful volume. All of Mr. Shaler's writing is
highly characteristic. In every sentence of his one hears his voice. But I
think he has nowhere more completely expressed himself than in this book.
Here is his chivalry, his adventure, his public spirit, his perpetual humor,
his wide sympathy, his profound religiousness. Through his escapade with
Elizabeth, too, he has acquired ease in blank verse. So that he seems himself
to be muttering these tales and setting his lips hard together after the climactic
passages. How many such yarns has he spun to me in equally picturesque
prose ! Some of these poems, too, I had already seen. He brought them to me
in manuscript, and in my ruthlessly critical way I pulled them to pieces and
told him to go to work at them longer. Now they are precious. I long to tell
him so and to say over the love and admiration which then seemed unneces-
sary. Fortunately he was big enough not to need our approval. I think he
knew how many of us loved him, and deep within was glad. But the great
powerful creature strode along his noble and independent path while we
little fellows scrambled after, hardly near enough to make our delight in
him audible. How large your companionship with him was your words in
this volume, and elsewhere, show. Happy woman to have been so blest, and
happy we who were allowed to know you both I

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS, ETC.

Kentucky Geological Survey, new series (1874-1880). Reports of Progress,
Memoirs of Survey, and Bulletins by Director and Assistants. Vol. iii by
Director alone.

Question Guide to Environs of Boston, for Beginners in Geology in Har-
vard University. I : Somerville and Cambridge. Cambridge : C. W. Sever,
1875.

Thoughts on the Nature of Intellectual Property. Boston : James R. Osgood
& Co., 1878.

The Geology of Boston and its Environs (Memorial History of Boston,
edited by Justin Winsor). 1880.

Glaciers, with W. M. Davis as collaborator. Boston : James R. Osgood &
Co., 1881.

The First Book of Geology. Boston: Ginn & Heath [1884]. (There are also
German and Polish editions of this text-book.)

Kentucky : A Pioneer Commonwealth. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
1885.

Physiography of North America (Narrative and Critical History of Amer-
ica, edited by Justin Winsor). Boston, 1887.

Field Geology. (Published serially in Popular Science News.) 1887.

Aspects of the Earth. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1889.

Nature and Man in America. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891.

The Story of Our Continent. Boston: Ginn & Co., 1892.

Sea and Land. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1892.

Valor. Harvard Graduates' Magazine, 1892.

The United States, edited by N. S. Shaler. New York: D. Appleton & Co.,
1893.

The Interpretation of Nature. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1893.

Domesticated Animals. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895.

1 This list does not pretend to completeness. Many scientific notes by Mr. Shaler appeared
in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History and elsewhere, and many re-
ports on mines, railroads, etc., are to be found in printed documents. Mr. Shaler also con-
tributed scientific articles to Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia and edited the geological
terms in the Standard Dictionary. A very full bibliography of his writings, compiled
by Prof. John E. Wolff of Harvard University, appears in the Bulletin of the Geological
Society of America for March, 1908.

448 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

American Highways. New York: Century Co., 1896.
Outlines of the Earth's History. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1898.
The Individual New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1900.
The Moon. Smithsonian Institution, 1903.

Elizabeth of England. Five volumes. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
1903.

The Neighbor. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1904.
The Citizen. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1904.
Man and the Earth. New York: Fox, Duffield & Co., 1905.
From Old Fields. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1906.

MISCELLANEOUS REPORTS

Report on Phosphate Beds of South Carolina. Coast and Geodetic Survey,
1870.

Report on Geology of the Sea Island District. Coast and Geodetic Survey,
1870.

Report on a special investigation of lunar phenomena, dated Sept. 25,
1872. Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, vol.
viii, pp. 50-53. 1876.

Report on the Delaware Gravel Beds, containing chipped pebbles. Pea-
body Museum American Archaeology in connection with Harvard College,
vol. ii. 1876-77.

Report on The Unfinished Work of the Survey of the Commonwealth under
Dr. David Dale Owen. Frankfort, K . : Yeoman Press, 1877.

Report on Lunar and Terrestrial Geology. Observatory, Harvard College,
1878.

The Island of Campobello. Preliminary Report. Cambridge, 1881.

Report on The Fossil Brachiopods of the Ohio Valley. (Geological Survey of
Kentucky.) Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1883.

Preliminary Report on The Geology of Cobscook Bay, District of Maine.
American Journal of Science, July, 1886.

Annual Report of the Commissioners of the Massachusetts Topographical
Survey for 1887.

Report on Fluviatile Swamps of New England. American Journal of Sci-
ence, March, 1887.

Report of Massachusetts Commissioners of Topographic Survey and Map,
with F. A. Walker & H. L. Whiting. 1890.

Report of Massachusetts Gipsy Moth Commission. 1890.

Report on Tertiary and Cretaceous Deposits of Eastern Massachusetts.
Bulletin of Geological Society of America, vol. i, 443-452. Plate 1. 1890.

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS 449

Report on The Topography of Florida. 1890.

Report on The Inundated Lands of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Board of
Agriculture, 1891.

Report on Marshes and Swamps of Northern Long Island, between Port
Washington and Cold Springs Harbor. 1902.

Report on Plans for the Extermination of Mosquitoes on the North Shore of
Long Island, between Hempstead Harbor and Cold Springs Harbor, pp. 64-76.
New York: Styles & Cash, 1902.

REPORTS CONTAINED IN UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL
SURVEY PUBLICATIONS

Report: Atlantic Coast Division. U. S. Geol. Surv., J. W. Powell, Director,
6th Ann. Rept., 1884-85, pp. 18-22. Washington, 1885.

Preliminary Report on Seacoast Swamps of the Eastern United States.
U. S. Geol. Surv., J. W. Powell, Director, 6th Ann. Rept., 1884-85, pp. 353-
398. Washington, 1885.

Report: Atlantic Coast Division of Geology. U. S. Geol. Surv., J. W. Powell,
Director, 7th Rept., 1885-86, pp. 61-65. Washington, 1888.

Report on The Geology of Martha's Vineyard. U. S. Geol. Surv., J. W.
Powell, Director, 7th Rept., 1885-86, pp. 297-363, pis. 19-29. Washington,
1888.

Introduction: Nature and Origin of Deposits of Phosphates of Lime, by
R. A. F. Penrose, Jr. U. S. Geol. Surv. Bull., vol. 7, pp. 483-494, no. 46.
Washington, 1888.

The Geology of Nantucket. U. S. Geol. Surv. Bull., vol. 8, pp. 601-653,
10 pis., no. 53. Washington, 1889.

Report: Division of Coast-Line Geology. U. S. Geol. Surv., J. W. Powell,
Director, 8th Rept., pp. 125-128. Washington, 1889.

The Geology of the Island of Mount Desert, Maine. U. S. Geol. Surv.,
J. W. Powell, Director, 8th Rept., pp. 987-1061, pis. 64-76. Washington,
1889.

Report: Atlantic Coast Division. U. S. Geol. Surv., J. W. Powell, Director,
9th Rept., pp. 71-74. Washington, 1889.

The Geology of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. U. S. Geol. Surv., J. W. Powell,
Director, 9th Rept., pp. 529-611, pis. 32-37. Washington, 1889.

General Account of the Fresh-Water Morasses of the United States, with
a Description of the Dismal Swamp District of Virginia and North Carolina.
U. S. Geol. Surv., J. W. Powell, Director, 10th Rept., pp. 255-339, pis. 6-19.
Washington, 1890.

450 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER

Report: Atlantic Coast Division. U. S. Geol. Surv., J. W. Powell, Director,
10th Kept., pp. 117-119. Washington, 1890.

The Origin and Nature of Soils. U. S. Geol. Surv., 12th Ann. Kept., pt. 1,
pp. 219-345. 1892.

The Geological History of Harbors. U. S. Geol. Surv., 13th Ann. Kept.,
pt. 2, pp. 99-209, pis. 22-45, figs. 7-15. 1893.

Preliminary Report on the Geology of the Common Roads of the United States.
U. S. Geol. Surv., 15th Ann. Kept., pp. 259-306. 1895.

The Geology of the Road-Building Stones of Massachusetts, with Some
Consideration of Similar Materials from Other Parts of the United States.
U. S. Geol. Surv., 16th Ann. Kept., pt. 2, pp. 277-341, pis. 18-24. 1895.

Origin, Distribution, and Commercial Value of Peat Deposits. U. S. Geol.
Surv., 16th Ann. Kept., pt. 4, pp. 305-314. 1895.

Geology of the Cape Cod District (Massachusetts}. U. S. Geol. Surv., 18th
Ann. Kept., pt. 2, pp. 503-593, pis. 97-104, figs. 86-92. 1898.

The Glacial Brick Clays of Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts,
with J. B. Woodworth and C. F. Marbut. U. S. Geol. Surv., 17th Ann. Kept.,
pt. 1, pp. 957-1004, pis. 61-62, figs. 34-43. 1896.

Geology of the Richmond Basin, Virginia, with J. B. Woodworth. U. S. Geol.
Surv., 19th Ann. Kept., pt. 2, pp. 385-520, pis. 18-52, figs. 90-116. 1899.

Geology of the Narragansett Basin, with J. B. Woodworth and A. F. Foreste.
U. S. Geol. Surv., Mon. xxxiii, 402 pp., 31 pis., 30 figs. 1899. (Reviewed
in Journal of Geology, vol. 8, pp. 377-378. 1900.)

MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY REPORTS

Report on List of Brachiopods from the Island of Anticosti. M. C. Z., June,
1865, pp. 10.

Report on the Collection of Brachiopoda. Annual Report M. C. Z. 1864
(1865), pp. 41-42.

Reports on the Palseontological Collections. Annual Report M. C. Z. 1865
(1866), pp. 28-30.

Report on the Department of Paleontology. Annual Report M. C. Z. 1866
(1867), pp. 33-35.

Report on the Collection of Fossil Remains in General. Annual Report
M. C. Z. 1868 (1869), pp. 41-45; 1869 (1870), pp. 26-30.

[Reports on Instruction in Geology and Palaeontology.] Ann. Rept. M. C. Z.
1870 (1871), pp. 24-26 ; 1871 (1872), pp. 28-29 ; 1872 (1873), pp. 28-31 ; 1875
(1876), pp. 29-30 ; 1876 (1877), pp. 12-14 ; 1877-78 (1878), pp. 20-21 ; 1878-
79 (1879), pp. 11-12 ; 1879-80 (1880), pp. 12-13 ; 1880-81 (1881), pp. 10-13 ;
1883-84 (1884), pp. 19-20; 1884-85 (1885), pp. 19-20; 1885-86 (1886),

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS 451

pp. 12-13; l 1886-87 (1887), pp. 10-13; 1887-88 (1888), pp. 12-14; 1888-89
(1889), pp. 12-15; 1889-90 (1890), pp. 11-14 ;2 1890-91 (1891), pp. 12-17 ;3
1891-92 (1892), pp. 17-19; 1892-93 (1893), pp. 19-21; 1893-94 (1894),
pp. 19-24; 1894-95 (1895), pp. 20-26; 1895-96 (1896), pp. 20-25; 1896-97
(1897), pp. 10-17; 1897-98 (1898), pp. 8-12; 1899-1900 (1900), pp. 19-28.*

Report on the Geology of the Cambrian District of Bristol Co., Massachu-
setts. M. C. Z., October, 1888, pp. 30.

Report on the Occurrence of Fossils of the Cretaceous Age on the Island
of Martha's Vineyard, Mass. M. C. Z., June, 1889, pp. 10.

Report on the Topography of Florida. M. C. Z., March, 1890, pp. 20.

Report on the Conditions of Erosion beneath Deep Glaciers, based upon
a Study of the Boulder Train from Iron Hill, Cumberland, R. 1. M. C. Z.,
January, 1893, pp. 42.

MEMOIRS OF MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY

Vol. IV: (No. 10) The American Bison, Living and Extinct, by J. A. Allen,
in connection with the Geological Survey of Kentucky; preliminary note
by N. S. Shaler. May, 1876, pp. 246.

Vol. VIII : (No. 3) North American Reptiks, by S. Carman, in connection
with the Kentucky Geological Survey; preliminary note by N. S. Shaler.
July, 1884, pp. 200.

Vol. XVI: (No. 1) Notes on the Taxodium distichum, or Bald Cypress.
June, 1887, pp. 16. (No. 2) Notes on the Original Connection of the Eastern
and Western Coal Fields of the Ohio Valley. June, 1887, pp. 12.

SCIENTIFIC MEMOIRS

Proposition concerning the Motion of Continental Glaciers. Memoirs Boston
Society Natural History, June, 1875.

Notes on the Cause and Geological Value of Variation of Rainfall. Id.,
October, 1875.

On the Antiquity of Caverns and Cavern Life in the Ohio Valley. Id.,
February, 1875 ; ii, 355.

Propositions concerning the Classification of Lavas considered with Reference
to the Circumstances of their Extrusion. Id., 1880.

i 1884-86 with W. M. Davis.

» 1886-90 with W. M. Davis and J. E. Wolff.

» 1890-91 with J. D. Whitney, W M. Davis, and J. E. Wolff.

« 1899-1900 with W. M. Davis, R. T. Jackson, and R. DeC Ward.

452 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS AND SCIENTIFIC PAPERS

On the Formation of Mountain Chains. Geological Magazine, London,
1868.

Earthquakes. Atlantic Monthly, June, 1869.

Great Earthquakes of the Old World. Id., August, 1869.

An Account of Specimens from Ohio and Kentucky, presented to the Pea-
body Museum, Harvard University (a letter to Jeffries Wyman). Peabody
Museum Reports, i, 1214. Cambridge, 1869.

Earthquakes of the American Continents. Atlantic Monthly, October, 1869.

Earthquakes of the Western United States. Id., November, I860.

California Earthquakes. Id., March, 1870.

The Time of the Mammoths. American Naturalist, May, 1870.

An Ex-Southerner in South Carolina. Atlantic Monthly, July, 1870.

Father Blumhardt's Prayerful Hotel. Id., December, 1870.

The Effect of Pressure on Rocks. Proceedings Boston Society Natural His-
tory, January, 1872.

Notes on the Origin of our Domesticated Cat. Id., April, 1872.

Notes on the Effects of the Upright Position of Man. Id., June, 1872 ; vol. xv,
p. 188.

Rattksnake Hypothesis. American Naturalist, April, 1872.

On the Geology of the Island of Aquidneck and the Neighboring Parts of
the Shores of Narragansett Bay. Id., September, October, and December,
1872.

Effects of Extraordinary Seasons on the Distribution of Animals and Plants.
Id., November, 1872.

Notes on the Right and Sperm Whales. Id., January, 1873.

The Summer's Journey of a Naturalist. Atlantic Monthly, June, August,
and September, 1873.

The Moon. Id., September, 1874.

Notes on Some of the Phenomena of the Elevation and Subsidence of the
Continents. Proceedings Boston Society Natural History, December, 1874;
vol. xvii, p. 288.

Martha's Vineyard. Atlantic Monthly, December, 1874.

North American Climate. Proceedings Boston Society Natural History,
1875.

Notes on Cause of Geological Value of Variations in Rainfall. Id., October,
1875; vol. xviii, p. 176.

Some Considerations on the Possible Means whereby a Warm Climate may
be produced within the Arctic Circle. Id., January, 1875; vol. xvii, p. 332.

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS 453

A State Survey for Massachusetts. Atlantic Monthly, March, 1875.

The Harvard Summer School of Geology. American Naturalist, January,
1876.

On the Prehistoric Remains of Kentucky, by Lucien Carr and N. S.
Shaler. Cambridge : University Press, 1876.

How to change the North American Climate. Atlantic Monthly, December,
1877.

Notes on the Age and Structure of the Several Mountain Axes in the Neigh-
borhood of Cumberland Gap. American Naturalist, July, 1877.

On the Existence of the Alkghany Division of the Appalachian Range ivithin
the Hudson Valley. Id., October, 1877.

The Mountain Axes near Cumberland Gap. Id., July, 1877.

The Silver Question Geologically Considered. Atlantic Monthly, May, 1878.

Reelfoot Lake. Id., August, 1878.

Notes on Certain Evidences of a Gradual Passage from Sedimentary to
Volcanic Rocks, shown in Brighton District. Proceedings Boston Society Nat-
ural History, January, 1879.

Notes on Submarine Coast Shelf or Hundred Fathom Fringe. Id., May, 1879.

Note on Value of Saliferous Deposits as Evidence of Former Climatic Con-
ditions. Id., 1879.

The Natural History of Politics. Atlantic Monthly, March, 1879. —

The Use of Numbers in Society. Id., September, 1879. —

Precious Metal Mining in the United States. Kansas City Review, vol. iv;
1880.

Future of Precious Metal Mining in the United States. Atlantic Monthly,
June, 1880.

The Future of Weather Foretelling. Id., November, 1880.

On the Recent Advances and Recession of Glaciers. Proceedings Boston
Society Natural History, vol. xxi, p. 162 ; March, 1881.

A Winter Journey in Colorado. Atlantic Monthly, January, 1881.

The Value of University Records. Harvard Register, April, 1881.

Hurricanes. Atlantic Monthly, March, 1882.

Improvement of the Native Pasture-Lands of the Far West. Science, March
23, 1883.

The Floods of the Mississippi Valley. Atlantic Monthly, May, 1883.

American Swamp Cypress. Science, July 13, 1883.

The Red Sunsets. Atlantic Monthly, April, 1884.

Altruism. A lecture delivered at the Harvard Divinity School. Christian
Register, May, 1884.

On the Origin of Kames. Proceedings Boston Society Natural History,
vol. xxiii, p. 36; February, 1884. (Also separately.)

454 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

The Negro Problem. Atlantic Monthly, November, 1884.
- — Humanism in the Study of Nature. Science, July 24, 1885.

Race Prejudices. Atlantic Monthly, October, 1886.

The Swamps of the United States. Science, March 12, 1886.

On the Formation of Mountain Chains. Geological Magazine, London,
vol. 5, pp. 511-517. 1886.

On the Parallel Ridges of the Glacial Drift in Eastern Massachusetts. Id.,
London, vol. 8, pp. 27, 28. 1886.

On the Needs of American Universities. Harvard Monthly, February, 1886.

Series of Twenty-five Colored Geological Models and Twenty- five Photographs
of Important Geological Objects, accompanied by letter-press descriptions,
with the assistance of W. M. Davis and T. W. Harris. Boston: D. C. Heath
& Co., 1886.

Field Geology. Popular Science News, May and August, 1887.

The Stability of the Earth. Scribner's Magazine, March, 1887.

The Forests of North America. Id., April, 1887.

Caverns and Cavern Life. Id., October, 1887.

The Instability of the Atmosphere. Id., August, 1887.

The Supply of Natural Gas. Forum, May, 1887.

The Earthquake in the Riviera. Epoch, March, 1887.

The Law of Fashion. Atlantic Monthly, March, 1888.

Animal Agency in Soil Making. Popular Science Monthly, February,
1888.

— On the Study of Nature. Popular Science News and Boston Journal of
Chemistry, April, 1888.

Volcanoes. Scribner's Magazine, February, 1888.

The Crenitic Hypothesis and Mountain Building. Science, June 15, 1888.
Rivers and Valleys. Scribner's Magazine, August, 1888.
The Work of Underground Waters. Chautauquan, December, 1889.
College Scientific Expeditions. Id., 1889.

The Sense of Honor in Americans. North American Review, August, 1889.
Discipline in American Colleges. Id., July, 1889.
The Athletic Problem in Education. Atlantic Monthly, January, 1889.
The Problem of Discipline in Higher Education. Id., July, 1889.
School Vacations. Id., December, 1889.

Effects of Permanent Moisture on Certain Forest Trees. Science, March 8,
1889.

The Common Roads. Scribner's Magazine, October, 1889.
Chance or Design. Andover Review, August, 1889.
Knees of the Bald Cypress. Garden and Forest, January, 1890.

— Nature and Man in America. Scribner's Magazine, September, 1890.

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS 455

The Use and Limits of Academic Culture. Atlantic Monthly, August, 1890.

Science and the African Problem. Id., July, 1890.

The Negro Race Question. Arena, November, 1890.

The Peculiarities of the South. North American Review, October, 1890.

Critical Points in Continuity of Natural Phenomena. Unitarian Review,
January, 1890.

Rock Gases. Arena, May, 1890.

Soils of Massachusetts, a lecture delivered at the annual meeting of the
Mass. State Board of Agriculture, 1890.

Note on Glacial Climate. Proceedings Boston Society Natural History,
vol. xxiv,p. 460; 1890.

Individualism in Education. Atlantic Monthly, January, 1891.

College Examinations. Id., July, 1891.

The Interpretation of Nature, a lecture on the Winckley Foundation, An-
dover Theological Seminary. 1891.

The Antiquity 'of the Last Glacial Period. Proceedings Boston Society
Natural History, May, 1891.

The Betterment of Our Highways. Atlantic Monthly, October, 1892.

The Border State Men of the Civil War. Id., February, 1892.

Sea and Land. Scribner's Magazine, May, 1892.

The Depths of the Sea. Id., July, 1892.

Icebergs. Id., August, 1892.

Caves. Id., April, 1892.

Sea Beaches. Id., June, 1892.

Regulation of Professions. Engineering Magazine, October, 1892.

United States Geological Survey. Id., November, 1892.

Relation of Animals and Plants. Harper's Magazine, April, 1892.
— Faith in Nature. International Quarterly, December, 1892.

Our Costly Geological Survey. 1892.

European Peasants as Immigrants. Atlantic Monthly, May, 1893.

Relations of Academic and Technical Instruction. Id., August, 1893.

Undiscovered Mineral Wealth of the World. Donahoe's Magazine, May,
1893.

High Buildings and Earthquakes. North American Review, March, 1893.

Geology, What is it ? Chautauquan, December, 1893.

The Geology of Niagara Falls. In Howells (W. D.), etc., "Niagara Book,"
pp. 65-92. 1893.

Beasts of Burden. Scribner's Magazine, July, 1894.

The Dog. Id., June, 1894.

Geological Science. Chautauquan, November, 1894.

The Horse. Scribner's Magazine, November, 1894.

456 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER

The Transmission of Learning through the University. Atlantic Monthly,
January, 1894.

Distribution of Earthquakes. Proceedings Boston Society Natural History,
vol. xxvi, pp. 246-256; 1894.

Domesticated Birds. Scribner's Magazine, September, 1895.

The Direction of Education. Atlantic Monthly, March, 1895.

Training of Engineers. Engineering Magazine, September, 1895.

Relation of Science to Industry. Chautauquan, October, 1895.

Conquests of Geology. Id., December, 1895.

March of Invention. Id., November, 1895.

Aspects of the Negro Question. Public Opinion, February, 1895.

The Last Gift of the Nineteenth Century. North American Review, Decem-
ber, 1895.

Beaches and Tidal Marshes of the Atlantic Coast. American Book Com-
pany, 1895.

Conditions and Effects of the Expulsion of Gases from the Earth. Proceed-
ings Boston Society Natural History, vol. xxvi, pp. 89-106 ; 1896.

Natural History of Warfare. North American Review, March, 1896.

Relations of Geologic Science to Education. Science, April 24, 1896.
— — * Environment and Man in New England. North American Review, October,
1896.

Erosion of the Soil. National Geological Magazine, October, 1896.

The Scotch Element in the American People. Atlantic Monthly, April, 1896.

Autumn. Chautauquan, November, 1897.

Nansen's Heroic Journey. Atlantic Monthly, May, 1897.

Elective Studies. Educational Review, May, 1898.
— The Landscape as a Means of Culture. Atlantic Monthly, December, 1898.

The Changes of the Seasons. Chautauquan, April, 1898.

The True Measure of Valor. Harvard Graduates' Magazine, December,
1898.

Future of the Negro in the United States. Popular Science Monthly, July,
1900.

The Negro since the Civil War. Id., May, 1900.

The Transplantation of a Race. Id., March, 1900.

Influence of the Sun upon the Earth's Surface. International Quarterly,
July, 1900.

Thomas Henry Huxley, Life and Letters. Critic, March, 1901.

American Quality. International Quarterly, July, 1901.

Future Supply of Gold. Id., November, 1901.
- Proposed Appalachian Park. North American Review, December, 1901.

Nature of Volcanoes. Id., July, 1902.

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS 457

Teaching Geology. New Educational Association, 1903.
Plant and Animal Intelligence. Harper's Magazine, July, 1903.
Human Personality. Independent, May, 1903.
Natural History of War. International Quarterly, September, 1903.
A Comparison of the Features of the Earth and Moon. Smithsonian Contri-
butions to Knowledge, vol. xxxiv; 1903.

INDEX

INDEX

ABOLITION and Abolitionists, 79, 82,
85, 86, 112, 113, 242.

Acland, Dr. Henry W., 262, 263, 264.

Adams, John Quincy, 78.

Administrative work, Shaler's, 386-
401.

.Etna, 318, 319, 321; study of, 405-
406.

Agassiz, Louis, 90, 92; Shaler's first
meeting with, 93 ; personal quality
of, 94 ; his ease in captivating men,
94-95; his methods of teaching,
95-96, 103-104; his laboratory,
95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 127, 128; Sha-
ler's first work under, 97-99 ; qual-
ity of his lectures, 101; a note of
Shaler's on, 103 n.\ bouts with Wil-
liam B. Rogers, 105, 116-117; 106,
107, 110, 111, 113, 114, 115, 118;
some students of, 119-129 ; distress
of, at outbreak of the Civil War, 170-
171; work of his students, 179, 180,
181; swift accumulation of collec-
tions and books for his establish-
ment, 182 ; 188, 189, 190, 191, 194,
195, 200-201, 208, 209, 225, 226;
letters by, 226-227, 250, 251, 270,
271, 297-298; letters by Shaler to,
248; a dinner party at his house,
363; 426.

Agassiz, Mrs., 298.

Agassiz's glacial theory, 265.

Agassiz 's museum. See Museum of
Comparative Zoology.

Albany, Ky., 287.

Alder Mine, the, 335.

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 428, 429.

Aletsch glacier, 229.

Alexandria, Egypt, 402.

"Alfred the Great," 443.

Algiers, William Shaler's Sketches of,
7; memorial of William Shaler in,
7; 193.

All Souls College, Oxford, Eng., 262.

Alps, 228; great glaciers of, 229; 234,
235.

"American Highways," 427.

American Social Science Associations,
249.

"Americans" vs. Provincials, 143,
144, 158.

Anderson, John, 272.

Anderson School, 271.

Andover, Me., 136.

Andover Theological Seminary, 433.

Andrew, Gov. John A., 197.

Animals, Shaler's early interest in,
49; childhood studies of spiders,
insects, and birds, 49-50 ; first ac-
quaintance with a menagerie, 52;
playing with the elephant and the
camel, 53; companionship with
dogs, 53, 180; a small collection of
living, 184, 185; study in Dresden
Zoological Gardens, 241.

Anticosti, island, expedition to, 139-
160; description of, 150-152; col-
lecting fossils on, 152-153; bear-
hunting, 153-154; an unpleasant
adventure, 154-155 ; another hunt-
ing incident, 155-156 ; loneliness of
life on the island, 156; the light-
house-keepers, 156-157; tale of the
original gun on Bad Rock, 157;
an admirable hermitage, 157 ; 158,
159, 160, 162; scientific results of
the expedition, 166-168; 171, 188,
253, 425.

Anticosti lighthouses, 162.

Appalachian system, 162.

Appleton Chapel, 411, 422.

Aquaria, 206.

Archaean district of Canada, 54.

Architectural School, 355.

Argyle, Duke of, 259, 260.

Aristocracy, a landed, 33.

462

INDEX

Arkansas River, 297.

"Armada Days," 439, 440.

Arno, the river, 302, 303, 309.

Arnold, Major, at Fort Independence,
174.

Arthur's Seat, 265.

Artistic abominations, 307.

Arts and Sciences, faculty of, 369.

Ashland, Ky., 220.

"Aspects of the Earth," 427.

Astronomy, Shaler's boyhood inter-
est in, 55, 56.

Athens, 404 ; study of the Parthenon
and an engineering feat for Har-
vard men conceived, 404 ; 405.

Atkinson, Edward, 432 n.

Atlantic Monthly, articles by N. S.
Shaler in, cited, 219, 254, 289, 430.

Atlantic Ocean, 297, 334.

"Aunt C ," Shaler's maternal

great-aunt, description of, 20-21.

Autobiography, 3-212, 218, 228; be-
gun in Egypt, 403.

Auvergne, 237.

Azores, 355.

B., Captain, of Salins, 233.

B s, the, 285.

Baiae, Italy, 319.

Bailey, anti-slavery editor in Ken-
tucky, 85.

Bangor, Me., 252.

Bar Harbor, 134.

Barbecues, 41.

Barlow, telescope-maker, 56.

Bay of Fundy, 141.

Beacon Hill, Boston, 193.

Beacon Park track, 94.

Beacon Street, Boston, 193, 198.

Bears, black, on the island of Anti-
costi, 153-154.

Beaumont's, Elie de, "Systeme des
Montagnes," 190-191, 192, 228.

Beckham, C. W., 277 n.

Bee Spring, Camp at, 281.

Belmont market gardens, a story of
Huxley, 346.

Bentley, Richard, 258.

Benton Farm, the, 224.

Berkenridge New Ferry, 4.

Berry, Albert S., 300.

Big Bone Lick, 247.

Big Sandy River, 281.

Billings, Elkanah, 139.

Bird Rock, 145-146; an adventure
upon, 146-147; 148.

Birds, early interest of Shaler in, 49 ;
mating pigeons, 50 ; training game-
cocks, 50-51.

Biscayne, Fla., 330.

Blue Hills, the, 368.

Blumhardt, Father, 243, 246.

Board of Overseers of Harvard Col-
lege, 388.

Boll, Wiirttemberg, 244 ; a faith-cure
hotel at, 245.

Bond, William Cranch, 104.

Boone, Daniel, 33.

Booth, Edwin, 182.

Border states, 86.

Boston, 68, 69, 103, 104, 109, 114,
115, 116, 117, 120, 121, 136, 139,
160, 163, 183, 184, 185, 186, 193,
194, 197, 200; walks in the country
about, 201-202, 204,205, 248; 255,
283; "Boston somewhere near
Cambridge," 290; 324, 348; field
days in neighborhood of, 368 ; 377,
384, 390, 417.

Boston Basin, The, 115.

Boston Bay, 368.

Boston celebrities, 193-199.

Boston Common, 198.

Boston Daily Advertiser, quoted, 368.

Boston Society of Natural History,
104, 105, 110, 116, 182, 419; Pro-
ceedings of the, 427.

Boston Theatre, 183.

Bostonians, 290.

Bounty-catchers, 135.

Bow Street, Cambridge, 254, 296, 347.

Bow Street, No. 13, 254, 296, 344.

Boxing, Shaler's bouts with his tutor

at Harvard, 91.

Brachiopods, 100, 180; the Anticosti,
425 ; fossil, of the Ohio Valley, 426.

INDEX

463

Bragg, Gen. Braxton, 126, 219, 220.
Brattle House, Cambridge, 187.
Brattle Street, Cambridge, 187.
Breckenridge, Elder, 73.
Breckenridge, John C., 73, 86, 171,

173.

Briggs, Le Baron R., 392.
Brigham's oyster-shop, 183.
"Bristoe," a slave, 38-39.
Broadhorn, 84.
Brown, D. S., cabinet and collections

of, 182.

Brown, John, the, raid, 195.
Brown, John Mason, 173, 432.
Brown-Sequard, Dr. Charles fidouard,

322 ; adventures of a gift to Huxley

from, 322-323.
Brussels, 242.

Buckner, Gen. Simon B., 171, 172.
Buell, Gen. Don Carlos, 220.
Buffalo, N. Y., 68, 289.
Bull Run, 163, 170.
Bunker Hill, Battle of, an ancient

with memories of, 136.
"Burial Place, The," 221.
Butte, Montana, notable legal contest

in, 338, 339; 398.
"Button, Bill," 13.

C , 281, 289.

C , a Mr., of Minnesota, 290.

Cairo, Egypt, 402-403.

Calhoun, John C., 82.

Cambridge, 44, 69, 79, 90, 96, 100,
107, 109, 120, 121, 125, 136, 170,
174, 182, 186, 192, 193 ; the College
circle in, 199, 207, 216, 240; pro-
posed Zoological Garden in, 241;
the Shaler homes in, 253, 254, 286,
296, 344, 345, 348, 359; 258, 260;
"Boston somewhere near Cam-
bridge," 290; 293, 351, 353, 356;
the Cambridge of the Eighteen-
seventies, 363; a dinner party at
Agassiz's, 363-364; 377; enter-
tainment of students, 379, 403;
411, 412, 426, 441.

Cambridge celebrities, 193, 199-200.

Cambridge, Eng., 191, 258, 259, 260,
261, 376.

Cambridge University, 191, 376.

Camp Clay, 220.

Camp Dick Robinson, 173.

Camp Harvard, Cumberland Gap,
369.

Campbell County, Ky., 17, 33, 36.

Campobello, island, 325.

Camps and camping, in Mount De-
sert, 134; in the Umbagog Lakes
country, 135-137; Camp Harvard,
Cumberland Gap, 273-275, 289-
290, 369; elsewhere in Kentucky,
281, 294, 295; on Hoosac Moun-
tain, 282-283; Alleghany camps,
285; on Martha's Vineyard, 350;
at Squam Lake, 351.

Canada, 54, 83, 139.

Canada Survey, the, 139.

Cape Ann, report upon the geology
of, 343.

Cape Ann fishermen, 143, 144.

Cape Breton fishermen, at Anticosti,
158 ; compared with the New Eng-
land sailors, 159; courtesies ex-
changed with, 159.

Card-playing, old time, in Kentucky,
72, 73.

Carolinas, the, 66, 252.

Carrara, peaks of, 313.

"Carroll, Lewis," and "Alice in Won-
derland," 262.

Catskills, 68.

Celebrities, Cambridge and Boston,
193-206.

Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia,
275, 288.

Certosa, Italy, 302, 309.

Chamberlain, Montague, 372.

Channing, Dr. Walter, 12.

Charles River, 206, 258.

Charlestown, 199, 203.

Chickamauga, 123, 124.

Child, Francis James, 418.

Chilmark, Mass., 346, 347.

Chilmarks, the English and American,
and Rudyard Kipling, 346-347.

464

INDEX

Christ Church, Oxford, Eng., 262.

Cincinnati, 31, 32, 43, 44, 55;
Mitchel's observatory in, 55; 56,
58; notable group of Germans in,
62 ; 63 ; Harriet Beecher Stowe in,
85; fortifications of, 88-89, 219,
242, 281, 288.

"Citizen, The," 217, 427, 435.

Civil War, Kentucky Unionists in the,
14; 41, 43, 46, 73, 74, 75; Ken-
tucky's losses by the, 76; 82, 86,
88, 120; a story of the, 123-124;
126, 127, 141, 157, 159, 163; first
year of, 170-178; situation in Ken-
tucky at the outbreak of, 171 ; 186,
187, 188, 197, 207, 216; Shaler's
battery in, 219, 221-223 ; Shaler's
treatment of, in his " Kentucky,"
432; his poems of the, 443.

Clay, Cassius M., 85.

Clay, Henry, 82.

Cleveland, President Grover, 249.

Cleveland, Richard Jeffry, his "Nar-
rative of Voyages and Commercial
Enterprises" cited, 5.

Cleveland, 0., 68, 287.

Coal Swamps of the Eastern United
States, report upon, 343.

Coast Survey. See United States
Coast Survey.

Coast Survey Camp, 282, 283.

Cock-fighting, 50, 51, 52.

Cohasset, Mass., 284.

College companions, 118-129.

College gymnasium, 97.

College library, 182.

"College teas," 363.

College Yard, the, 344, 348, 361,
377.

Colonial Club, Cambridge, 345.

Colonists of Kentucky, 33, 76.

Colorado, 296, 297, 308.

Columbus, Ky., 293.

Confederacy. See Southern Confed-
eracy.

Confederate army, 121, 163, 171, 173,
219, 220, 223 ; the Confederate sol-
dier, 432.

Confederates in Kentucky, 171, 172,

173.

Connecticut, 150, 199, 291.
Connecticut Valley, 4, 125.
Conroy Mine, 408.
Cook, Caleb, 97.
Cooke, Josiah P., Ill, 124, 180, 190,

208.
Coolidge, Philip Sidney, 121; story

of, 121-123, 124, 208.
Corey Hill, Brookline, 410.
Corfu, 405.

Gorman, Charles, 332.
Cosmos Club, Washington, D. C., 414.
Cotta, Bernhard von, 243.
Country living, 348-360.
County fairs, 41.
Covington, Ky., 79.
Crandell, A. R., 277 n.
Crittenden, J. J., 73.
Cruising and Camping, 130-138.
Cuba, 5, 7, 12, 240.
Cumberland Gap, summer school at,

273 ; incidents of, 273 ; a rattlesnake

episode, 273-275 ; 289-290, 295, 369.
Cumberland River, 279.
"Curtius,"443.
Cushman, Charlotte, 182.
Cuvier's "Le Regne Animal," 180.

Daffodils, cultivation of, at "Seven
Gates," 351, 356.

Dana, Edward S., 227.

Danville, Ky., 291.

Darwin, Charles R., 257, 439.

Darwin, W. E., 351.

Darwinism, 105, 110, 128-129, 181.

Davenport, E. L., 182.

Davis, Jefferson, 88.

Davis, William M., 418, 426.

Debating society, Kentucky, dis-
cussions of States' Rights in, 86-
87.

Deerfield, Mass., 298.

Democratic party, 291.

Dent du Midi, 228, 296.

Denver, Col., 296; in 1879, 297; 398.

Devonshire, Duke of, 259.

INDEX

465

Digger Indian, 398.

Divinity Hall, 121, 179.

Dixwell, Epes Sargent, 69, 90, 199-
200, 242.

" Domesticated Animals," 427, 429.

Douglas, Stephen A., 80.

Dredging expeditions, 130-133; in-
cidents of, 131-132.

Dresden, 238; water cure in, 238-
240, 242; the Zoological Garden
in, 241 ; the Isis Society, 241 ; 242.

Drill Club, in Cambridge, 174, 183.

Duel, the, in Kentucky, 42-43;
challenge received by Shaler, 46;
second in, 47 ; maxims of, 48.

Durham Cathedral, 268-269.

"Eager Muster, The," 221.
Eagle Lake, Mount Desert, 134.
Earthquakes, papers on, 430.
"East Tennesseans," 21.
Eastport, Me., 132-133, 139, 141,

163, 252, 253.
Edinburgh, 257, 266, 438.
Egypt, visit to, 402, 403.
Elephants, fossil remains of, 247.
Eliot, Charles W., 251, 280, 297, 345,

364, 369, 379, 395, 396, 400, 417,

418.

Elizabeth Islands, 145.
" Elizabeth of England," quoted, 301 ;

427, 438, 439, 441, 442, 445.
Ellis Bay, Anticosti, 158, 159.
Ely Cathedral, 260-261.
Emancipation party, 86.
Emerson, George, 124-127, 196, 201.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 262, 363.
England, 41, 200, 228, 229, 231, 242;

visits to, 255-269, 270, 271, 272,

299; 309, 407, 426.
English Geological Survey, 289.
English hotels, 267.
Entry Island, 145.
Escher, Johannes, a Swiss tutor, 60,

61; teachings and philosophy of,

61; inducts young Shaler into the

mystery of Hegel, 62; 90, 91, 102,

209.

Europe, journeyings in, 228-246,
247, 265, 299, 312, 313; 400.

Europeans, 197, 198.

Evans, Dr. Thomas W., Paris, 238.

Evolution, Shaler's early teaching of
the principles of, 216.

" Exhaustion of the World's Metals,
The," cited, 335.

Expeditions, along the Maine coast,
130; to the Gulf of St. Lawrence,
139-149 ; on the Labrador shore,
160-163; various scientific expe-
ditions, 253 ; on the Florida coast,
330-331.

Faith cure at Boll, 245-246.
Far West, 41, 337, 341, 378.
Federal army, 120, 123, 124, 163,

173, 197, 199, 211; N. S. Shaler in,

219-223.

"Federalist, The," 86.
Fen country, Eng., 261.
Fencing, Shaler's training in, 43-44,

45; a bout with Agassiz, 96.
Felton, Cornelius C., 69, 190.
Feudal system, in the settlement of

Kentucky, 32-33 ; 349.
Field Days. See " Prof essor Shaler's

Field Days."
"Field Geology," 427.
Field work, 1873-1879, 270-298.
Fields, James T., 428.
Fifth Avenue Troop, 280.
Fifth Kentucky Battery, 219, 220,

221.
Fighting and fighters, 34; fighting

propensities of early Kentuckians,

41, 42 ; anecdote of Sam McLaugh-

lin, fighter, 42; 44, 49, 119.
Figline, Italy, 307, 308.
Finnell, John W., 172.
"First Book of Geology, The," 426;

translations of, 427.
First Kentucky Confederate Brigade,

433.

Fishing ships, types of, 144-145.
Fiske, John, a little story of, 187.
Florence, Italy, 78, 299; walks in and

466

INDEX

about, 299-300; 302; tramps into

its ancient environs, 302 ; along the

way to Impruneta, 302-304 ; town

and country folk, 304, 309; 311,

314, 317, 318, 319, 322, 324.
Florida, 247, 330; impressions of,

331; an adventure in, 331-332;

334.
Foley, of Kentucky, 119-120, 135,

173.
Forbes, James D., 228.

Forbes, , 382.

Foreword, 1859-1862, 215.

Fort Independence, Boston Harbor,

174, 175, 176.

Fort Warren, Boston Harbor, 197.
Fossils, 100, 153, 229, 244, 247; col-
lections sent to Dom Pedro, 298;

in Italy, 314, 316; 426.
France, 228; incidents of travel in

out-of-the-way parts, 230; 231,

237, 238.
Franco-Italian-Austrian War, 122,

157.
Frankfort, Ky., 46, 70; description

of, in Shaler's boyhood, 71-72;

73, 74, 75,- 171, 211, 278, 280, 287,

288, 291, 292, 293.
Freiberg, 242; School of Mines in,

243 ; a German household, 243-244.
French Revolution, 5, 210.
Frenchman's Bay, 131, 133
Fresh Pond, 414.
"From Old Fields," 221, 427, 443,

444.
Frontiersmen, 34, 41; Kentucky

type of, 165.

Galton, Francis, 257.

Game-cocks, 50; young Shaler's in-
terest in battles of, 51 ; 52, 53.

Garibaldi, recollections of, 320.

Gasp6, 161-162; an interesting geo-
logical field, 162-163.

Gay Head, 115, 351.

"General's Yarn, The," 221.

Geodetic and Geological Survey, 249.

Geoffrys, 257.

Geological excursion. See " Professor
Shaler's Field Days."

Geological Record, 289.

Geological Reports, Government and
State, 426, 427, 428; 429, 430.

Geological Surveys, Kentucky, 224;
United States, 247.

Geology, Shaler's early speculations
in, 53-54 ; study of, under Agassiz,
100, 101,111; field work, 115; 117;
on the coast of Labrador, 160 ; in
Gaspe', 161-163; 180; Shaler's
methods of instruction in, 225,248,
272, 280; various reports upon,
275, 283, 343 ; Agassiz's instruction,
297; Shaler's lectures to his stu-
dents, 365-366; "Natural History
Five," afterward "Geology Four,"
367-368; " Professor Shaler's Field
Days," 368-369.

" Geology of Boston and its Environs,
The," 426.

"Geology of Roads," report on, 430.

George, the cook, 140, 141, 147, 152,
153.

"Georgians, The," 221.

Germany, 90; travels in, 238; visits
to Dresden, 238-243; to Freiberg,
243-244 ; to out-of-the-way places,
244, 245.

Gilman, Arthur, 373.

Glaciers, 228; great glaciers of the
Alps, 229; Shaler's book on, 426.

Glasgow, 266.

Glenn, William, 118.

Gloucester fishermen, 143, 144.

Goebel, Gov. William, 73.

Gould, Augustus A., 109.

Gould, Benjamin Apthorp, 104.

Government post, Newport, Ky., 27,
31, 39, 55, 59.

Government Surveys, 249.

Graduate School of Applied Science.
See Lawrence Scientific School.

Grand Manan, 132, 133.

Grant, Gen. Ulysses S., 174.

Gray, Asa, 104, 105; Shaler's rela-
tions with, 110; 113, 190, 208.

INDEX

467

Grayson, Ky., 284.

Grayson Springs, 279, 281, 285.

Great Britain, 139.

" Great Raid, The," 222.

Greece, visit to, 403-405.

Green. See Fiske, John.

Green Mountain, Mount Desert, 134.

Greenfield, Mass., 79, 125, 126.

Greenland, 140.

Greenough, Horatio, 69.

Greenwood, Master, 222.

Greylock, 68.

Grindelwald, glacier of, 229.

Grindrod, Dr., of Malvern, 255.

Guescard, Prof., in Naples, 319.

Gugenheimer, in Agassiz's labora-
tory, 97.

Guides. See Italian guides, Swiss
guides, and Tuscan guide.

Guinea-pig, adventures with a sa-
vant's, 322-323.

Guinitz, Prof., Dresden, 241.

Gulf of St. Lawrence, expedition to
the, 139-169; 142, 144, 145; results
from the expedition to, 165-168;
discomforts and dangers of the ex-
pedition, 168-169.

Gulf Stream, 356.

Gut of Canso, 142, 143, 144, 163.

H., Major, 48.

Haddam, Conn., ancestors of Shaler
there, 4.

Hall, James, 227.

Hamilton, Ky., 281.

Hammond, Surgeon-General, 14.

Hannibal's old camping-ground, 406.

Hansen, a Swede, learned in Scan-
dinavian languages, 118.

Hanson, Roger, of Kentucky, 171.

Harte, Bret, 363.

Harvard alumni, 389, 390.

Harvard Club dinners, 401.

Harvard College and University, N.
B. Shaler in, 12, 69; N. S. Shaler
in, 13, 43, 44, 75, 79, 90-163; 111,
117, 121, 126, 135; Shaler's last
year in, 179-192; 193, 194, 208,

209; the College circle, 199; the
faculty, 199; 200, 207, 249, 250,
251, 270, 271, 272, 275, 282, 297;
Gordon McKay's gift to, 328, 335 ;
363, 364, 369, 370, 372, 373, 378,
379, 382, 386, 387, 388, 391, 395,
411, 434.

Harvard corporation, 387, 388.

Harvard Divinity School, 69.

Harvard faculty, 388, 389; part
played by Shaler in meetings of,
392-395; 396.

Harvard Law School, 184.

Harvard Medical School, N. B. Sha-
ler in, 53, 69.

Harvard Natural History Society,
251.

Harvard Observatory, 121, 208.

Harvard Summer School, 258, 272;
organization of, 369 ; advancement
of, 369-370, 372; the opening re-
ception, 372; 373, 408.

Harvard University Gazette, quoted,
366.

Hasty Pudding Club, 97.

Haussmann, Baron, 237 ; Haussmann-
ized Florence, 302.

Havana, William Shaler consul at,
5, 7; N. B. Shaler physician in, 12.

Head, Low, 139, 142.

Heidelberg, 90.

Helena, Mont., 326.

Helmholtz's theories, 228.

Henderson, Ky., a wise farmer of,
432 n.

Henry Clay Whigs, 82.

Hereford, Eng., 267; Herefordshire
cider, 267; the ancient cathedral,
267.

Heth, Gen. Henry, 219.

Hickman, Ky., 286.

Hillard, George S., 197, 198.

Hillsboro, Fla., 332.

Hinde, Dr. John, 19-20; surgeon in
the British navy, 19; in Virginia,
20; with Wolfe at Quebec, 20;
figured in Benjamin West's paint-
ing, 20; anecdotes of, 20; his

468

INDEX

death at nearly a hundred years,
his wife then ninety, 20; 22.

Hinde.Mrs. John (born Hubbard), 20.

Hingham, Mass., 225, 284.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 363, 430.

Hoosac Mountain, 282, 283.

Hoosac Tunnel, 282.

Hopkins, William, 191.

Horsford, Eben N., 124, 190.

Hospitality North and South, 201.

Hotchkiss, 326.

"How to Change the American Cli-
mate," 430.

Howells, William D., 363, 430.

Howgate, H. W., 278.

Hubbard. See Mrs. John Hinde.

Hudson's Bay Station, 160; Indian
trading at, 160-161.

Humboldt, Tenn., 293.

Hunt, T. Sterry, 283.

Hunting, 66 ; bears on Anticosti, 153-
154, 155.

Huntington, Edward, 396.

"Hurricanes," 429.

Hutton, James, 265.

Huxley, Thomas H., 256, 257, 322;
his visit to Cambridge, anecdote of,
346.

Hyatt, Alpheus,79,97, 120-121, 124,
126, 130, 139, 141, 155, 163, 146,
201, 284, 420.

Iceland, 140.

Illinois, 80, 341.

Impruneta, Italy, a tramp from Flo-
rence to, 302-304; description of,
304 ; a unique Tuscan guide, 304,
305, 306; primitive industries of
the peasants, 305; serpentines at,
305, 306.

Indian River, 330.

Indian wars, with the Illinois Indians,
40; tales of old Indian fighters,
40-41.

Indiana, 291.

Indians, 39 ; how to " manage an In-
jun," 40; 41, 151; trading, of Lab-
rador, 160-161.

"Individual, The," 217, 425, 427,
433, 435, 436, 438.

"Infant Hayes," 120.

Inns, a French country inn, 233-
234; English inns, 285; Italian vil-
lage inn, 305; in Rome, 319.

Insects, boyish studies of, 49, 84, 96.

"Interpretation of Nature, The,"
425, 427, 428, 433, 434.

Ironbound Island, 131; an amateur
Grecian at, 131-132.

Ischia, Italy, 319.

Isis Society, Dresden, 241.

Italian country and farm life, 303,
304, 305, 306, 308, 310, 311; Tus-
can women drawing heavily laden
carts, 315.

Italian guides, 304; character of, to
geological localities, 314, 315, 317.

Italian patois, 317.

Italian peasantry, 303, 304, 305, 306,
309, 310, 311 ; a typical contadino
home, 315-316; 317; old and mod-
ern customs of, in Naples, 320.

Italian shepherd, an ancient, on a hill-
top, 307-308.

Italian soldier, the, 299-300.

Italian villages, 302, 304-306, 307,

309, 320.

Italian villas, 303 ; as country places,

310, 315.

Italy, 62, 78; visits to, 236-237, 299-
321.

Jackson, Charles T., 12, 53, 69, 100,

104, 105; qualities of, 109-110;

207.
Jackson, Gen. James, duellist, 46 ;

anecdote of, 46-47.
Jackson, James, of Kentucky, 173.
Jackson, Ky., 295.
Jackson Purchase, the, 32.
Jacksonville, Fla., 331.
Jacquard, Monsieur, 232.
Jamaica, ancestors of Shaler there, 4.
James, William, 359, 400, 418; letter

of, on "The Individual," 436-438;

on "From Old Fields," 443-444.

INDEX

469

Jardin des Plantes, 238.
Jarvis Street, Cambridge, 97.
Jefferson, Thomas, 16, 121, 158, 194.
Jews in Boston, 384.
Johnson, Stoddard, 292.
Johnston, Gen. Albert Sydney, 174.
Journal, Mrs. Shaler's, 261; quoted,

261-263, 264, 265, 266-269.
Journal, Shaler's, quoted, 215-216,

374, 433-434, 440.
Journal of Geography, quoted, 367.
Jura, the, 235.

Kansas City, 296.

Keene, N. H., 92, 93.

Kentuckians, 141, 223.

Kentucky, 12, 14, 19, 31 ; settlement
of, 32; the feudal system, 33; re-
semblance of the tenant whites to
the English cotter class, 34, 35;
slave-owners in, 36; 48, 49, 56;
eastern Kentucky, 66 ; some Ken-
tucky magnates, 71-79; 80; po-
litical life in, immediately preced-
ing the Civil War, 82 ; customs of
the early days in large households,
83; "living within yourself," 83,
84; 86, 87, 94, 96, 119, 123, 126,
138, 139, 140 ; situation in, at the
outbreak of the Civil War, 141,
171-172, 173; 165, 168, 186, 192,
195, 198, 203, 209, 211, 219; the
war in, 220-223 ; 224, 242, 247, 260,
269; geological survey of, 270-271,
273-281, 282, 283, 289-296; 329,
369, 415, 417, 419, 426, 431, 432,
433.

"Kentucky: A Pioneer Common-
wealth," cited, 219 n.\ 223, 426,
431-433.

Kentucky farmers, 432 n.

Kentucky Geological Survey, 224,
270; Shaler director of, 271, 273-
281 ; Reports on, 275, 276-277, 426 ;
episodes in the work of, 276-278;
letters written during its progress,
278-282, 284-288, 289-296; 432.

Kentucky habit, a, 353.

Kentucky Legislature, 275, 276, 278,

280, 287, 288, 292.
Kentucky mountains, 432 n.
Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, 86.
Kentucky River, 74, 291.
Kentucky Unionists, the, 14.
Key West, 330.
Kidd, Capt., treasures of, 158.
King John of Saxony, 198.
King's Mountain, 136.
Kingston, Canada, 329.
Kipling, Rudyard, in Cambridge,

346; a little story of, 346-347.
Know-Nothing party, 203.

La Grange, Ky., 280.

Labrador, 144, 150, 159; expedition
in, 160-163, 164.

Lake Erie, 68.

Lake Geneva, 228.

Lake Worth, 330, 331.

Lamb, , 97.

Lancaster, Mass., home of Abigail
Stilwell in, 9; N. B. Shaler at
school in, 12, 68.

Landscape, Shaler's love of, 355-356.

Lauderdale Station, 331.

"Law of Fashion," 430.

Lawrence, Mr., 277.

Lawrence, Bishop, 411.

Lawrence Scientific School, 95, 105,
106, 110, 111, 117, 120, 126, 208,
225, 240, 270, 289, 334, 339, 350;
Shaler made dean of, 386 ; his ad-
ministration work in, 387, 390-391 ;
Gordon McKay's bequest to, 387;
the proposed "merger" with the
Mass. Institute of Technology, 387,
389, 390; change of name, to the
Graduate School of Applied Sci-
ence, 387; 392, 395, 396, 400, 404,
409, 411, 421.

Lawrences, the, John and Henry,
229.

Lawrences, the, of Boston, 198.

Le Locle, 232.

Leadville, Col., 297; mining-camp
near, 297.

470

INDEX

Lectures, Shaler's courses in the
Lowell Institute, 333, 401; notes
for his college lectures quoted,
365-366; his course "Natural
History Five," afterward " Geology
Four," 367-368; course at the An-
dover Theological Seminary, 433.

Lee, Gen. Robert E., 12, 174.

Lesley, J. Peter, 227.

Leslie, Gov. Preston H., 270, 278,

279, 287, 288, 291.

Letters, by Shaler, quoted, 216, 217;
from camp in the Civil War, 220;
225; from Dresden, 242 ; 248; from
Martha's Vineyard, 251-252 ; from
Mount Desert, 252, 253; during the
Kentucky Geological Survey, 277,
278-282, 284-288, 289, 290-296;
the Coast Survey in New England,
282, 283, 284; from Colorado and
other mining regions, 296-297, 397-
398, 409 ; from Italy, 300, 301, 318-
319; familiar letters from various
places, 1882-1883, 325-327, 328-
331, 333, 426; to Shaler from
Agassiz, 250-251, 271, 297; 283,
284, 289; to Shaler from Prof.
James, 400, 436-438; to Shaler from
others, 429, 430, 432, 432 n., 434,
436, 443 ; to Mrs. Shaler, on Shaler's
spirit and work, 392-395, 443-444,
445. .

Lewes, G. H., "History of Philoso-
phy," 63.

Lexington, Ky., 17, 56, 85, 171, 220,

280, 281, 285, 292.
Liberian colonization, 82, 196.
Libraries collected by Agassiz, 182.
Lichfield, Ky., 282, 327.
Licking River, 31, 36, 66, 79, 217.
Liddell, Rev. Henry George, 262.
Liddell, Mrs., 262, 263.

Life Saving Station, Florida, 332.
Lignite mines in Tuscany, 316;

methods of mining, 316-317, 318.
Lincoln, Abraham, 79-81.
"Little Giant," the. See Douglas,

Stephen A.

Liverpool, Eng., 255.

Liverpool, N. S., 142, 164.

Livingstone mine, 326.

Loch Lomond, 266.

London, visits in, 256-258, 426, 431.

Long Island, 68, 69.

Longfellow, Henry W., 199, 363.

Louisville, Ky., 47, 277, 281, 285,
287, 293.

Louisville Journal, 47.

Love, James Lee, 372.

Lovering, Joseph, 190.

Lowell, Rev. Charles, 199.

Lowell, James Russell, 111; charac-
terization of, 112; 195, 199, 363,
415.

Lowell Institute Lectures, 333, 401.

Lowells, the, 199.

Lush, Miss, of Albany, New York,
married to Wright Southgate, of
Virginia, 16.

Lyell, Sir Charles, 116, 182, 257.

Lyman, Theodore, 97, 251.

M., Frau, 239, 241.

McGee's, Miss, boarding-house, Cam-
bridge, 187.

McKay, Gordon, 295, 296, 297; Sha-
ler's associations with, 327-328;
death of, 327; bequest of, to the
Lawrence Scientific School, 335,
386, 387, 388; 398, 399, 400.

McLaughlin, Sam, fighter, 42.

Machias, Me., 253.

"Madame B.'s Review," 221.

Madison, Wis., 326.

Magoffin, Gov. Beriah, 212.

Maine, 37, 130, 135, 247, 252, 253.

Maine lumberman, the, 138.

Malvern, Eng., 255, 256, 265, 289,
324.

Mammoth Cave, 47, 282, 294.

"Man and the Earth," 427, 429.

Manchester, Eng., 231.

Manchuria, 429.

Marcou, Jules, 100, 104; description
of, 114-115; 116, 207, 233, 234.

Marion, Ky., 279.

INDEX

471

Mars, Captain, 44.

Marshall, Humphrey, 74, 75.

Marshall, John, 74, 75.

Marshall, John, the jurist, 75.

Marshall, Thomas F., 74, 75; curious
relations of Shaler with, 77-79; 87,
209.

Martha's Vineyard, 115, 251, 332;
report upon the geology of, 343;
347; "Seven Gates," the Shaler
"Farm" on, 348-354, 359; geo-
logical formations of, 351; 356,
360, 398, 409.

Maryland, 120, 163.

Mason and Dixon's Line, 216.

Mason and Slidell affair, 264.

Massachusetts, 68, 110, 120; shores
of, 166; 195, 197, 248, 260, 271;
southeast Massachusetts, 356.

Massachusetts Gypsy Moth Commis-
sion, 396.

Massachusetts Highway Commission,
396.

Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology, 117; corporation of, 387,
388; the "merger" with Harvard
project, 387, 388, 389, 390; faculty
of, 390; alumni of, 390.

Massachusetts Legislature, 271.

Massachusetts Metropolitan Park
Commission, 396.

Matterhorn, 234.

Mayfield, Ky., 294.

Medford, Mass., 204.

Mediterranean, voyaging on the,
402.

Memoir, The, 215-445.

"Memorial History of Boston, The,"
426.

Mer de Glace, 229.

Mercantile Library, Cincinnati, 55,
56.

"Merger " controversy, the, 387, 389,
390, 399, 409.

Mexican boundary survey, 114.

Mexican War, 28, 41, 74, 88, 174.

Mexico, 41, 74, 122.

Middlesex Canal, the old, 204.

"Midnight Venture, A," 221.

Mine prospecting, 326, 334; Shaler
as a mining expert, 335, 336; his
attitude toward the "prospector,"
337; a Montana incident, 337-338;
339.

Mingan, Labrador, 159, 160, 161,
163.

Mining in Italy, 316, 317.

Mining camps and towns, 297, 340-
341.

Mining life, 340.

Mining School, Freiberg. See School
of Mines.

Mississippi, 47.

Mississippi River, adventures of Wil-
liam Shaler on, 6, 81, 293.

Mississippi Valley, 41, 341.

Missouri, 33.

Mitchel, Ormsby McKnight, 55.

Monboddo, Lord, 310.

Monmouth, Eng., 267.

Monongahela River, 84.

Mont Cervin, 229.

Montana, 175, 326; mine prospect-
ing in, 337; 338, 397, 398, 408.

Montauk Point, 69, 70.

Monte Cavo, 406.

Monte Ferrato, 306, 307, 308.

Monte Morello, 311; the climb to the
summit, 312-313, 314.

Monte Rosa, 229.

Montreux, 227, 228, 229, 296.

"Moon, The," 427, 430.

Moore, Charles H., 265.

Moore, P. M., 277 n.

Morgan, Gen. John H., 74, 221, 222,
223.

Morgan's cavalry, 432, 433.

Mormons, 398.

Morristown, N. J., 288.

Morse, Edward S., 97.

Morton, Sam, 82.

Morton, Dr. William T. G., 169.

Moses, "the man who wrote the first
geological essay," 298.

Mount Auburn, 411.

Mount Desert, camp journey in, 134-

472

INDEX

135; 252, 253; report upon the
geology of, 343.

Mount-Deserters, 252.

Mount Tom, 185.

Mount Washington, a tramp over,
192, 329.

Mountain structure, study of, 116,
190, 228, 229; in Italy, 307, 312-
313.

Miiller, Max, 262.

Murchison, Sir Roderick Impey, let-
ter to, 249-250.

Murchison's "Silurian System," 55.

Museum of Comparative Zoology,
nucleus of, 97, 98, 100; 101, 102,
103, 114, 118, 139, 171, 181, 182,
186, 225, 247, 248, 250, 251, 258,
271, 297, 298, 344, 361; Reports
of the Curator of the, 427 ; 437.

Mystic River, 202, 204.

N., Sefior, 240, 240-241.

N , 298.

Nahant, 97; Agassiz's summer home
at, 201, 227; 249.

Nan tucket, 258; report upon the
geology of, 343 ; proposed summer
school in, 426.

Naples, 237, 268; notes on, and the
Neapolitans, 319-321; second visit
to, 405, 407.

Napoleon III, 237.

Narragansett Basin, 110.

Narragansett Bay, 110.

"Narrative and Critical History of
America," 427.

Nashua, N. H., 398.

Nashua River, 10.

National Academy of Science, 397.

National Survey, a, 249.

Natural history, Shaler's early inter-
est in, 92 ; 93, 98 ; plans for instruc-
tion of, 298.

"Natural History of Politics," 430.

Nature, Shaler's love of, 350, 354,
358.

Nature, 289.

"Nature and Man in America," 427.

Nautical Almanac office, 208.

Neapolitans, the, 321.

"Negro Problem, The," 430.

Negro-traders, 31, 36, 38.

Negroes, of Sea Islands, 251. See
Slaves and slavery.

"Neighbor, The," 217, 427, 435.

Nemi, 406.

New Brunswick, 143, 161.

New-Brunswickers, 159.

New England, 85, 92, 125, 138, 143,
144, 145, 151, 159, 194, 200, 201,
224, 262, 282, 348, 362, 368, 378.

New England climate, 348.

New England coast, 205 ; geology of,
283.

New England fishing ships, 144, 145.

New England sailors, 159.

New England wilds, 138.

New-Englander, 125, 170, 201-202.

New Madrid earthquakes of 1811,
phenomena connected with, re-
corded by William Shaler, 6.

New Orleans, 32.

New York, 32, 83, 283, 291, 294, 407,
431.

Newberry, John S., 227.

Newport, Ky., 3, 12; characteristics
of, before the war, 31-32; 39, 54,
66, 85, 217, 279, 291, 325, 397.

Newport barracks, 14, 27, 28, 39, 55,
57, 59, 174.

Niagara Falls, 257.

Nightingale, the, 406-407.

Nile, the, 403.

North, the, 82, 84, 88, 170, 172, 195,
201, 216, 219.

North Adams, Mass., 283.

North Bend, O., 281.

North Carolina, 34, 41, 172, 289,
295.

Northern States. See North, the.

Northerners, 196.

Northumberland Channel, 163.

Norton, Charles Eliot, 265 ; letter of,
on "From Old Fields," 444.

Norwood, C. J., 277 n.

Sote-books, Shaler's, quoted, 215;

INDEX

473

kept in Italy, 302, 318; on Vesu-
vius, 319, 321; 356.

Notre Dame Mountains, 162.

Nova Scotia, 142, 143, 144, 164, 334.

Nova-Scotians, 144, 159.

Nullification doctrine, the, 86 ; atti-
tude of the men of Kentucky on,
86.

Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard, 251-

252.
Observatory, Mitchel's, 55 ; Harvard,

121, 208.
Ohio, 84; Morgan's raid into, 221,

222, 278.
Ohio River, 17, 18, 27, 31, 32, 33, 36,

50, 54, 55, 59, 84, 88, 192, 220, 229,

280, 281.
Ohio Valley, 17; geology of, 54, 139,

168; 426.

"Ohio Cavern Life," 289.
"Old Daniel," negro slave exhorter,

57-58.

Olympia, Ky., 325, 329.
Open fireplace, the, 344, 353, 379.
"Origin and Nature of Soils," 428,

429.

"Orphan Brigade, The," 433.
"Outlines of the Earth's History,"

427.

Oxen, the Italian white, 315.
Oxford, Eng., 193, 261-264.

P., Dr., 211.

P , 281, 284, 287.

P , John, Scotch gentleman, long

resident in Naples, recollections of,

320.

Pacific Ocean, 122, 297, 334.
Page, Rev. Charles H., 218 n.
Page, Mrs. Logan W., 409.
Page, Sophia Penn. See Shaler, S. P.
Page, W. B., 277 n., 398.
Palmer, George Herbert, 418, 444,

445.
Paris, 231; Exposition of 1867, 231;

visits to, 236, 237-238, 242, 322.
Parker, Judge, 198.

Parks, Rev. Leighton, 434.

Parsons, Theophilus, 199.

Pattison, Mark, 262.

Peabody Museum of American Archae-
ology and Ethnology, 97.

Peach Orchard, Ky., 286.

Peacock, Jack, a character, 157, 332.

Pedro, Dom, anecdote of the visit of,
to England, 263 ; 298.

Peirce, Benjamin, 104; memories of,
113; 188, 190, 191,283.

Peirce, Charles S., 247, 283.

Peloponnesus, 405.

Penikese Island, 271, 272.

Pennington Gap, 295.

Pennsylvania, 116, 355.

Perryville, 46.

Peters, Dr., of Lexington, Ky., 292.

Phi Beta Kappa, Shaler's poem be-
fore the, 443.

Philadelphia, 275, 288. See Centen-
nial Exhibition.

Phillips Brooks House, 379, 399.

Phlegrsean Fields, the, 319, 321.

"Physiography of North America,"
427.

Pictet, Francois Jules, 229.

Pioneer life, tales of, 84.

Pioneers, in Kentucky, 19; differ-
ences between, in Kentucky and
Ohio, 32; 33, 84.

Pittsfield, Mass., 68.

Plain of Marathon, 356.

Platte River, 341.

Platte Valley, 296.

Poems, reminiscent of the Civil War,
221, 222.

Political debates in Kentucky be-
tween 1858 and 1861, 87-88.

Pompeii, 320, 321.

"Poor Whites," 33, 34, 36, 41.

Popular Science News, 427.

Porta Magna, 318.

Portland, Me., 135.

Powell, John W., 329.

Powis, Earl of, 259.

Prato, Italy, 306, 307, 309.

Prentice, Courland, 47.

474

INDEX

Prentice, George Denison, 47.
Price, Bonamy, 193.
Prince Edward Island, 163.
Prince Leopold, 263; observations of,

264.

Prince of Wales, 161, 262.
Princeton, Ky., 279, 280.
Proctor, John R., 277 n.f 288, 294.
Proctor, Richard A., 257.
"Professor Shaler's Field Days,"

368-369.

Proslavery party in Kentucky, 86.
Province ports, fishermen of, 143.
Provinces, the, 144.
Provincial sailors, 165; value of "the

common man" found in them,

165.
Provincials vs. "Americans," 143,

144.
Prussian officers at the Dresden water

cure, 239-240.
Prussian spies, Shaler and Tawney

seized as, in a French town, 230.
Purim Association, the, 384.
Puritans and Puritanism, 109, 125,

127, 200, 201, 203.
Putnam, Frederick W., 97.
Puy de Parion, 237.
Puy du D6me, 237.

Quaker stock, 200.

Quebec, 20.

Quincy, Edmund, 112-113.

Quincy, Miss Eliza, 368.

Quincy, Mass., 249, 368.

Quincy Street, Cambridge, 344.

Quincy Street house, the, 344 ; mem-
ories of the old library, 345; Sun-
day afternoon receptions, 345 ; 348,
359; hospitalities to the stranger
in Cambridge, 363 ; entertainments
of the natural history students,
380-381; 391, 398; Shaler's work-
room in, 399; 409, 410, 437.

Quincys, the, 199.

R , Dr., of Frankfort, 288, 291

Radcliffe College, 373.

Ramsay, Sir Andrew C., 257.

Ramsbottom, , 133-134.

Raymond, Rossiter, 338.

"Recent Changes of Sea-Level on the
Coast of Maine," 289.

Renivier, Swiss geologist, 229.

Reports, Geological. See Geological
Reports.

Reports of the Curator in the Mu-
seum of Comparative Zoology,
427.

Republican party, 219, 242.

Revere House, Boston, 279.

Revolutionary War, 4; a pensioner
of the, 39; 41, 136.

Rhode Island, 110.

Rhone Valley, the, 234.

Richardson, Dr. Maurice, 255.

Richmond, Va., 17.

Ringgold's Battery, 28.

Riverton, Ky., 279.

"Road-Building Stones," report on,
430.

Roanoke, Va., 326.

Robinson, James F., 172, 212.

Rocca di Papa, 406.

Rocky Mountains, 296, 297, 337, 341,
342.

Rodman, Gen. Thomas J., 175; his
experiments with great guns at
Fort Independence, 175-176.

Rogers, Henry D., 100, 116.

Rogers, James, 100.

Rogers, William B., 104; debates of,
with Agassiz, 105, 116-117; quali-
ties of , 117; 207.

Rolleston, George, 261-262.

Roman nightingales, 406-407.

Rome, 236, 302, 306; second visit to,
318, 320 ; third visit to, 405 ; tramps
into the surrounding country, 406 ;
407, 429.

Ross, Denman, 381.

Ross, Eng., 267.

Royal Geographical Society, 249.

Royal Society of London, 257.

Royce, Josiah, 359, 418.

"Ruddygore.," the opera, 431.

INDEX

475

Ruskin, John, 265.
Ruskin School of Drawing, 265.
Russell, Lord John, 264.
Russell, Thomas, 199.
Russian Jew student, the, 382 ; hard-
ships of, 382-383.

Russian quarter, the, in Boston, 384.
Rutland, Vt., 326.

S , 281.

Safford's Geology of Tennessee, 289.

Sag Harbor, 10, 69.

St. Augustine, Fla., 330.

St. Glair's defeat, 41.

St. John's Chapel, Cambridge, 187.

St. Lawrence River, 151.

Salem, Mass., 127, 195.

Salins, 114, 233.

Salisbury Crags, 265.

Salt Lake City, 397-398.

Salvini, Tommaso, 182.

Sanders, Charles, 179.

Sanders Theatre, 179, 250, 443.

Sanford, Col. John, 73.

San Giovanni, Italy, 314, 317.

San Jacinto, battle of, 10.

San Marco, cabinet of, Florence, 314.

Saratoga, 326.

Sayles, Milton, 44.

Scherer, fencing-master, 43 ; Shaler's
relations with, 43-44; anecdotes
of, 44-46; 51,91.

Scherer's school of arms, 91.

"School Vacations," essay, cited,
364, 370.

School of Mines, Freiberg, 243.

School of Mines, London, 289.

School of Mines, Paris, 238, 322.

Scotland, 41 ; visits to geological lo-
calities of, 265.

"Sea and Land," 427.

Sea Caves, 145.

Sea-fowl, 147.

Sea Island district, geology of, 251.

Sea Island negroes, 251.

Secession and Secessionists, 82, 86,
88, 171, 172, 197.

Sedgwick, Adam, 259.

Sedgwick, Me., 253.

Serpentines, in Italy, 305, 306, 307.

Settlers of Kentucky, quality of, 33.

"Seven Gates," 348, 349; develop-
ment of, 351-352; 356; life at, 357-
359; conversational "orgies" at,
359; the house at, 409.

Seward, William EL, 197.

Shaler, Captain, at sea when a lad,
8; early master of his own ship,
8 ; merchant in New York city, 8 ;
privateer in the War of 1812, 8;
his ship finally vanishes from the
sea, 8; 9, 11, 24.

Shaler, Ann Hinde Southgate, 3, 12;
forbears of, 16-21; description of,
21-22; 23, 28, 56, 68, 80; death of,
88 ; 90, 221, 300 ; Shaler's letters to,
301, 327, 329-331, 419, 420.

Shaler, Elizabeth, 199.

Shaler, Nathaniel Burger, 3; for-
bears of, 3-11; description of, 11-
16 ; in Harvard College, 12 ; in Har-
vard Medical School, 12 ; practising
physician in Havana, 12; settle-
ment and marriage of, in Newport,
Ky., 12; surgeon at Newport Bar-
racks, 14; death of, 15, 16, 300; 18,
23, 24, 27, 29, 35 ; views of, on duel-
ling, 42-43, 46 ; interest of, in min-
eralogy, 49, 53-54; 56, 59, 60; col-
lege mates and friends of, 68, 112 ;
69, 88, 90, 140, 182, 209, 217, 224,
350, 377, 414, 419, 426.

Shaler, Nathaniel Southgate, birth
and birthplace of, 3 ; forbears of, on
the name side, in England, 3; in
America, 4; first on the island of
Jamaica, then in Connecticut, 4;
farmers with a propensity for
fighting, 4 ; great-great-great-grand-
father quarrying the red sandstone
of the Connecticut Valley, 4 ; great-
grandfather at Berkenridge New
Ferry, 4 ; in the Revolution, 4,8;
grandfather, Capt. Shaler, sea-
farer, merchant, and privateer, 4,
8; great-uncle, William Shaler,

476

INDEX

navigator, scholar, diplomat, 4,
5-7 ; great-aunt, Abigail S til well, a
great dame, 9-10; father, Dr. Na-
thaniel Burger Shaler, physician in
Kentucky, 11-16; ancestors on the
maternal side, the Southgates, in
England and in America, 16; first
settled in Virginia, 16 ; great-grand-
father, Wright Southgate, Vir-
ginia merchant and planter, 16;
grandfather, Richard Southgate,
lawyer, early established in Ken-
tucky, 17; 18-19, 21; grandmo-
ther, daughter of Dr. John Hinde,
surgeon in the British navy, a large
figure in her time and place, 19;
mother, Ann Hinde Southgate
Shaler, 21-22; inheritances from
these ancestors, 23-24; recollec-
tions of childhood, 26-48; first
memories, 27 ; playing at war, 28-
29 ; fight with a bully, 30-31 ; pass-
ing from childhood to youth, 31;
becomes an expert rifle-shot and
fencer, 43; a memorable fencing-
contest, 44-46; the duelling code,
46-48 ; desultory education, 49-66 ;
early interest in objects of natural
history, 49, 52, 53; interest in
game-cocks, 50-52 ; introduction
to geology, 53-55; turned toward
astronomy, 55-56; early attitude
toward religion, 57-58; awaken-
ing love of nature, 58-59; formal
schooling first at the barracks
school, in Newport, afterward with
a Swiss tutor, 59-63 ; youthful love
of philosophy, 63 ; first visits from
home, 66-70 ; a journey to Massa-
chusetts with his father, 68-69;
first visits to Frankfort and impres-
sions of it, 71-75; a friend of his
youth, Thomas F. Marshall, 77-79;
a brief contact with Abraham Lin-
coln, 79-80 ; member of a debating
society discussing States' Rights,
86-87 ; at Cambridge under a tutor,
90-92; first meeting with Agassiz,

93 ; becomes a pupil of Agassiz, 95 ;
his examination, 96; first work in
the laboratory, 98-100 ; the Zoologi-
cal Club, 103 ; relations with scien-
tific men in Boston and Cambridge,
104-111, 113-117; some college
companions, 118-129; cruising and
camping, 130-133; geological ex-
peditions, 139-169 ; in the Gulf of
St. Lawrence, 139-149; on the
island of Anticosti and the Labra-
dor coast, 150-169 ; fitting for the
duties of a soldier, 174 ; at Fort In-
dependence, Boston Harbor, 174-
176; last year at Harvard, 179-
192 ; work and play of student life,
179-184 ; economies of the Southern
students, 187-188; examinations
for his degree, 189-192 ; off to the
war, 207, 210, 211; in the Federal
service, captain of the Fifth Ken-
tucky Battery, 219-224 ; return to
Cambridge in 1864, 224; his first
university appointment, 225 ; takes
charge of the regular instruction in
zoology and geology in the Law-
rence Scientific School, 225; first
visit to European scenes of geologi-
cal interest, 226, 228; walks and
talks abroad, 228-246; study of
mountain structure in the Alps, 228-
229 ; acquaintances with Swiss geo-
logists, 229, 232 ; tramps with Ed-
ward Tawney, English geologist,
229-233; in Italy, 236-237; in
Paris, 237-238; in Germany, 238-
246; teaching and exploring, 247-
254; investigations for the United
States Geological Survey and the
Coast Survey, 247, 249 ; unearthing
fossil remains of elephants at Big
Bone Lick, 247-248; plans for de-
veloping the work at the Museum
of Comparative Zoology, 248; va-
rious scientific expeditions, 251,
253, 254; abroad again, 1872-1873,
255-269; visits to London, Cam-
bridge, Oxford, 257-265; in Scot-

INDEX

477

land, visiting classic geological lo-
calities, 265-266; in various old
English places, 266-269; field
work, 1873-1879, 270-299; ap-
pointed director of the Kentucky
Geological Survey, 271 ; Camp Har-
vard, summer school at Cumberland
Gap, 273, 274-275; progress of the
survey, 275-278; letters written
during this work, 278-282, 284-
288, 289-296; on Coast Survey
work in New England, 282-284;
in Colorado, 297; constantly pro-
moting the interests of the Mu-
seum of Comparative Zoology, 297-
298; third visit to Europe, 1881-82,
299-325; in Florence, 299; long
tramps for the exploration of Ital-
ian geological localities, 300; re-
cord of, from notes kept while in
Italy, 302-321 ; again in Paris and
in England, 322-324; relations
with Gordon McKay, 327-328;
urged to head the United States
Geological Survey, 328; researches
on the Florida coast, 321; mine
prospecting and other experiences,
1881-1891, 334-347; as a mining
expert, 334-340 ; writing a poem in
the intervals of his taxing profes-
sional work, 339; remarkable out-
put of literary work and scientific
reports, 342-343; homes in Cam-
bridge, 344-346; country living,
348-360; on Martha's Vineyard,
348, 351, 356; life at "Seven
Gates," his "Farm" there, 349,
351-359; his love of landscape,
355-356 ; as the teacher, 1864-1905,
361-385; social life of the Cam-
bridge of the Eighteen-seventies,
363 ; lofty view of the teacher's vo-
cation, 364-365 ; his lecture-notes,
365-366 ; geological excursions with
his students, 368-369 ; establishing
the Harvard Summer School, 369,
372; concerned in the founding of
Radcliffe College, 373; relations

with his students, 375-378, 382-
385; the "University Teas," 379;
the Sunday evening students' recep-
tions at the Shalers' house, 379-
382; administrative work, 1891-
1903, 386-401; appointed dean of
the Lawrence Scientific School,
1891, 386; large development of it
under his direction, 387; his atti-
tude upon the McKay bequest and
the "merger" project, 387-390;
his active part in faculty meetings,
392-396; work on Massachusetts
State boards, 396-397; hard work
and long journeys, 397-398 ; Low-
ell Institute lectures, 401; last
years, 1904-1905, 402-412; a "sab-
batical" abroad, 402; in Egypt,
Greece, Sicily, Italy, 402-407; at
home again and his duties re-
sumed, 408 ; closing of his life, 409-
410; death and burial, 411; per-
sonal characteristics, 412-423 ; na-
ture and variety of his literary
work, 424-442; his dramatic ro-
mance, "Elizabeth of England,"
439-443; his last volume, "From
Old Fields," 443; appreciative
tributes, 443-445.

Shaler, Sophia Penn Page, 55 n., 218
n. ; letters to, quoted, 220 n., 225,
443-444, 445; 227, 242; journal of,
quoted, 261-263, 264-265, 266-
269; 272, 287, 391, 445.

Shaler, William, 5; story of, 5-7;
early master of his own ship in
foreign trade, 5; involved in
the French Revolution, 5 ; voyage
about the world with the "mer-
chant-navigator" Cleveland, 5 ; ad-
ventures in South America, 5; in
government employment, 6 ; United
States consul at Algiers, 6; aids
the French in the expedition against
Algiers, 7; consul at Havana, 7;
death there, 7 ; his personality, 8-9 ;
his library in the Boston Public
Library, 10; 12, 24, 193, 199.

478

INDEX

Shaler, William, second, 11.

Shaler's battery. See Fifth Kentucky
Battery.

Shaler's journal. See Journal, Sha-
ler's.

Shaler's letters. See Letters.

Shaler's note-books. See Note-books.

Shayler, or Shaylor, family in War-
wickshire, 3.

Shaw, Pauline Agassiz, 271.

Shaw, Quincy A., 271.

Shelbyville, Ky., 247.

Sheridan, Gen. Philip H., 174.

Siberia, the steamship, 255.

Sibley, John Langdon, 179.

Sicily, 318, 405; study of .Etna, 405;
at Taormina, 406.

Silk culture, domestic, in Kentucky,
83, 84; in Italy, 316.

Silk-manufacture, in Kentucky, 83,
84.

Silurian system, study of the, 139,
150, 152.

Simons, Rev. Mr., a squire-parson,
256.

Slave-traders. See Negro-traders.

Slaveholders, 170, 195, 199.

Slaves and slavery, 21, 26, 27, 32, 33,
34; theories of Kentucky slave-
owners, 36 ; status of the slaves in
Southern households, 36-37; 38,
57, 80, 82; fugitive slaves, 83; 84;
growth of a proslavery party, 86 ;
112, 170, 195, 196, 199, 216, 242,
349, 362.

"Sleep and Dreams," 430.

Small, Skipper, 140, 141, 143; the
skipper and the gulls, 147; 148,
152, 153, 164.

Smith, Gen. Kirby, 219, 221.

"Smugglers, The," 221.

Smyth, Henry L., 418.

Social systems in settlements on either
side of the Ohio, 32-33.

Somerville, Mass., 185, 202.

South, the, 82, 84, 87, 155, 170, 173,
186, 195, 196, 197, 201, 216, 260;
Shaler's papers on, 291.

South Carolina, 86.

South Park, Col., 342.

Southern Club, 410.

Southern Confederacy, 171, 172, 173,
212, 433.

Southern people, the, 195.

Southern States. See South, the.

Southern students at Harvard, 195;
division between them and the
Northern students, 195.

Southern sympathizers, 86, 173, 196,
216.

Southerners, 170, 187, 196, 219.

Southgate, Ann. See Shaler, Ann
Hinde Southgate.

Southgate, Henry, 21.

Southgate, Richard, of Virginia, 17;
at William and Mary College, 17;
becomes a lawyer and moves to
Kentucky, 17; practises his pro-
fession and amasses a fortune, 17;
death of , 17 ; an example of the old
class of Virginia gentlemen, 18; 19,
21, 23, 35; treatment of his slaves,
37-38; 47, 49, 60; farm of, 66; 80,
83, 84; supposed to have figured
for "St. Clare" in "Uncle Tom's
Cabin," 85; 90, 186, 193, 202, 209,
221, 350.

Southgate, Mrs. Richard, 19; quali-
ties of, 19.

Southgate, William, 21, 74.

Southgate, Wright, the emigrant in
Virginia, 16; becomes a merchant
and planter there, 16 ; marries Miss
Lush of Albany, N. Y., 16; his
principal shops in Richmond, 17;
19.

Southgate family, in London, 16;
origin of the name, 16 ; 23 ; in Ken-
tucky, 34.

Southgate, town, 50.

Spain, 241.

Spanish Main, buccaneers on the, 23.

Spiders, Shaler's boyish studies of,
49, 96.

Squam Lake, 351.

"Squarson," the, 256.

INDEX

479

Stadiums, the Harvard and the
Grecian compared, 405.

Stage-coaching, 47.

Stallo, John B., 62.

"States'-Right" view, the, 86, 87,
171 ; States'-Rights group in Ken-
tucky, 173; 174, 211, 219.

Staunton, Va., 326.

Sterling, 266.

Stillman Infirmary, 377.

Stilwell, Abigail, 5, 7; stately home
of, in Lancaster, Mass., 9, 10; an
example of the great dame, 9 ; her
family stories, 9 ; her children and
grandchildren, 10 ; 11, 68, 193.

Stilwell, Elias, 357.

Stilwell, Elias Millard, 10-11.

Stilwell, Mr., 332.

Stimpson, William, 97, 104, 127;
qualities of, 128-129 ; 130, 132, 133 ;
incident of his merry humor, 163-
164.

Stone, Miss, archaeologist, 405.

Stone River, 123.

Storer, N. M., 397.

"Story of Our Continent," 427, 428.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 84, 85.

Stuart, David, 10.

Stuart, Elizabeth (Stilwell), 10.

Stuart, Gen. James E. B., 74.

Students' amusements, 182; march-
ing in gang to and from the play
and opera in Boston, 183 ; fishing-
parties outside Boston Harbor,
183; a little fun with the Boston
police, 183 ; revenge on a bore, 184.

Students' Reception Committee, 379.

Subiaco, 406.

Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 431; hint for
the plot of his "Ruddygore," 431.

Summer School of Geology, 272, 273.

Summer School of Natural History,
272.

Summer Schools, 258, 272, 273-275,
277, 281, 289-290, 294, 295, 369,
408; proposed, 426.

"Summer's Journey of a Natural-
ist," 430.

Sumner, Charles, 195.

Sumter, 170.

Sunday afternoon receptions at the
Shalers', 345, 346.

Sutherland, Lee, a gentleman vaga-
bond, 38-39.

Swamp lands, report on, 429.

Swiss guides, 229.

Switzerland, travels and geological
explorations in, 228-229, 231-236 ;
incidents of sojourns in remote
places, 231 ; target practice in the
village of B., 231-232; a unique
spectacle in Le Locle, 232-233.

T , Col., of Frankfort, 279.

T , Edward, 293.

Taliaferro, Richard, pioneer, 84.

Tampa, Fla., 330.

Taormina, 406.

Tawney, Edward B., 229; Shaler's
adventures with, 230, 231 ; 268.

Taylor, Edmund, 71.

Taylor, Gen. Zachary, 88.

Taylor family in Kentucky, 34.

Teacher, Shaler, the, 361-385.

Tenantry in early days of Kentucky,
shiftlessness of, 34-35; homes of,
35.

Tennessee, 172, 289.

Tennessee mountains, 66.

Tennessee River, 32.

Tewkesbury, Eng., 266; the abbey
church, 266-267.

Thompson, Benjamin, 176.

Thompson, Lieut., later Major, ar-
tillerist, at Fort Independence,
176; a hard disciplinarian, 176,
177; coolness of in action, 177; the
"true type of a soldier," 178.

Thompson, William H., 258, 259.
Thoughts on the Nature of Intel-
lectual Property," 426.

Thursday Club, 417.

Ticknor, George, 9, 139, 193 ; Boston
home of, 193, 194, 198; quality of,
194, 197; 199, 200.

Ticknor, Mrs. George, 193.

480

INDEX

Tilden, Samuel J., 291.

Tilly Foster Mine, 293.

Tisbury, Mass., 252, 346, 347.

Tisburys, the English and American,
and Rudyard Kipling, 346-347.

Torrey, Henry W., 185.

Trading ports in Labrador, 160-161.

Travers, Val de, 289.

Treat, Captain, of Eastport, 139.

Treat, Upton, sailor, 140.

Trenton, N. J., 428.

Trenton Point, 133, 134.

Triassic sandstones, 145.

Trilobite bed, the only, in New Eng-
land, 368.

Trinity College, Cambridge, Eng.,
258, 259.

Tuscan guide, 304.

Tuscan mountains, 307, 309.

Tuscany, garden region of, 306;
tramps in, 302-318 ; mountains of,
307, 309; on Monte Ferrato, 307,
308; in winter, 307, 309; 310;
Monte Morello, 312-313; 314, 315;
lignite mines and their working,
316-317.

Tyndall, John, 229, 257.

Umbagog Lakes, 135; sport at the,
136-137.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin," 84, 85; char-
acters of, supposed to have been
drawn from Newport, Ky., and its
neighborhood, 85 ; Richard South-
gate pictured in St. Clare, Legree
sketched from a neighbor, 85; the
incident of Eliza's flight drawn
from an old local tradition, 85;
195.

"Underground Railroad," 83.

Union, the, 82, 87, 88, 142, 172, 173,
174, 210, 211, 216, 433.

Union soldier, the, 432.

Unionists, in Kentucky, 171, 172,
173, 197, 432.

United States, 32, 73, 91, 157, 159,
161, 242, 249, 261.

"United States, The," 427.

United States Coast Survey, 247, 249,
270, 271 ; work on, in New England,
282-284; 348; Reports upon, 427.

United States Geological Survey,
247, 328; Reports upon, 343, 426,
427, 429.

University of Texas, 124.

University of Upsala, Sweden, 11.

University of Virginia, 194.

University Catalogue, the, 387.

University Hall, 344, 437.

University Press, 187.

"University Teas, The," 379, 399.

Ursuline convent, 202, 203-204.

"Use of Numbers in Society," 430.

Vacation schools, 369, 370.

Val d'Arno, 314, 317, 356.

"Valor," 427, 443.

Vanceburg, Ky., 284.

Vaughan, teacher in the Newport
Barracks school, 55; anecdotes of,
55 n.\ 56.

Verrill, A. E., 97, 139.

Versailles, Ky., 79.

Vesuvius, 237, 318; notes on the
ascent of, 319-320; 321; a farewell
view of, 407.

Via Romana, 309.

Vicenza, 237.

Victoria, Queen, 264.

Vienna, 240.

Villas, Italian. See Italian villas.

Vineyard Sound, 354-355.

Virginia, 16; colonists of Kentucky
from, 19, 34, 84; Virginia system
of land grants inherited by Ken-
tucky, 32; 36, 41, 66, 116, 172, 195,
218 n. ; 253, 254, 260 ; 293, 369, 398.

Virginia mountains, 326.

Virginia oyster, the, 168.

Volcanoes, extinct, studying the phe-
nomena of, 237.

Waggener, Leslie, 121; a story of,
after the Civil War, 123-124;
president of the University of
Texas, 124; 208.

INDEX

481

Walcott, Dr. Henry P., 343.

Walks, in the country about Boston,
201-205, 368-369; along the sea-
shore, 205; abroad, 228; among
the Alps, 229; through a part of
the Rhone Valley, 234 ; out on the
Campagna, 236; in Italian towns,
236-237; in England, 255; in and
about Florence, 299-300; from
Florence to Impruneta, 302-304;
305-306 ; between Prato and Monte
Ferrato, 306-309; about Martha's
Vineyard, 353, 358, 360 ; 399 ; in the
country about Rome, 406 ; 413.

Wallace, Alfred Russel, 186.

Wallace, Col. Lew, 220.

Waltham, Mass., 232.

War Department, 277, 278.

War of 1812, Capt. Shaler a privateer
in, 8; 41.

Warren, Dr. John Collins, 12, 53.

Warwickshire, Eng., ancestors of
Shaler there, 3.

Washington, D. C., 163, 329.

Water cure at Dresden, 238; ac-
quaintances made in, 239-240.

" Way with the Mutineers, The," 222.

Webb, Mrs. Willoughby L., 409.

Welsh, German drawing-master, 58.

Wendell, Barrett, memories of Shaler
in the Harvard faculty, 392-395.

Werner, Abraham Gottlob, 243.

West, Benjamin, 20.

West Point, 10, 90.

Westmorly Hall, 254, 344.

Weymouth River, 368.

Wheatland, Richard, 97, 127-128.

Wheeler, Gen. Joseph, 74.

Whigs, 82.

Whitby, Eng., 268.

White Mountains, a tramp over Mt.
Washington, 192 ; 329.

White Sulphur Springs, Va., expe-
dition from Cambridge to, 253 ; 254,
329.

Whitney, Josiah D wight, 227.

Whittier, John G., 195.

Willard, Ky., 286.

William and Mary College, 17.

Winlock, Joseph, 247.

Winsor, Justin, 343, 426, 427.

Wolff, John Eliot, 418.

Woodworth, Jay B., 418.

World's Work, The, quoted, 367.

Wright, Chauncey, 283.

Wye, the river, 267.

Wyman, Jeffries, 104; characteriza-
tion of, 105-107; 109, 111, 189,
190, 208.

Wyman, Dr. Merrill, 107; character-
ization of, 107-109.

Wyman, Rufus, qualities of, 109.

"X," a collaborator of Agassiz, 114.

Yankee, the, of caricature, 85 ; Yan-
kee life, 128; 143, 144.
York Cathedral, 267-268.

Zermatt, 234.

Zoological Club, 102, 103, 116, 119,

120, 186, 204.
Zoological Garden, Dresden, 241.
Zoological Hall, 102, 106, 119, 120,

186.
Zoological Museum. See Museum of

Comparative Zoology.
Zoology, studies in, 100, 101, 111,

117, 127; Shaler instructor in, 225;

275, 297.

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