NOVEMBER 4, 1895 This has been a very happy Monday. I mended my aquarium, read up on ants for my lecture tomorrow, and finished other odds and ends. At three o'clock, Miss Johanna, Miss Byrant, and myself went on a jolly ride to Mr. Dickinson's, where we remained for supper and came back by moonlight. The nights are cool and the days warm, like the desert, the air being very dry. I cannot help thinking of all the splendid scientific books I have to read. NOVEMBER 5, 1895 The day has been very full. McCook's book on ants gave the finishing touches to my lecture, which was well received by the class. Thoreau's "Autumn" was read. He speaks of a drought as perhaps causing dull autumnal colors, while I had been accounting for our beautiful deep colors this year, especially those of the sugar maple, as due to our very dry, bright weather. Perhaps I have only noticed them more. I am still unable to find a mole cricket. Ants seem to have disappeared. NOVEMBER 9, 1895 Made a sketch of Betsy Bell. What a fine day! Heard the familiar note of the yellow-bellied wood pecker. The promised rain has come. Patter, patter, gently, spring-like. The charged electricity of our warm days is let loose silently. The gutter under my window gurgles melodiously. Goodnight; sweet dreams! NOVEMBER 10, 1895 A delightful, rainy Sunday. Read Marcus Aurelius. I like him better than Thomas à Kempis. He must suit my age better. My character, too, is stoical. See my book of quotations for notes. EDUCATION Education is the drawing out, or development, of our natural powers; the cultivation and strengthening of our body, mind, feelings, conscience, will, and art of expression. The most important natural power we have is the freedom to choose and act for ourselves, and that man is best educated who has the wisdom and courage to choose and act in the best manner. The aim of all true education is to persuade and enable boys and girls to become good and useful men and women. LOSING AND FINDING The Naturalist took a sixteen-mile tramp one day with his rifle on his shoulder and brought back several jaybirds for his collection, but, just as he reached home, he discovered that his knife was missing. He had learned in his psychological studies that the memory could be stimulated by "eddying around a subject," and that lost objects had frequently been recovered through dreams by this same process of concentration; so he proceeded to concentrate, until, finally, he brought back a distinct picture of the lost knife lying on the ground in the woods where he had shot the first jaybird. The next day, he walked back to the spot with perfect confidence and picked up the knife. The memory of a sound may also be recalled very vividly upon occasion. Soon after the Naturalist entered college, when he was about fourteen, his father gave him a silver dollar to buy a much-needed geometry and he went skating with the dollar in his trousers' pocket. That night, when he prepared for bed, the dollar was missing, and a dollar went almost as far in those days as it did in the days of George Washington. Lying upon his bed, with sleep a stranger, he thought very hard and finally succeeded in recalling a peculiar clink upon the ice that did not sound like that made by a skate. Early next morning before breakfast, without mentioning his loss to anyone, he hurried to the pond with his heart in his mouth and saw the silver dollar lying on the ice near a big rock where he had come to grief in trying to execute a difficult turn with an old-fashioned pair of skates. It looked to him then about the size of a dinner-plate and seemed as valuable as a diamond tiara. CHAPTER XII WINTER READING NOVEMBER 20, 1895 A cold day with some snow. I fixed up my laboratory and read "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Dr. Jekyll, a good man, changed himself by the use of a powder to Hyde, the personification of all the pure wickedness of his nature. Crimes being committed and the level gradually lowering, Dr. Jekyll at length found himself unable to be anything but Mr. Hyde. The lower nature dragging the upper down! The book is unpleasant and I dislike it all. But it is true sin conquering righteousness. DECEMBER I, 1895 I must not fail to record the wonderful impression made upon me by "The Life of Agassiz" written by his wife. I am devouring it every spare moment, as I would a fascinating standard novel. It will make an era in my life, I am quite sure. Some things are so much like my own life; only I have done so very little. It is almost discouraging to think |