loathsome. I turned it over and
around; looked it in the face--ghastly!--from behind, beneath, above,
sideways, at three-quarters view--just as ghastly. I was in despair.
At an early hour I concluded that lunch was necessary; so, with
infinite relief, the fish was carefully replaced in the jar, and for
an hour I was free.

"On my return I learned that Professor Agassiz had been at the Museum,
but had gone, and would not return for several hours.... Slowly I drew
forth that hideous fish, and, with a feeling of desperation, again
looked at it. I might not use a magnifying glass; instruments of all
kinds were interdicted. My two hands, my two eyes, and the fish; it
seemed a most limited field.... At last a happy thought struck me--I
would draw the fish; and now with surprise I began to discover new
features in the creature....

"He listened attentively to my brief rehearsal of the structure of
parts whose names were still unknown to me.... When I had finished he
waited, as if expecting more, and then, with an air of disappointment,
'You have not looked very carefully; why,' he continued most
earnestly, 'you haven't even seen one of the most conspicuous features
of the animal, which is as plainly before your eyes as the animal
itself. Look again! Look again!' and he left me to my misery.

"I ventured to ask what I should do next.

"'Oh, look at your fish,' he said, and left me again to my own
devices. In a little more than an hour he returned and heard my new
catalogue.

"'That is good, that is good,' he repeated: 'but that is not all; go
on.' And so for three long days he placed that fish before my eyes,
forbidding me to look at anything else or use any artificial aid.
'Look, look, look,' was his repeated injunction."

Doctor Scudder says that this was the best entomological lesson he
ever had, and a lesson of which the influence extended to the details
of every subsequent study.

It is the duty of the college student to look at his fish, to thumb
his lexicon, to read his textbook, to study his notes, to think, and
think hard, upon the truth therein presented. Of all the students in
the world the Scotch represent this simple duty the best. The men at
Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews and Aberdeen toil mightily.

The duty of learning one's lessons is, in these times, opposed by at
least two elements of college life. One is self-indulgence and the
other is athletics. Self-indulgence is a general cause and constant.