to-morrow the Aeggisch-horn, and look down from there upon the Aletsch glacier.  You will have under your eye all the more interesting and important phenomena relating to the matter.”  We parted next morning.  I had enjoyed a great privilege, for he was the man of all men to meet in such a place,—­a feeling deepened a day or two later, when I looked down from the peak he had indicated upon this wide-stretching glacier below.

As age drew on he mellowed well.  Perhaps sympathy with men and things outside his special walk was no stronger than in earlier years, but it had readier expression.  I heard from him this good story.  President Eliot was once showing about the university a multimillionaire and his wife who had the good purpose to endow a great school of learning in the West.  Having made the survey, they stood in Memorial Hall, about to say good-bye.  “Well, Mr. Eliot,” said the wife, “How much money have you invested?” Mr. Eliot stated to her the estimated value of the university assets.  The lady turning to her husband, exclaimed, with a touch of the feeling that money will buy everything, “Oh, husband, we can do better than that.”  Said Mr. Eliot, with a wave of the hand toward the ancient portraits on the walls:  “Madame, we have one thing which money cannot buy,—­nearly three centuries of devotedness!” There is fine appreciation of a precious possession in this remark.  In other ways Harvard may be surpassed.  Other institutions may easily have more money, more students.  As able men may be in other faculties possibly (I will admit even this) there may be elsewhere better football.  But that through eight generations there has been in the hearts of the best men, a constant all-absorbing devotion to the institution, is a thing for America unique, and which cannot be taken away.  How stimulating is this to a noble loyalty in these later generations!  The old college is a thing to be watchfully and tenderly shielded.  As Alexander told me the story, I felt in his manner and intonation that the three centuries of devotedness had had great influence with him.  As John Harvard had been the first of the liberal givers, so he was the last, and I suppose the greatest.  The money value of his gifts is very large, but who will put a value upon the labour, the watchfulness, the expert guidance exercised by such a man, unrequited and almost without intermission throughout a long life!  His fine nature, no doubt, prompted the consecration, but the old devotedness spurred him to emulation of those who had gone before.

In 1909 I enjoyed through Agassiz a great pleasure.  He invited me to his house where I found gathered a company of his friends, many of them men of eminence.  He had just returned from his journey in East Africa, during which he had penetrated far into the interior, studying with his usual diligence the natural history of the regions.  He entertained us with an informal talk beautifully and profusely illustrated by photographs.