of his being pursued by a printer's boy about the town, from house to club, from club to the theatre, and so on, and finally of his being overtaken, getting into a corner and writing an admirable article with pencil and paper on the top of his hat. Agassiz,[79] the great Swiss naturalist, who became an adopted and honored son of this country, was singularly unmethodical in his habits of professional labor. If he was suddenly seized with an interest in some scientific inquiry, he would pursue it at once, putting by all present work, though it might be that he had just got fairly started in another direction. "I always like to take advantage," he would say, "of my productive moods." The rule that we must finish one thing before we begin another, had no force with him. An individual connected with the lyceum of a neighboring city called upon Agassiz to induce him to lecture on a certain occasion, but was courteously informed by the scientist that he could not comply with the request. "It will be a great disappointment to our citizens," suggested the caller. "I am sorry for that," replied Agassiz. "We will cheerfully give you double the usual price," added the agent, "if you will accommodate us." "Ah, my dear sir," replied the scientist, with that earnest but genial expression so natural to his manly features, "I cannot afford to waste time in making money." A very similar habit of composition or study possessed Goldsmith, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Pope, and some others of the poets, who not infrequently laid by a half-constructed composition for two or three years, then finally took up the neglected theme, finished and published it. This unmethodical style of doing things is but one of the many eccentricities of genius. Scott said he never knew a man of much ability who could be perfectly regular in his habits, while he had known many a blockhead who could. Southey and Coleridge were at complete antipodes in regard to regularity of habits and punctuality: the former did everything by rule, the latter nothing. Charles Lamb said of Coleridge, "He left forty thousand treatises on metaphysics and divinity, not one of them complete." Neither Agassiz, Coleridge, nor any of similar irregularity in work, is to be imitated in those respects. Had it not been for Agassiz's far-seeing and vigorous powers,--in short, for his great genius, he could never have accomplished his remarkable mission. The deduction which we naturally draw is, that method is a good servant but a bad master. If genius were to be trammelled by system and order, it would suffocate. Perhaps Montaigne was nearly right when he thought that individuals ought sometimes to cross the line of fixed rules, in order to awaken their vigor and keep them from growing musty.