An important part of our curriculum was the Tuesday evening geological conference, during which any graduate worker could give a paper. To these conferences came, at different times, Brooks, Spurr, Schrader, Goodrich, Mendenhall, P. S. Smith, Mansfield, Matthes, Lane, Crosby, Barton, Douglas Johnson, Daly, and all the Harvard staff. The men got confidence in public speaking and exhibiting, and the professors commented in kindly fashion. Topics ranged from summer work in the far west and current studies in meteorology under Ward to petrographic or experimental work with projection apparatus under Wolff and me. Jackson and Hyatt brought in fossils, and the Geological Survey was always in evidence as a goal for young men, or a subject for review. Shaler’s comments were accompanied by a string of good stories. The conferences taught students how to teach by making them speak in public. It was one of Shaler’s most productive inventions, and has been copied far and wide. Walcott in the Survey looked to Harvard to produce field mappers of rocks. Graduate students had the choice between process and history, geography linked to school teaching, microscopical petrography and crystallography linked to the minerals and rock collections, or evolution linked to museums and fossils. Beecher of Yale had found hairs on the legs of fossil trilobites. Someone else had found fossil bacteria. A group of petrographers got together and founded an artificial classification of fire-made rocks based on chemistry--no use at all to the field man with a rock specimen. Agassiz had built a magnificent museum. The research motive was based on collections; the public exhibit motive was based on evolution and big, rare things. The publication motive imitated Europe; “be as technical as possible, detest reporters and newspapers, and never be popular.” In 1897 Harvard University gave me a Ph.D. degree, after a double thesis and an oral examination. I passed the examination very awkwardly, as my capacity for remembering text book information is nil. My theses were (1) on an invention, a mineral hardness instrument; and (2) on the included fragments found in Boston dikes. The microsclerometer, as the instrument was called (that is, a microscope scratcher), was designed to diamond drill a mineral to a fixed depth. The hardness was measured by the time consumed, on the theory that the energy required for the standard hole varied with the time, and the time with the hardness. The number of rotations with a constant speed motor is a measure of the time.