On an autumn day in the early fifties, as I loitered in the green-house of the Botanic Garden at Cambridge, a lithe bare-headed man, in rough brown attire, came quickly stepping in from the flower-beds outside. He was in his fullest vigour, his hair more inclined to stand erect than to lie smooth, his dark eyes full of animation. It was a noticeably vivid and alert personality, and as he tossed on to a working-table a heavy sheaf of long-stemmed plants, wet from a recent shower and bent over them in sharp scrutiny, I knew I was in the presence of Asa Gray, the first of American botanists. He had come as a boy from a remote rural district, and with few advantages, following the bent of a marked scientific genius, he had won for himself before reaching middle life a leading place. I was soon to know him better, for it was my fortunate lot to be one in the crowd of juniors which for a term lined up before him once a week or so in Holden Chapel. The small peculiarities of great men have an interest, and the function I am seeking now to fulfil is to make sharp the ordinary presentment of the eminent characters I touch. I recall of Asa Gray, that with the class, he sat at his desk behind a substantial rail, which fenced him in from the boys in the front row, his seat a little raised and the notes before him made plain by a narrow light-well, which in the Holden of those days opened over the teacher's head to a sky-light in the roof. Gray's utterance was rather hesitant. He would catch for his word often, reiterating meanwhile the article, "the-a, the-a, the-a," his gaze meanwhile fixed upon the sky-light, and a nervously gyrating forefinger raised high and brightly illuminated. The thought suggested was that he had a prompter on the roof to whom he was distressfully appealing to supply the true phrase. For Professor Gray the truth was in the top rather than the bottom of the well. Though sometimes long in coming it was the right thing when it came and clothed his thought properly. Sizing up the new professor, in our first days with him, as boys will do, some unconscionable dogs in our front row, assuming an attitude which Abraham Lincoln afterward made classic, settled back in their chairs and rested their feet on the rail in front in a position higher than their heads. The professor, withdrawing his gaze suddenly from the sky-light, found himself confronted not by expectant faces but by a row of battered and muddy boot-soles. His face fell; his whirling forefinger, ceasing to gyrate, tilted like a lance in rest at the obnoxious cowhide parapet. "Those boots, young gentlemen, ah, those boots"; he ejaculated forlornly, and the boots came down with mutinous clatter. Professor Gray soon established himself as a prime favourite among our lazy men, of whom there were too many. In calling us up he began with the A's, following down the class in alphabetic regularity. While Brooks was reciting, it was easy for Brown, sitting next, to