In these later years came also many demands on Ericsson’s generosity, and to the near members of his family, and even to his most distant relatives, he invariably responded with a substantial gift. Realizing the tremendous value of education, he gave freely when money was needed to provide schooling for the children of members of his family whom he had never seen. But these benefactions to relatives and friends were invariably made only when Ericsson believed in the true need and the sincerity of the request. Out of the considerable income which came to him from his inventions in later years he gave also with a liberal hand whenever public or private distress was brought to his attention.

Ericsson’s own wants were few. His temperate habits, his love of physical exercise, and his simple tastes made but slender demands on his income. Vigorous by inheritance, and possessing a fine physique from his early activities, he preserved his splendid vigor throughout his long life. Rarely has been given to the world a finer example of health and character contributing to a career of splendid usefulness.

On the eighth of March, 1889, John Ericsson died in his New York house, where for a quarter of a century he had lived his active and solitary existence. The significance of his death was recognized, not only by his native Sweden and the United States, the land of his adoption, but by the entire civilized world, in which his inventions had brought such revolutionizing changes. But the story of his achievements can never die, and in the history of his useful life is an inspiration to every succeeding generation to whom the United States unfolds an ever-increasing opportunity.

III
LOUIS AGASSIZ

Born in Motier, Switzerland, 1807
Died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1873

When men first received the names which they have handed down through succeeding generations there was undoubtedly an appropriate reason for the name which each man bore. The Smiths quite probably worked with iron, the Carpenters labored with saw and hammer, and the son of John became Johnson to his friends. But centuries have passed, and it rarely happens to-day that a man’s name describes his vocation or his characteristics.

Occasionally, however, there is an exception, and the name of Agassiz is one of these. Lover of nature, and particularly of the living things which have for hundreds of thousands of years inhabited the earth, Louis Agassiz bore a name that suggested his ruling interests; for Agassiz, or Aigasse as it was written in old French, is the name of the magpie, a lovable, friendly bird that was known to every peasant in the beautiful countryside of La Sarraz.

Louis Agassiz was a naturalist and a geologist. Wise in all departments of these wide fields of nature study, and the leading teacher in his time, he will always be remembered for his discoveries in two particular departments of his great subject. Agassiz was an ichthyologist and a palæontologist. These are hard Latin names, but they are easily understood, for an ichthyologist is a man who studies fishes, and a palæontologist is one who is a student of the ancient life of the globe as it may be seen in the fossil remains deep buried in the earth. Moreover, to the science of geology Agassiz contributed a great discovery which revolutionized the thought of scientists of his day; for it was he who proved beyond all doubt that at one time, far back in the world’s history, great moving glaciers covered a huge part of the earth’s surface, and where now the summer sunshine warms green fields, at one time, in an arctic temperature, these same lands were deep buried under grinding, creeping fields of ice.

Not far from Lake Neuchâtel, in western Switzerland, is the little village of Motier, a place so small that it is hard to find it on the maps of ordinary atlases. Below the village the blue water of Lake Morat gleams like a bit of sky in the green of hills and fields, and beyond, like a blue wall against the sky, the Bernese Alps look down over the ancient country.

Here on May 28, 1807, was born Jean Louis Rudolph Agassiz. His father was a clergyman and his mother the daughter of a physician, and the boy inherited from them a love of study and a delight in teaching which always distinguished him. From the beautiful country of his birth came also an inheritance of nature that kept him throughout his long life always a boy at heart.