ABSTRACT
On a late spring day in 1877, nineteen-year-old Henry Fairfield Osborn walked slowly around a display of fossils in a room on the campus of Princeton College. His tailored, fashionable suit gave him the air of a European aristocrat. In the hall the clicking of his shoes on the polished wood floor made the only sound in the still, dry air that smelled of the heat of the approaching summer. The fossils had been arranged by Professor Arnold Guyot to show the steady, divinely ordered progression of life on earth. To Guyot the lesson seemed so clear and elegant that its truth was self-evident. The young Osborn agreed. He had recently become interested in natural history as a result of attending Guyot's lectures. So inspired, he was about to leave the bucolic splendor of Princeton to hunt fossils in the wilds of the Western territories. Having finished his inspection of the display, he turned and quickly strode down the hall and into the open air on his way to wrestle with eternity.
