 In 1917 , English professor Lane Cooper from Cornell University published a collection of reminiscences of Agassiz . The book included notes from several notable contributors , including Scudder and Cooper , William James , Professor Addison Emery Verrill ( " [ Agassiz 's ] plan was to make young students depend on natural objects rather than on statements in books " ) , and Professor Edward S. Morse , who wrote that Agassiz 's method was " simply to let the student study intimately one object at a time . " Cooper prefigures Pound 's interest by remarking on the " close , though not obvious , relation between investigation in biology or zoology and the observation and comparison of these organic forms which we call form of literature and works of art " , concluding that " We study a poem , the work of man 's art , in the same way that Agassiz made Shaler study a fish . " Critic Robert Scholes concludes that Pound had access to this book and used the material within it as the source for the parable that opens ABC of Reading . 
