178 LOUIS AGASSIZ [CHAP. xxi. 



great effort of preparing his elaborate address, its 

 delivery before a large audience, combined with the 

 sorrow clue to his daughter's illness, proved too much 

 for his brain ; and soon after he broke down completely, 

 and a very severe and dangerous attack of paralytic 

 apoplexy disabled him for more than ten months. His 

 speech was affected, he was unable to control his hands 

 and hold anything, and physicians forbade every exer- 

 tion, even thinking. This last privation was the most 

 painful, and not easy to bear without constant desire 

 to break the doctor's order. Lying on a lounge in his 

 sick-room, he looked like a lion loaded with chains and 

 encaged in an iron box. His splendid and strongly 

 built body was no longer at the command of his will ; 

 his inquisitive, brilliant, and intelligent eyes followed 

 closely every visitor, as if to inquire what they thought 

 of his sickness. Vertigo was a constant menace. How- 

 ever, as soon as he could, he began to dictate notes in 

 regard to the arrangement of the more recent collec- 

 tions received in his museum ; and he called to his side 

 some of his assistants, to confer with them regarding 

 lectures and the application of a new and strict rule 

 to each employee, compelling each to work seven hours 

 a day purely for the benefit of the institution, no out- 

 side work, even of a scientific character, being allowed 

 during that time. 



In the spring of 1870, as soon as it was possible to 

 remove him without too much risk, he left Cambridge 

 for the small village of Dcerfield, on the Connecticut 

 River. There he improved rapidly; the vertigo symp- 

 toms soon disappeared, daily walking about the village 



