JAMES ELLIOT CABOT. fi53 



more of studious and systematic work than its predecessor the " Dial," 

 but far less of freshness and originality, — and then went under. 



A more successful enterprise in which he was meanwhile enlisted was 

 a trip to Lake Superior with Agassiz, in 1850, when Cabot acted as sec- 

 retary and wrote and illustrated the published volume of the expedition, 

 — a book which was then full of fresh novelties, and which is still very 

 readable. Soon after his return, he went into his brother Edward's 

 architect office in Boston to put his accounts in order, and ultimately 

 became a partner in the business, erecting various buildings. 



He was married on Sept. 28, 1857, to Elizabeth Dwight, daughter 

 of Edmund Dwight, Esq., a woman of rare qualities and great public 

 usefulness, who singularly carried on the tradition of those Essex County 

 women of an earlier generation, who were such strong helpmates to 

 their husbands. Of Mrs. Cabot it might almost have been said what 

 was said by John Lowell in 1826 of his cousin Elizabeth Higginson, 

 wife of her double-first cousin, George Cabot : " She had none of the 

 advantages of early education afforded so bountifully to the young ladies 

 of the present age ; but she surpassed all of them in the acuteness of her 

 observation, in the knowledge of human nature, and in her power of 

 expressing and defending the opinions which she had formed." * Thus 

 Elliot Cabot writes of his wife: " From the time when the care of her 

 children ceased to occupy the most of her time, she gradually became 

 one of the most valuable of the town officials, as well as the unofficial 

 counsellor of many who needed the unfailing succor of her inexhaustible 

 sympathy and practical helpfulness." 



Cabot visited Europe anew after his marriage, and after his return 

 served for nine years as a school committee-man in Brookline, where he 

 resided. He afterwards did faithful duty for six years as chairman of 

 the examining committee of Harvard Overseers. He gave for a single 

 year a seiies of lectures on Kant at Harvard University, and for a time 

 acted as Instructor in Logic there, which included a supervision of the 

 forensics or written discussions then in vogue. The Civil War aroused 

 his sympathies strongly, especially when his brother Edward and his 

 personal friend Francis L. Lee became respectively Colonel and Lieu- 

 tenant-colonel of the 44th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Elliot 

 Cabot himself enlisted in a drill club, and did some work for the Sanitary 

 Commission. He also assisted greatly in organizing the Museum of Fine 

 Arts and in the administration of the Boston Athenaeum. 



* Lodge's Cabot, p. 12 ; note. 



