PREFACE 



A FEW words in regard to the circumstances 

 under which this book has been written are 

 necessary. In the spring of 1917, the Council of Rad- 

 cHffe College appointed Mrs. William G. Farlow, Miss 

 Alice M. Longfellow, and Professor William E. By- 

 erly a committee, to which Professor Fred N. Robin- 

 son was later added, to arrange for the publication of 

 a biography of Mrs. Louis Agassiz, the first President 

 of the college, in order that the future students might 

 have some knowledge of her character and of what 

 Radcliffe owes to her. It was decided that the earlier 

 portion of the memoir, treating of Mrs. Agassiz's 

 youth and married hfe (1822-73), should be written 

 by Miss Emma F. Cary, her youngest and only sur- 

 viving sister, and the remainder (1873-1907) by my- 

 self. 



From the time when the biography was first 

 planned. Miss Cary devoted herself to its prepara- 

 tion and gave it constant thought. It was to be not 

 only the crowning labor of her long life, which al- 

 ready numbered eighty-three years, but also a final 

 tribute of devotion to a dearly loved sister. Her 

 friends earnestly hoped that she might live to see the 

 book completed, but she had made only a preliminary 

 selection of letters and had written merely a few sec- 

 tions of her narrative, when in August, 1918, her 

 work was ended by her death. 



