CAMBRIDGE 37 



marriage, his son, Alexander, a boy thirteen years of age, 

 had joined him, and in the autumn of 1850 his two 

 daughters, Ida and PauHne, both some years younger than 

 their brother, came to America. Thus the family in Oxford 

 Street was made complete. 



The relation between Mrs. Agassiz and her step-children 

 was most unusual and singularly happy. Her judicious 

 tenderness won their affection, and her devotion to them 

 and theirs to her in sickness and in health until death 

 parted them knew scarcely a shade of difference to that 

 existing between a mother and her own children. "She 

 showed us and taught us, just by being herself, only good 

 and lovely things," one of them wrote of her many years 

 afterward. Close and enduring as was the tie soon formed 

 between Mrs. Agassiz and her little step-daughters, the 

 intimacy which speedily developed between Alexander 

 and herself was still more remarkable. He had come to 

 America less than a year after the death of his own mother, 

 who had been his adored companion and the object of his 

 tender devotion during her final illness, when he had as- 

 sumed the care of the household. Quiet and thoughtful 

 beyond his years, with his mother's place forlornly empty, 

 speaking only French and German, he offered in his boyish 

 heart ready soil for the flower of affection that sprang up 

 at his first sight of his father's future wife, and that never 

 ceased to blossom. She remained, as he said at her death, 

 for sixty years his mother, guide and friend. How closely 

 their lives became entwined will in a measure be seen 

 in later chapters, but has best been expressed by Alex- 

 ander himself in a letter written shortly after his step- 

 mother's death and published in his biography by his son 



