38 ELIZABETH GARY AGASSIZ 



George: "Our relations were so peculiar that I don't 

 know what to style them. She was my mother, my sister, 

 my companion and friend, all in one. . . . From the time 

 that I first saw her at Mr. Felton's house as Miss Gary, 

 and I only a small boy of thirteen, there never was a word 

 of disagreement; she belonged to me and I to her; it could 

 not have been otherwise; she learned to know me through 

 and through and placed in me the most unbounded con- 

 fidence, and entrusted me with the keeping of her sorrows." 

 Thus the beginning of Mrs. Agassiz's married life was 

 occupied with the care of the three children and the regu- 

 lation of Agassiz's amazing establishment. Although many 

 of the human inmates had disappeared, the animate zoolog- 

 ical specimens still had to be reckoned with. Many a stir- 

 ring incident of their varied doings is related, one by Mrs. 

 Agassiz herself in a letter written to her mother not long 

 after her marriage. 



TO MRS. THOMAS G. GARY 



[Cambridge] 

 By the way, I must tell you something that hap- 

 pened to me today, in solemn warning to any woman 

 who thinks of becoming the wife of a naturalist. In 

 a hurry this evening to prepare for church, I ran to 

 my cupboard for my boots, and was just going to 

 put my hands upon them when I caught sight of the 

 tail of a good-sized snake, which was squirming about 

 among the shoes. I screamed in horror to Agassiz, who 

 was still sound asleep, that there was a serpent in my 

 shoe-closet. "Oh, yes," he said sleepily, "I brought 

 in several in my handkerchief last night; probably 



