THE AGASSIZ SCHOOL 49 



returning from Nahant, where he had died, to [their 

 house in] Pemberton Square, Lizzie arranged that 

 she with my sister SaUie should spend the winter at 

 Quincy Street. She could not have done this without 

 Agassiz's approval, which he gave most willingly, 

 for he had made himself absolutely one of us and was 

 like a son to my mother; but then all duties devolved 

 upon the housekeeper. 



Mrs. Agassiz's part in the school is still more fully de- 

 scribed by Miss Schuyler, one of her pupils, in the address 

 published below in Chapter XV. The term, "Hostess of 

 the School, " that Miss Schuyler applies to her is significant 

 of the unusual atmosphere that she gave the schoolroom. 

 "She was always to me an ideal gentlewoman," one of the 

 former pupils wrote long after the school days were ended, 

 "an American lady whom any nation might be proud to 

 claim as queen. I always recall her voice, remembering it' 

 with the admiration I felt at the time when she reproved 

 her schoolgirls for their boisterous manners and trouble- 

 some behaviour in the hours when they should have been 

 quiet, ending — * I expect you to behave as you would in 

 your mothers' drawing-rooms.'" It was in such wearisome 

 matters of discipline and in the general supervision and 

 direction of the whole that Mrs. Agassiz's principal share 

 of the work lay. But one habit which became of great con- 

 sequence to both her and Agassiz was formed in these 

 days in the schoolroom. She always attended Agassiz's 

 lectures and took faithful notes of them, which she after- 

 wards wrote out. The practice thus gained proved of in- 

 estimable value to him for the preservation of later and 



