50 ELIZABETH GARY AGASSIZ 



more important lectures. It is true that having had no pre- 

 vious scientific training Mrs. Agassiz had to pass through a 

 period of apprenticeship, in the course of which, as she often 

 recalled with enjoyment in a laugh at her own expense, 

 Agassiz one day on looking over her notes, said, "My dear, 

 these are most gracefully expressed, but from the point of 

 view of science they are such nonsense as I never uttered." 

 But that she learned not to sacrifice scientific truth for the 

 sake of a happily turned phrase and became a remarkably 

 proficient assistant of Agassiz we shall see later in the ac- 

 count of the Journey in Brazil and her other writings. 



Beyond her appearance in Agassiz' s lecture-room some of 

 the pupils have few? recollections of Mrs. Agassiz in their 

 school days. Yet, as she told them, she was '* always there," 

 ready to give them help, counsel, affection, and to do for 

 them a thousand services that at the time they did not 

 realize she was rendering them. A pleasant picture of her 

 part in the school life is afforded us in a letter written to 

 her on the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the school 

 by one of the first comers, who fifty years earlier had de- 

 scribed her as "very pretty and sweet looking and very 

 kind to us." "I have been recalling with joy," she says, 

 "that beloved day fifty years ago when your school 

 began. ... I must thank you once more for us all for your 

 great thoughtf ulness in sending up to us in the schoolroom 

 between two and three when we were eating our dinners 

 there steaming plates of the best mutton broth I ever 

 saw. How kind it was ! iVnd how welcome it was ! You never 

 taught me, but you often let me pronounce French to you. 

 I wonder if you remember what you usually said after it — 

 * Surprising — the perfectly Yankee sound of it, though 



