54 ELIZABETH GARY AGASSIZ 



an unvarying sort of existence as hers was, she should 

 have given such a passionate expression both of hap- 

 piness and suffering. Perhaps if she had found the 

 natural food for her capacities, and her heart and 

 head had not been so starved for want of nourish- 

 ment from without, her imagination would not have 

 gone on " weaving endlessly for her that story " which, 

 as she tells us in Jane Eyre, she was never tired of 

 listening to as she walked up and down the gallery 

 at Thornfield Hall on cold and snowy afternoons. 

 After reading her life I took up Jane Eyre again, and 

 I could not help thinking what a dehght it must have 

 been to her to get out of the tedious reahties of her 

 Haworth home and live for a few hours Jane Eyre's 

 tremendously exciting life. If I knew where to get 

 them I should like soon to read the books of her sis- 

 ters. I never finished them because they were so dis- 

 tasteful, but now that I know more of the women and 

 their strange way of life, I feel an interest in their 

 books. 



TO MISS SARAH G. GARY FROM PAULINE AGASSIZ 



June 2, 1857 

 You can't imagine what a pleasant week this last 

 one has been, only it did not seem quite right, because 

 the celebration of Father's birthday was a sort of thing 

 at which you ought to have been present. Mother has 

 probably given you a long description about it in her 

 letters, so I shall only say that it would have done 

 you good merely to look at Mother's and Father's 

 faces during the serenade, because they both looked 



