110 ELIZABETH GARY AGASSIZ 



We are going to Washington next Monday, and I 

 hope the change may be refreshing to Agassiz. I 

 must tell you something Louis said yesterday; the 

 scamp, he grows funnier every day. He was wishing 

 that I would n't go to Washington, and I said I must 

 be with Grandfather. "Oh," said he, "can't you 

 let sixty go alone and forty -five stay at home.^^" He 

 heard me say a day or two before that his Grand- 

 father was sixty and I was forty -five, and we were both 

 growing old. He is a fascinating child to me. 



Good-bye. I wanted to pour out my heart to you, 

 and here it is with all the fine things people have 

 said of me, but it would be absurd to make any 

 apologies about egotism to you. Talking to you and 

 Mother is like talking to myseK. 



TO MISS SARAH G. GARY 



Cambridge, February 16, 1868 

 Our copper mine is working well — the first edition 

 of the book was disposed of in about three weeks and 

 the second is already before the public. I do wish you 

 had been here to sympathize on the spot with all the 

 pleasant things that have been said and written to 

 us about it. It seems egotistical to repeat them all, 

 but tell this to Emma from Longfellow, who has been 

 delightful about it and always si>eaks of it as "your 

 beautiful book." He says his present reading of Buf- 

 fon's old saying, le style cest Vhomme is le style c'est 

 lafemme, "That," he adds, "is my httle joke about 

 it." It seems absurd to write all these little things, 



