CHANGED CONDITIONS 173 



ful. — Today (this afternoon) the College Club gives a 

 tea for Mr. and Mrs. Briggs. I will go." There is no other 

 reference in Mrs. Agassiz's diaries to her sorrow of 1873. 

 Her natural serenity and freedom from the least tinge of 

 morbidness steadied her, and the words that she wrote a 

 few years later to a friend in great grief give a clue to the 

 spirit in which she took up her altered life: — "I dare not 

 face the future for you, — but we will not talk of that. 

 Each day has its own burden and is enough in itself." 

 "We know," she wrote to still another friend, "how the 

 character ripens in suffering and grows as it were out of 

 this world into the next. And yet happiness seems such a 

 natural atmosphere — like light and sunshine for a plant 

 — one must believe that somewhere and somehow we 

 shall find it without fear of loss or change." With self-for- 

 getfulness and self-control she accepted the passing of the 

 old and the coming of the new duties, and from watching 

 the ship freighted with her treasure sail away from her to 

 the unknown sea, she turned to welcome the three little 

 craft that floated into the ample harbor of her care and 

 affection — affection that followed them and theirs to the 

 end of her days. 



During the next few years Mrs. Agassiz naturally lived 

 in retirement, occupied with the care of the boys and sup- 

 plying so far as might be the void in her son's life. The 

 sympathy between them was strengthened by the tie of a 

 common sorrow and by her ardent and intelligent interest 

 in his professional aims, projects and pursuits. He was in 

 the habit of submitting to her his scientific papers in manu- 

 script and found in her his most valued critic. Many of the 

 letters that he wrote to her during the separations occa- 



