388 ELIZABETH GARY AGASSIZ 



(his and mine) which I could hardly read myself with- 

 out emotion. 



April 8, 1906. — I am reading for the second time 

 Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua. I confess I have 

 found it difficult to understand how a man of so power- 

 ful, so logical a nature could enter into the Catholic 

 Church. Does he himself give us a clew.'^ He says 

 (p. 44 of the Apologia),'' From the age of fifteen dogma 

 has been the foundation principle of my religion. I 

 cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of reli- 

 gion." How then should he find himself landed else- 

 where than in the headquarters of dogma, creeds, 

 sacraments, sacramental rites? 



May 22, 1906. — I am re-reading Emerson's biog- 

 raphy by Eliot Cabot. How far away and how de- 

 lightful those days seem! 



May 25. — Finished Emerson today. He and his 

 comrades made a most interesting set of men, and 

 Eliot Cabot has put them together in a very effective 

 and human sort of way. 



After 1904 Mrs. Agassiz did not return to Nahant, but 

 on the advice of her physicians spent the remaining sum- 

 mers of her life with her niece, Miss Louisa Felton, who 

 owned an attractive cottage at Arlington Heights. Although 

 Mrs. Agassiz at times thought wistfully of her beloved 

 Nahant, she greatly enjoyed the beautiful view from Miss 

 Felton's verandah over woodland and distant hills, and at 

 the end of her first season there, she wrote to a friend, ** It 

 has been a summer of health and happiness for me and I 

 am grateful for it." Eighty-three is not an age at which 

 new surroundings, however desirable, are usually wel- 



