REMOVAL OF HIS FATHER TO CONCISE. 135 



ing, and an excellent kitchen garden. A 

 never-failing spring gushes from a grotto, and 

 within fifty steps of the house is a pretty 

 winding stream with a walk along the bank, 

 bordered by shrubbery, and furnished here 

 and there with benches, the whole disposed 

 with much care and taste. The house also is 

 very well arranged. All the rooms look out 

 upon the lake, lying hardly a gunshot from 

 the windows. There are a parlor and a din- 

 ing-room on the first floor, beside two smaller 

 rooms ; and on the same floor two doors lead 

 out into the flower garden. The kitchen is 

 small, and on one side is a pretty ground where 

 we can dine in the open air in summer. The 

 distribution of rooms in the upper story is the 

 same, with a large additional room for the ac- 

 commodation of your father's catechumens. 

 A jasmine vine drapes the front of the house 

 and climbs to the very roof. . . . 



To this quiet pretty parsonage Madame 

 Agassiz became much attached. Her tranquil 

 life is well described in a letter written many 

 years afterward by one of her daughters. 

 " Here mama returned to her spinning-wheel 

 with new ardor. It was a work she much 

 liked, and in which she was very skillful. In 



