152 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



shutting his eyes to petty impositions that he would not 

 have tolerated from his associates. 



Although "Castle Hill" was often filled with his 

 sons' friends, he lived very quietly there for many sum- 

 mers, mingling little with the Newport life. He, how- 

 ever, saw something of Professor Cooke and Professor 

 Gibbs, who were settled at Newport, and occasionally 

 entertained some distinguished man of science from the 

 Old World. But as a rule he allowed nothing to inter- 

 fere with his work, and limited his recreation to a row 

 in the bay with one of his boys, or an afternoon's ride 

 on horseback. In later years the automobiles sadly in- 

 terfered with his riding, and this probably had some 

 bearing on his great dislike of them. Not long after the 

 introduction of those conveyances, the beau monde of 

 Newport arranged for a great race around the ocean 

 drive, the only access to his place. Notwithstanding the 

 objections of Agassiz and other abutters, after an un- 

 civil war, the city of Newport consented to close the 

 road for the afternoon, to the delight of the promoters 

 and the apparent discomfort of their opjionents. At the 

 last moment, however, Agassiz completely turned the 

 tables by getting an injunction and preventing the race. 

 This led a waggish friend to insert a notice in the papers 

 denying the report that Mr. Agassiz contemplated mak- 

 ing his next trip to Calumet in an automobile. 



His dislike of these machines he retained to the end 

 of his life ; only a few years before his death he came 

 into his house in Cambridge, delighted with an occur- 

 rence he had just seen in Boston. It appeared that on 

 a corner where people were accustomed to wait for the 

 electric cars, an automobile, with its owner lolling in 

 the back seat, had pushed through the crowd and 



