4 ELIZABETH GARY AGASSIZ 



room into a schoolroom where her flock of little broth- 

 ers and sisters became her scholars, a duty in which 

 an older brother also returned from foreign lands joined 

 her. The old family journals tell of the play of Shake- 

 speare or the novel of Walter Scott read aloud in 

 the winter evenings when the snow outside had shut 

 them in, by "Mama," who added to her gracious 

 presence and sweet voice the gift of admirable read- 

 ing, or the minuet danced by the younger members 

 of the family, while "Sister Margaret" played the 

 harpsichord and the mother and father looked on from 

 their straight-backed stately armchairs in the corner 

 of the parlor. Nourished on good literature, trained in 

 the manners of the old school, drawn closer in family 

 affection and intercourse by the absence of other 

 society, and taught to reverence and love the hard- 

 won institutions of their country so recently secured, 

 these young people grew up valuing their education 

 the more, perhaps, because they owed it in so large a 

 degree to their own personal efforts and those of their 

 parents. 



Such were the surroundings in which Mrs. Agassiz's 

 father lived until he entered Harvard College. After his 

 graduation he studied law and in 1820 married Mary, the 

 daughter of Thomas Handasyd Perkins of Boston. By 1821 

 he was established as a lawyer in Brattleboro, Vermont, 

 and had he continued to practise his profession there, Mrs. 

 Agassiz's life would doubtless have run in very different 

 channels from those that it followed. But not long after 

 her birth, in 1822, he decided to give up his legal practice 

 and cast in his lot with his brothers who were already 



