172 ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 



understanding that he had received from her ever since she 

 had first entered his own boyhood and for the care that he 

 desired for his children. Some few months earlier he had 

 come with his family temporarily to his father's house, ex- 

 pecting to pass the winter in Nassau. On the death of his 

 wife he at once took the house in Quincy Street for his own 

 residence, and there Mrs. Agassiz had her home for the rest 

 of her life, his companion, the presiding genius of his house- 

 hold, and the mother of his three boys, George, Maximilian, 

 and Rodolphe. To the youngest, Rodolphe, she literally 

 took the place of a mother, and she brought him up as if he 

 had been her own child. A year later Alexander Agassiz 

 began to build a house at Newport, Rhode Island, and 

 after 1875, the family used to separate for the summer, 

 Mrs. Agassiz going as usual to Nahant and the rest of the 

 household to Newport. Thus while the outer setting of her 

 days remained unaltered, with the close of 1873 a wholly 

 new epoch in her occupations, her cares, and her habits 

 began. 



Under these conditions her exceptional qualities did not 

 fail her. "She was so constructed," Mrs. Curtis writes, 

 "that she could really accept her own sorrow with more 

 fortitude than that which came to her children; and I re- 

 member a sentence in a letter that I received from Sallie 

 when we went abroad two years after all this, in which she 

 says, * I do so miss Lizzie's happiness.'" There is a notice- 

 able entry in Mrs. Agassiz's diary thirty years later: 

 "December 14, 1903. The anniversary of Agassiz's death 

 - and Annie's the week after. How that month, Decem- 

 ber, 1873, changed life for us all! Mimi sent me wonderful 

 roses and mignonette; she is always so kind and thought- 



