THE LAST YEARS 381 



versity Museum, after the southwest corner of the facade, 

 which had been given by the children of Agassiz in the 

 preceding year, had been finished. The event was impor- 

 tant, for it marked the completion, except for a part of 

 the south wing, of the building that had been the aim of 

 Agassiz, whose plan for the Museum had had a far wider 

 scope than its original name, the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology, implied. 



June 12. Meeting; Museum, speeches, etc. All 

 went off successfully. As I looked at the building 

 of such magnitude as to be really impressive and 

 picturesque too with its drapery of vines, and as I 

 saw the crowds flocking towards us, I thought of 

 [Agassiz's] shanty built of rough boards not large 

 enough to hold half a dozen people, its only furni- 

 ture a kitchen table and a few pine shelves against 

 the wall and compared it with the huge building 

 containing one of the finest collections of Natural 

 History in the world; it seemed to me impossible that 

 the one should have been the beginning and, as it were, 

 the foundation of the other. 



July 16, Nahant. Reading French at sight. It 

 seems a little absurd to be pursuing modern languages 

 when you are face to face with your eightieth birth- 

 day. I wonder why I do it. 



August 16. I have heard such good music at 

 Emma's this morning. They sang things which carried 

 me back to the old days irresistibly. What a strange 

 thing it is to live things over, to find them as real and 

 true as ever in your memory, and yet not be sure that 

 you shall have them again. 



