402 ELIZABETH GARY AGASSIZ 



Agassiz only a few weeks, with her sister, Miss Eliza- 

 beth Hoar, and other Concord ladies, more than 

 seventy years ago, read all the Greek and Latin 

 authors which their brothers were studying here in 

 college, and through long lives they never lost their 

 love of classic literature. One of these brothers was 

 our beloved and revered Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar. 

 It was hardly a year ago that Mrs. Storer (who was 

 then nearly 90 years old) asked me to lend her the 

 Hippolytus of Euripides " in good large Greek type." 

 This period of classical study in Concord began 

 before Mr. Emerson made that town his home. In- 

 deed it may well be thought that the attraction of 

 this cultivated society helped to draw him thither. 

 I remember with pleasure another one of my Greek 

 readings, before which I found Mrs. Samuel Hooper, 

 with her niece, Mrs. Gurney, toiling up the long stair- 

 case of Harvard Hall with their Greek books to hear 

 a comedy of Aristophanes. Mrs. Gurney herself was 

 a brilliant example, in the second generation, of the 

 scholarly company of ladies into which she was born. 

 Her coming to Cambridge made an era in our intel- 

 lectual life. She brought into it a fresh vitality which 

 I shall never forget. I never undertook any important 

 work in connection with my professorship without 

 consulting her as well as her husband, and I never 

 failed to receive the best advice. She became at 

 once most devoted to our new women's college, and 

 Mrs. Agassiz always depended upon her in every for- 

 ward step which was taken. She was one of a class of 

 ladies who one year entered their names as students 



