398 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



forest. Occasionally he would drive into town to call on 

 a friend. 



In the evening, when he did not have a few people 

 to dinner, he usually dined elsewhere, for his never- 

 failing charm, a dominant trait, as universally recognized 

 as it is impossible to describe, made him a welcome 

 guest at many boards. Once at some social gathering in 

 Newport, when a vote was taken as to who was the most 

 agreeable man at a dinner, the overwhelming majority 

 was for Mr. Agassiz. 



The giving of little dinner parties became one of his 

 chief recreations in later life. He took the greatest inter- 

 est in seeing that all the details were as complete as 

 possible, and always brought the wine up from the cel- 

 lar and decanted it himself. On special occasions, the 

 table was lighted by two magnificent candelabra, said to 

 be copies of a pair by Benvenuto Cellini, which he had 

 bought as a souvenir of a scientific prize. 1 As he pre- 

 sided with evident pleasure over one of these festive 

 little feasts, at a table set with old silver, which it was 

 one of his hobbies to collect, an attractive woman of the 

 world on either hand, he sometimes referred to the little 

 chap who used to trudge between Neuchatel and Frei- 

 burg because he was too poor to pay the stage-coach fare. 



There was nothing of the ascetic about him ; he en- 

 joyed a good dinner and cultivated, congenial society. 

 Both his Newport and Cambridge houses were models 

 of comfort filled with the choicest collections of the 

 best art of China and Japan, collections begun in the 

 days when such treasures were less appreciated than now 

 and more easily acquired. 



1 The Prix Serres, awarded to Agassiz in 1879, by the French Academy 

 of Sciences, for his embryological work. 



