24 ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 
I always think of you, mon ami, when we meet to- 
gether on Sunday evenings and miss your face and 
your voice very much indeed, and very, very often 
when Mary and I learn something that is new and 
pretty, I think of you, and wonder whether you will 
be too wise to enjoy our uncultivated music when you 
return. But no! I will not believe any such thing. I 
am sure it will at least have the power of association 
like the violet, and that you will value it, if it is only 
for being home music. 
And now I must ask a thousand pardons of you 
for boring you with such a long epistle; but somehow 
or other I have been going on without much think- 
ing, and having a hundred things to say to you, till 
Treally have inflicted upon you much more than I 
meant to when I began, and can only beg that if you 
find it stupid, you will not consider yourself at all 
obliged to read the whole. 
Your affectionate cousin, 
Lizziz Cary 
Our next reminiscence of Mrs. Agassiz’s youth is supplied 
by Miss Cary. 
One of my earliest recollections of my sister Lizzie 
is of a dancing party given by my father for his elder 
daughters. I was eight or nine years old, and this was 
the first ball I had ever seen, a simple affair compared 
to the splendid balls of today, but to me it seemed 
sumptuous. The flowers came from the greenhouses 
at Brookline and made our small rooms very pretty, 
and they looked to me very spacious with the 
