38 ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 
George: “Our relations were so peculiar that I don’t 
know what to style them. She was my mother, my sister, 
my companion and friend, all in one. ... From the time 
that I first saw her at Mr. Felton’s house as Miss Cary, 
and I only a small boy of thirteen, there never was a word 
of disagreement; she belonged to me and I to her; it could 
not have been otherwise; she learned to know me through 
and through and placed in me the most unbounded con- 
fidence, and entrusted me with the keeping of her sorrows.” 
Thus the beginning of Mrs. Agassiz’s married life was 
occupied with the care of the three children and the regu- 
lation of Agassiz’s amazing establishment. Although many 
of the human inmates had disappeared, the animate zodlog- 
ical specimens still had to be reckoned with. Many a stir- 
ring incident of their varied doings is related, one by Mrs. 
Agassiz herself in a letter written to her mother not long 
after her marriage. 
TO MRS. THOMAS G. CARY 
[Cambridge] 
By the way, I must tell you something that hap- 
pened to me today, in solemn warning to any woman 
who thinks of becoming the wife of a naturalist. In 
a hurry this evening to prepare for church, I ran to 
my cupboard for my boots, and was just going to 
put my hands upon them when I caught sight of the 
tail of a good-sized snake, which was squirming about 
among the shoes. I screamed in horror to Agassiz, who 
was still sound asleep, that there was a serpent in my 
shoe-closet. “Oh, yes,” he said sleepily, “I brought 
in several in my handkerchief last night; probably 
