4 ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 
room into a schoolroom where her flock of little broth- 
ers and sisters became her scholars, a duty in which 
an olderbrother also returned from foreign lands joined 
her. The old family journals tell of the play of Shake- 
speare or the novel of Walter Scott read aloud in 
the winter evenings when the snow outside had shut 
them in, by “Mama,” who added to her gracious 
presence and sweet voice the gift of admirable read- 
ing, or the minuet danced by the younger members 
of the family, while “Sister Margaret” played the 
harpsichord and the mother and father looked on from 
their straight-backed stately armchairs in the corner 
of the parlor. Nourished on good literature, trained in 
‘the manners of the old school, drawn closer in family 
affection and intercourse by the absence of other 
society, and taught to reverence and love the hard- 
won institutions of their country so recently secured, 
these young people grew up valuing their education 
the more, perhaps, because they owed it in so large a 
degree to their own personal efforts and those of their 
parents. 
Such were the surroundings in which Mrs. Agassiz’s 
father lived until he entered Harvard College. After his 
graduation he studied law and in 1820 married Mary, the 
daughter of Thomas Handasyd Perkins of Boston. By 1821 
he was established as a lawyer in Brattleboro, Vermont, 
and had he continued to practise his profession there, Mrs. 
Agassiz’s life would doubtless have run in very different 
channels from those that it followed. But not long after 
her birth, in 1822, he decided to give up his legal practice 
and cast in his lot with his brothers who were already 
