50 ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 
more important lectures. It is true that having had no pre- 
vious scientific training Mrs. Agassiz had to pass through a 
period of apprenticeship, in the course of which, as she often 
recalled with enjoyment in a laugh at her own expense, 
Agassiz one day on looking over her notes, said, “‘My dear, 
these are most gracefully expressed, but from the point of 
view of science they are such nonsense as I never uttered.” 
But that she learned not to sacrifice scientific truth for the 
sake of a happily turned phrase and became a remarkably 
proficient assistant of Agassiz we shall see later in the ac- 
count of the Journey in Brazil and her other writings. 
Beyond her appearance in Agassiz’s lecture-room some of 
the pupils have few recollections of Mrs. Agassiz in their 
school days. Yet, as she told them, she was “always there,” 
ready to give them help, counsel, affection, and to do for 
them a thousand services that at the time they did not 
realize she was rendering them. A pleasant picture of her 
part in the school life is afforded us in a letter written to 
her on the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the school 
by one of the first comers, who fifty years earlier had de- 
scribed her as “‘very pretty and sweet looking and very 
kind to us.” “TI have been recalling with joy,” she says, 
“that beloved day fifty years ago when your school 
began. .. . I must thank you once more for us all for your 
great thoughtfulness in sending up to us in the schoolroom 
between two and three when we were eating our dinners 
there steaming plates of the best mutton broth I ever 
saw. How kind it was! And how welcome it was! You never 
taught me, but you often let me pronounce French to you. 
I wonder if you remember what you usually said after it — 
‘Surprising — the perfectly Yankee sound of it, though 
