54 ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 
an unvarying sort of existence as hers was, she should 
have given such a passionate expression both of hap- 
piness and suffering. Perhaps if she had found the 
natural food for her capacities, and her heart and 
head had not been so starved for want of nourish- 
ment from without, her imagination would not have 
gone on “weaving endlessly for her that story” which, 
as she tells us in Jane Eyre, she was never tired of 
listening to as she walked up and down the gallery 
at Thornfield Hall on cold and snowy afternoons. 
After reading her life I took up Jane Eyre again, and 
I could not help thinking what a delight it must have 
been to her to get out of the tedious realities of her 
Haworth home and live for a few hours Jane Eyre’s 
tremendously exciting life. If I knew where to get 
them I should like soon to read the books of her sis- 
ters. I never finished them because they were so dis- 
tasteful, but now that I know more of the women and 
their strange way of life, I feel an interest in their 
books. 
TO MISS SARAH G. CARY FROM PAULINE AGASSIZ 
June 2, 1857 
You can’t imagine what a pleasant week this last 
one has been, only it did not seem quite right, because 
the celebration of Father’s birthday was a sort of thing 
at which you ought to have been present. Mother has 
probably given you a long description about it in her 
letters, so I shall only say that it would have done 
you good merely to look at Mother’s and Father’s 
faces during the serenade, because they both looked 
