110 ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 
We are going to Washington next Monday, and I 
hope the change may be refreshing to Agassiz. I 
must tell you something Louis said yesterday; the 
scamp, he grows funnier every day. He was wishing 
that I would n’t go to Washington, and I said I must 
be with Grandfather. “Oh,” said he, “can’t you 
let sixty go alone and forty-five stay at home?” He 
heard me say a day or two before that his Grand- 
father was sixty and I was forty-five, and we were both 
growing old. He is a fascinating child to me. 
Good-bye. I wanted to pour out my heart to you, 
and here it is with all the fine things people have 
said of me, but it would be absurd to make any 
apologies about egotism to you. Talking to you and 
Mother is like talking to myself. 
TO MISS SARAH G. CARY 
Cambridge, February 16, 1868 
Our copper mine is working well — the first edition 
of the book was disposed of in about three weeks and 
the second is already before the public. I do wish you 
had been here to sympathize on the spot with all the 
pleasant things that have been said and written to 
us about it. It seems egotistical to repeat them all, 
but tell this to Emma from Longfellow, who has been 
delightful about it and always speaks of it as “‘your 
beautiful book.” He says his present reading of Buf- 
fon’s old saying, le style c’est [homme is le style c'est 
la femme. “That,” he adds, “‘is my little joke about 
it.” It seems absurd to write all these little things, 
