390 ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 
among the Coral islands of the Southern Pacific he has 
at last taken a vacation which he has greatly enjoyed. 
Now he is coming home for his Newport summer. 
I hear only dimly from the world outside; but I 
have tidings now and then of Radcliffe and its affairs 
from Miss Irwin and from our President — Mr. 
Briggs, one of the faculty. He is a charming man and 
a great favorite with the students. When I remember 
our small beginnings — without buildings or books or 
apparatus which makes the outfit of an educational in- 
stitution, I can hardly believe that we are as it were 
anchored against the whole teaching force of Harvard. 
But I must not run on. 
Hoping that I may have the happiness of seeing you 
both as the warm weather sets us free, 
Your loving old friend, 
E. C. Acassiz 
“The carriage is just about to arrive,” she wrote to an- 
other friend a few weeks later, “‘in order to take this old 
lady to her summer residence on Arlington Heights. I am 
almost reconciled to leaving Nahant for that beautiful 
summit, where stretches of woodland alternate with dis- 
tant towns and villages, lost at last in our big Boston and 
its far away harbor; and then comes night, crowned with 
the constellations and sometimes with the morning or 
the evening stars.” 
One of the advantages of Arlington Heights was its 
accessibility to Boston, so that Mrs. Agassiz was not de- 
prived of the visits from step-children and friends, which 
were a great source of pleasure. No account of these years 
