Life in Cambridge, 



** So she keeps him still a child, 

 And will not let him go, 

 Though at times his heart beats wild 

 For the beautiful Pays de Vaud ; 



** Though at times he hears in his dreams 

 The Ranz des Vaches of old, 

 And the rush of mountain streams 

 From glaciers clear and cold ; 



** And the mother at home says, ' Hark ! 

 For his voice I listen and yearn ; 

 It is growing late and dark, 

 And my boy does not return.* " 



May 28, i8s7. 



The Saturday Club " referred to was a favourite 

 organisation with Agassiz. Dr. Holmes writes re- 

 garding it : At one end of the table sat Longfellow, 

 placid, quiet, benignant, soft-voiced, a most agreeable 

 rather than a brilliant talker, but a man upon whom 

 it was always pleasant to look, — whose silence was 

 better than many another man's conversation. At 

 the other end sat Agassiz, robust, sanguine, animated, 

 full of talk, boy-like in his laughter. The stranger 

 who should have asked who were the men ranged 

 along the sides of the table would have heard in 

 answer the names of Hawthorne, Motley, Dana, 

 Lowell, Whipple, Peirce, the distinguished mathema- 

 tician. Judge Hoar, eminent at the bar and in the 

 cabinet, Dwight, the leading musical critic of Boston 

 for a whole generation, Sumner, the academic cham- 

 pion of freedom, Andrew, ^ the great war governor ' 

 of Massachusetts, Dr. Howe, the philanthrophist, 

 William Hunt, the painter, with others not unworthy 

 of such company." 



8 



