Louis Agassiz. 



from nine o'clock in the morning until generally 

 three o'clock in the afternoon, and that during this 

 time he called for more than two hundred volumes 

 in different languages, always desiring to read each 

 work as it originally came from the mind of the 

 author. Thus every work which Alexander von 

 Humboldt ever wrote passed under careful review; 

 not only every volume, but every pamphlet, with the 

 exception of one, which could not be found in this 

 country. 



On the 4th of September he wrote me : 

 I have only yesterday finished gathering my 

 materials, and have not yet begun preparing my 

 address.*' 



He adds: ''My friends will never know what 

 anxieties I have to go through on this occasion.'' 

 Six days after this I received the following: 



'*Nahant, Sept. ioth, 1869. 



''My Dear Sir: 



" I have succeeded this evening in bringing to a 

 close my draft of an address ; not exactly as I would 

 like to deliver it, but such as I may be compelled to 

 read should the occurrences of the day unfit me for 

 an extemporised discourse which I believe might be 

 more effective." 



It would thus appear that even after the address 

 was written, he hoped to give, not what he had 

 embodied in manuscript, but the result of which 

 that would be the basis, in the form of an extempo- 

 rised discourse, for which, as all know from his 



