Our Italian teacher, Luigi Monti, is a refugee from Italy, and has a sad and mysterious look in his black eyes; he can hardly speak English, so we have things pretty much our own way during the lessons, for he cannot correct us. One of the girls, translating _capelli neri_, said "black hats," and he never saw the mistake, though we were all dying of laughter. No one takes lessons in Greek from long-bearded, fierce-eyed Professor Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles, so he is left in peace. He does not come more than once a week anyway, and then only to say it is no use his coming at all. Cousin James Lowell replaces Mr. Longfellow the days he can't come. He reads selections of "literary treasures," as he calls them, and on which he discourses at length. He seems very dull and solemn when he is in school; not at all as he is at home. When he comes in of an afternoon and reads his poems to aunty and to an admiring circle of cousins and sisters- in-law, they all roar with laughter, particularly when he reads them with a Yankee accent. He has such a rippling little giggle while reading, that it is impossible not to laugh. The other day he said to me, "Cousin Lillie, I will take you out for a walk in recess." I said, "Nothing I should like better, but I can't go." "Why not?" said he. "Because I must go and be a beggar." "What do you mean?" he asked. "I mean that there is a duet that Mrs. Agassiz favors just now, from Meyerbeer's 'Le Prophète,' where she is beggar number one and I am beggar number two." He laughed. "You are a lucky little beggar, anyway. I envy you." "Envy me? I thought you would pity me," I said. "No, I do not pity you, I envy you being a beggar with a voice!" I consider myself a victim. In recess, when the other girls walk in Quincy Street and eat their apples, Mrs. Agassiz lures me into the parlor and makes me sing duets with her and her sister, Miss Carey. I hear the girls filing out of the door, while I am caged behind the piano, singing, "Hear Me, Norma," wishing Norma and her twins in Jericho. There are about fourteen pupils now; we go every morning at nine o'clock and stay till two o'clock. We climb up the three stories in the Agassiz house and wait for our teachers, who never are on time. Sometimes school does not begin for half an hour. Mrs. Agassiz comes in, and we all get up to say good morning to her. As there is nothing else left for her to teach, she teaches us manners. She looks us over, and holds up a warning finger smilingly. She is so sweet and gentle. I don't wonder that you think it extraordinary that all these fine teachers, who are the best in Harvard College, should teach us; but the reason is, that the Agassiz's have built a new house and find it difficult to pay for it, so their friends have promised to help them to start this school, and by lending their names they have put it on its legs, so to speak.