Young Mr. Adams, far from showing conceit, was simply illumining the way
for us all in the direction of personal independence.
The Agassiz School was held in the professor’s own pleasant house on
Quincy Street, Cambridge, very near Harvard College. Probably the older
girls were conscious of this fact, but I was too young to bear it much
in mind. The students whom I met occasionally in the street seemed to me
great and august beings. Time, however, brings its revenges. In later
life, when my sons were undergraduates, I had occasion to revisit
Cambridge. The students no longer inspired me with awe; whether they
were afraid of me or not I cannot say.
In his charming wife Professor Agassiz had a most efficient helpmeet who
entered into all his plans and followed his work with loving zeal and
intelligence. Mrs. Agassiz, who survived her husband for many years, was
a very charming woman. She had a noble and whole-souled nature, which
one fancied was contagious, for the moment at least. I think it would
have been impossible to do a mean thing while in her company.
In the days of the Agassiz School she was still a young woman, and we
all felt that she was the presiding genius of the establishment as she
flitted from room to room in her pretty, trim morning dress and cap with
its fresh flowing ribbons, which seemed to correspond so well with the
sweetness and freshness of her disposition. She heard the lessons of the
younger pupils, but I am sure that she exercised a sweet and wholesome
influence over all the scholars, old and young.
Prof. Alexander Agassiz taught in his father’s school. I remember him in
those days as a handsome, rather melancholy-looking young man who was
suspected of being afraid of the biggest girls. Not long afterward he
married one of them, Miss Anna Russell, daughter of my father’s old
chum, George Russell. Prof. Alexander Agassiz was much more reserved and
grave than his father, whose genial temperament was full of warmth and
sunshine. Occasionally he also gave us a lecture.
During many years of his life, Louis Agassiz worked through a great part
of the night, sleeping very late in the morning. It is said that one
Sunday morning Mrs. Agassiz, while dressing for church, suddenly called
out, “Agassiz! there is a snake in my boot!” To which the Professor
drowsily replied, “I wonder where the others are!”
I remember a lecture where he showed us an orange to represent a
sea-urchin. With a sudden movement he opened the fruit, which we then
saw had been cut, into the form of a starfish, thus showing the
relationship between the two types of creatures, and the audience burst
into applause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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