And, when in the midst of these researches, on the successful outcome of which hinged one of the greatest sources of national wealth, the indefatigable savant was stricken with paralysis and his life was for a while despaired of, it was again his devoted helpmate that afforded him solace in suffering and exercised a supervision over those experiments which the great man was still conducting almost in the presence of death. That Pasteur's life was prolonged for a quarter of a century after the terrible attack of hemiplegia in 1868, that he was able to unravel the deep mysteries of microbian life, that he was able to make discoveries whose economical value to France was, in the estimation of Professor Huxley, more than sufficient to liquidate the immense indemnity of five billion francs exacted from his country by Germany at the termination of the Franco-Prussian war, that he was able, especially during these fruitful twenty-five years, to render his "scientific life like a luminous trail in the great night of the infinitely little in those ultimate abysses of being where life is born," was, in great measure, due to the unceasing care, the untiring vigilance and the sympathetic collaboration of one of the most devoted of wives and most noble and whole-souled of women. What has been said of the influence and helpfulness of Mme. Pasteur can be asserted with even greater truth of Elizabeth Agassiz and of Caroline Herschel. For these two women, apart from the assistance they gave to a loved husband and an idolized brother, in the labors that made them so famous, both achieved distinction for their contributions to the sciences which they individually cultivated with such splendid results. And had they elected to devote all their time to scientific research, instead of giving the greater part of it to those to whom they were so devotedly attached, who can tell how much more brilliant would have been their achievements and how much greater would have been the fame they would have won for themselves. Both of them were dowered in an eminent degree with taste and talent for science, and had they chosen to make it the sole object of their life work, there can be no doubt that their personal contributions to natural history and astronomy would have been far greater than they were. As it was, they were so overshadowed by those for whom they labored with such unselfishness and loyalty that the real value of their work is too often forgotten when there is question of the scientific triumphs of Louis Agassiz and Sir William Herschel. But they willed it so. They gladly effaced themselves that those whom they loved with such a deep and abiding love might shine the more brightly in the firmament of science. They preferred to spend and be spent in strengthening the great workers and leaders with whose lives their own were so thoroughly identified--"Inspiring them with courage, keeping faith in their own ideas alive, in days of darkness