Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence

by Louis Agassiz

It does not appear that he had any precocious predilection for study, and his parents, who for the first ten years of his life were his only teachers, were too wise to stimulate his mind beyond the ordinary attainments of his age. having lost her first four children in infancy, his mother watched with trembling solicitude over his early years. It was perhaps for this reason that she was drawn so closely to her boy, and understood that his love of nature, and especially of all living things, was an intellectual tendency, and not simply a child's disposition to find friends and playmates in the animals about him. In later years her sympathy gave her the key to the work of his manhood, as it had done to the sports of his childhood. She remained his most intimate friend to the last hour of her life, and he survived her but six years.

Louis's love of natural history showed itself almost from infancy. When a very little fellow he had, beside his collection of fishes, all sorts of pets: birds, field-mice, hares, rabbits, guinea-pigs, etc., whose families he reared with the greatest care. Guided by his knowledge of the haunts and habits of fishes, he and his brother Auguste became the most adroit of young fishermen,—using processes all their own and quite independent of hook, line, or net. Their hunting grounds were the holes and crevices beneath the stones or in the water-washed walls of the lake shore. No such shelter was safe from their curious fingers, and they acquired such dexterity that when bathing they could seize the fish even in the open water, attracting them by little arts to which the fish submitted as to a kind of fascination. Such amusements are no doubt the delight of many a lad living in the country, nor would they be worth recording except as illustrating the unity of Agassiz's intellectual development from beginning to end. His pet animals suggested questions, to answer which was the task of his life; and his intimate study of the fresh-water fishes of Europe, later the subject of one of his important works, began with his first collection from the Lake of Morat.

As a boy he amused himself also with all kinds of handicrafts on a small scale. The carpenter, the cobbler, the tailor, were then as much developed in him as the naturalist. In Swiss villages it was the habit in those days for the trades-people to go from house to house in their different vocations. The shoemaker came two or three times a year with all his materials, and made shoes for the whole family by the day; the tailor came to fit them for garments which he made in the house; the cooper arrived before the vintage, to repair old barrels and hogsheads or to make new ones, and to replace their worn-out hoops; in short, to fit up the cellar for the coming season. Agassiz seems to have profited by these lessons as much as by those he learned from his father; and when a very little fellow, he could cut and put together a well-fitting pair of shoes for his sisters' dolls, was no bad tailor, and could make a miniature barrel that was perfectly water-tight. He remembered these trivial facts as a valuable part of his incidental education. He said he owed much of his dexterity in manipulation, to the training of eye and hand gained in these childish plays.

Though fond of quiet, in-door occupation, he was an active, daring boy. One winter day when about seven years of age, he was skating with his little brother Auguste, two years younger than himself, and a number of other boys, near the shore of the lake. They were talking of a great fair held that day at the town of Morat, on the opposite side of the lake, to which M. Agassiz had gone in the morning, not crossing upon the ice, however, but driving around the shore. The temptation was too strong for Louis, and he proposed to Auguste that they should skate across, join their father at the fair, and come home with him in the afternoon. They started accordingly. The other boys remained on their skating ground till twelve o'clock, the usual dinner hour, when they returned to the village. Mme. Agassiz was watching for her boys, thinking them rather late, and on inquiring for them among the troop of urchins coming down the village street she learned on what errand they had gone. Her anxiety may be imagined. The lake was not less than two miles across, and she was by no means sure that the ice was safe. She hurried to an upper window with a spy-glass to see if she could descry them anywhere. At the moment she caught sight of them, already far on their journey, Louis had laid himself down across a fissure in the ice, thus making a bridge for his little brother, who was creeping over his back. Their mother directed a workman, an excellent skater, to follow them as swiftly as possible. He overtook them just as they had gained the shore, but it did not occur to him that they could return otherwise than they had come, and he skated back with them across the lake. Weary, hungry, and disappointed, the boys reached the house without having seen the fair or enjoyed the drive home with their father in the afternoon.

When he was ten years old, Agassiz was sent to the college for boys at Bienne, thus exchanging the easy rule of domestic instruction for the more serious studies of a public school. He found himself on a level with his class, however, for his father was an admirable teacher. Indeed it would seem that Agassiz's own passion for teaching, as well as his love of young people and his sympathy with intellectual aspiration everywhere, was an inheritance. Wherever his father was settled as pastor, at Motier, at Orbe, and later at Concise, his influence was felt in the schools as much as in the pulpit. A piece of silver remains, a much prized heir-loom in the family, given to him by the municipality of Orbe in acknowledgment of his services in the schools.

The rules of the school at Bienne were rather strict, but the life led by the boys was hardy and invigorating, and they played as heartily as they worked. Remembering his own school-life, Agassiz often asked himself whether it was difference of climate or of method, which makes the public school life in the United States so much more trying to the health of children than the one under which he was brought up. The boys and girls in our public schools are said to be overworked with a session of five hours, and an additional hour or two of study at home. At the College of Bienne there were nine hours of study, and the boys were healthy and happy. Perhaps the secret might be found in the frequent interruption, two or three hours of study alternating with an interval for play or rest. Agassiz always retained a pleasant impression of the school and its teachers. Mr. Rickly, the director, he regarded with an affectionate respect, which ripened into friendship in maturer years.

The vacations were, of course, hailed with delight, and as Motier was but twenty miles distant from Bienne, Agassiz and his younger brother Auguste, who joined him at school a year later, were in the habit of making the journey on foot. The lives of these brothers were so closely interwoven in their youth that for many years the story of one includes the story of the other. They had everything in common, and with their little savings they used to buy books, chosen by Louis, the foundation, as it proved, of his future library.

Long before dawn on the first day of vacation the two bright, active boys would be on their homeward way, as happy as holiday could make them, especially if they were returning for the summer harvest or the autumn vintage. The latter was then, as now, a season of festivity. In these more modern days something of its primitive picturesqueness may have been lost; but when Agassiz was a boy, all the ordinary occupations were given up for this important annual business, in which work and play were so happily combined. On the appointed day the working people might be seen trooping in from neighboring cantons, where there were no vineyards, to offer themselves for the vintage. They either camped out at night, sleeping in the open air, or found shelter in the stables and outhouses. During the grape gathering the floor of the barn and shed at the parsonage of Motier was often covered in the evening with tired laborers, both men and women. Of course, when the weather was fine, these were festival days for the children. A bushel basket, heaped high with white and amber bunches, stood in the hall, or in the living room of the family, and young and old were free to help themselves as they came and went. Then there were the frolics in the vineyard, the sweet cup of must (unfermented juice of the grape), and, the ball on the last evening at the close of the merry-making.

Sometimes the boys passed their vacations at Cudrefin, with their grandfather Mayor. He was a kind old man, much respected in his profession, and greatly beloved for his benevolence. His little white horse was well known in all the paths and by-roads of the country around, as he went from village to village among the sick. The grandmother was frail in health, but a great favorite among the children, for whom she had an endless fund of stories, songs, and hymns. Aunt Lisette, an unmarried daughter, who long lived to maintain the hospitality of the old Cudrefin house and to be beloved as the kindest of maiden aunts by two or three generations of nephews and nieces, was the domestic providence of these family gatherings, where the praises of her excellent dishes were annually sung. The roof was elastic; there was no question about numbers, for all came who could; the more, the merrier, with no diminution of good cheer.

The Sunday after Easter was the great popular fete. Then every house was busy coloring Easter eggs and making fritters. The young girls and the lads of the village, the former in their prettiest dresses and the latter with enormous bouquets of artificial flowers in their hats, went together to church in the morning. In the afternoon the traditional match between two runners, chosen from the village youths, took place. They were dressed in white, and adorned with bright ribbons. With music before them, and followed by all the young people, they went in procession to the place where a quantity of Easter eggs had been distributed upon the ground. At a signal the runners separated, the one to pick up the eggs according to a prescribed course, the other to run to the next village and back again. The victory was to the one who accomplished his task first, and he was proclaimed king of the feast. Hand in hand the runners, followed as before by all their companions, returned to join in the dance now to take place before the house of Dr. Mayor. After a time the festivities were interrupted by a little address in patois from the first musician, who concluded by announcing from his platform a special dance in honor of the family of Dr. Mayor. In this dance the family with some of their friends and neighbors took part,—the young ladies dancing with the peasant lads and the young gentlemen with the girls of the village,—while the rest formed a circle to look on.