Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence | Page 5

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