Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

[568] which he established and encouraged in the laboratory grew the warmest relations between his students and himself. Many of them were deeply attached to him, and he was extremely dependent upon their sympathy and affection. By some among them he will never be forgotten. He is still their teacher and their friend, scarcely more absent from their work now than when the glow of his enthusiasm made itself felt in his personal presence.

But to return to the distribution of his time in these busy days. Having passed, as we have seen, the greater part of the day in the Museum and the school, he had the hours of the night for writing, and rarely left his desk before one or two o'clock in the morning, or even later. His last two volumes of the ‘Contributions,’ upon the Acalephs, were completed during these years. In the mean time, the war between North and South had broken out, and no American cared more than he for the preservation of the Union and the institutions it represented. He felt that the task of those who served letters and science was to hold together the intellectual aims and resources of the country during this struggle for national existence, to fortify the strongholds