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

[125] with these words from his brother on the last sheet: ‘I hasten, dear father, to send you this excellent letter from my brother, which has just reached me. They have read it here with interest, and Uncle Francois Mayor, especially, sees both stability and a sound basis in his projects and enterprises.’

There is something touching and almost amusing in Agassiz's efforts to give a prudential aspect to his large scientific schemes. He was perfectly sincere in this, but to the end of his life he skirted the edge of the precipice, daring all, and finding in himself the power to justify his risks by his successes. He was of frugal personal habits; at this very time, when he was keeping two or three artists on his slender means, he made his own breakfast in his room, and dined for a few cents a day at the cheapest eating houses. But where science was concerned the only economy he recognized, either in youth or old age, was that of an expenditure as bold as it was carefully considered.

In the above letter to his brother we have the story of his work during the whole winter of 1830. That his medical studies did not suffer from the fact that, in conjunction with them, he was carrying on his two great works