Cousin James Lowell replaces Mr. Longfellow the days he can't come. He
reads selections of "literary treasures," as he calls them, and on which
he discourses at length. He seems very dull and solemn when he is in
school; not at all as he is at home. When he comes in of an afternoon and
reads his poems to aunty and to an admiring circle of cousins and sisters-
in-law, they all roar with laughter, particularly when he reads them with
a Yankee accent. He has such a rippling little giggle while reading, that
it is impossible not to laugh.

The other day he said to me, "Cousin Lillie, I will take you out for a
walk in recess." I said, "Nothing I should like better, but I can't go."
"Why not?" said he. "Because I must go and be a beggar." "What do you
mean?" he asked. "I mean that there is a duet that Mrs. Agassiz favors
just now, from Meyerbeer's 'Le Prophete,' where she is beggar number one
and I am beggar number two." He laughed. "You are a lucky little beggar,
anyway. I envy you." "Envy me? I thought you would pity me," I said. "No,
I do not pity you, I envy you being a beggar with a voice!"

I consider myself a victim. In recess, when the other girls walk in Quincy
Street and eat their apples, Mrs. Agassiz lures me into the parlor and
makes me sing duets with her and her sister, Miss Carey. I hear the girls
filing out of the door, while I am caged behind the piano, singing, "Hear
Me, Norma," wishing Norma and her twins in Jericho.

There are about fourteen pupils now; we go every morning at nine o'clock
and stay till two o'clock. We climb up the three stories in the Agassiz
house and wait for our teachers, who never are on time. Sometimes school
does not begin for half an hour.

Mrs. Agassiz comes in, and we all get up to say good morning to her. As