Your most welcome and long-expected letter of the 14th reached me only this noon. This first day of leisure of this week has been a very busy one. I have been to town, and just got back. I have had to work very hard this week. I have got my course of recitations for the Freshmen on Smellie well in progress, and am quite interested in it, though at first I thought it would have been a great bore. The class are generally very much interested, and give promise that I shall reap the fruits of my labor when they become Sophomores or Seniors and attend the botanical lectures, for which I think I am laying a foundation. I am now perfectly at ease in my mode of teaching them; I am pretty good at questioning, and I give them plenty of illustration, explanation, and ideas not in the book, which pleases and interests them. In one of the divisions last week, while giving them a sort of lecture, two hours long! (to which they listened well; for I gave them, or those who chose, the opportunity of going at the expiration of the regular hour, but not one of them budged), turning my head at a fortunate moment, I caught one of the fellows (rather a stupid fellow, a boarder with me last term) throwing his cap to his companion or playing some trick. You know I can scold. So I gave him about half a dozen words that made him open his eyes wide; and I do not think that he, nor any of that division, will venture upon anything of the kind again very soon.
As to the botanical class, which now numbers thirty-seven, I have given two more lectures, for I lectured both Thursday and Friday, on the last occasion, which was a sort of recapitulation quite without notes, as a trial. I am convinced that for lectures with much illustration I must have only heads and leading ideas written; for others, I will write nearly in full. I saw Miss Lowell ... the day before my first lecture, and promised to call upon her very soon if I succeeded well. Meeting her the other evening at Professor Sparks’s, she reproved me for not keeping my word. I very honestly and sincerely replied that I had not succeeded well, and was waiting until I was better satisfied. Quite to my surprise, I found that the class, at least those she had seen, her great-nephew and others, were well pleased with it. I will not repeat their expressions, as retailed to me by Miss Lowell, because I cannot but suspect that young Lowell may have been trying to humbug her. I feel I have so far acquitted myself very poorly as a lecturer; but I am sustained by the firm conviction that I shall in the end do very well, for a common college class.
TO JOHN TORREY.
May, 1843.
I have been speaking about the bones of the Zygodon, and there is a disposition to get up a subscription in the Natural History Society and buy them, if still for sale, the price not too great, and if Dr. Wyman, on seeing them, recommends the purchase. Do you know the price? And whether they can still be seen in New York, at Carey’s storehouse? The Boston zoölogists are far from praising De Kay’s Report. I heard Silliman on electro-magnetism the other evening (which hardly belongs to chemistry): great show of experiments; lauded Henry finely. He is finishing off with galvanic deflagration. Will Frémont go west this year? So Mr. Carey is going to Buffalo. Occupation will be the best thing for him; but we shall miss him in New York....
Monday afternoon, 9th May.
I have a few of Frémont’s plants up from seeds. The two pine-trees and the Pyxidanthera were received in good condition, to my great wonderment. Pyxidanthera is in full bloom, and a drawing of it nearly finished (as well as of Oakesia, about which I have some new matters that are curious) by the eldest Miss Quincy, whom I have pressed into the service....
Rhododendron Lapponicum, from the White Mountains, is just bursting into flower. I am building rock-work, but we get on slowly. All the work of the Garden comes together this spring, and all in a heap.
TO W. J. HOOKER.
Cambridge, 30th May, 1843.