Well, you have heard what I had to say about my introductory lecture. I was satisfied. I said plainly what I intended to say and delivered it not very well indeed, but well enough to satisfy me that I could do well with practice. This evening I have made a second trial, and a more trying one by far. I have a cold and am a little hoarse, which was a good thing, for as to voice I filled the house. As I was full of illustrations, quite as much as would cover the whole side of a barn, I determined to try the experiment of lecturing by the general guidance of my notes only (which indeed were but partly written out). So with the long pole in hand to point at the pictures I set at work, and talked away for an hour and ten minutes.
I felt like a person who can hardly swim, thrown into the river, fairly in for it, and had to kick and strike to keep my head above water. The results are these. I was by no means satisfied, and thought I had made almost a failure. I left out many important points, I repeated myself a little now and then, and,—the usual result of extemporizing,—I did not get through, but was obliged to break off in the midst of the best of it. But, in spite of some difficulties of expression, and bad sentences, the whole was probably more spirited in appearance than if I had followed my notes. And the audience generally seemed more moved by it than by the first.
I consider it thus far successful; that under unfavorable circumstances, for I had no time to look over my notes beforehand, I made a desperate lunge, and yet avoided a real failure. It will place me so much at ease that I can hereafter, with or without notes, look fairly at my audience without wincing. So I shall do better hereafter....
I send you my notes (on Vacciniums) as far as written before I left for the South last summer; and with all Boott’s memoranda as material. It would be crazy for me now to attempt to make any memoranda, or even to make the corrections that the new data require. Conclusions formed in hurly-burly are good for nothing; and I cannot, and must not, think of anything but my task. The two last of my lectures are not even arranged yet.
TO J. D. HOOKER.
Cambridge, 1st March, 1844.
My dear Friend,—I was very much gratified at receiving your kind letter of January 16; and I was quite startled at the lapse of time, I assure you, when you reminded me that five years had elapsed since we were running about the streets of London together. Since that time you have seen the world, indeed, or some very out-of-the-way parts of it; and you now stand in a perfectly unrivaled position as a botanist, as to advantages, etc., with the finest collections and libraries of the world within your reach; and if you do not accomplish something worth the while, you ought not to bear the name of Hooker.
I thank you most cordially for all the news you kindly give me respecting the family, and wish to return my best thanks for being remembered to one and all. Your good old grandfather holds out so well that really I sometimes think I may yet take him again by the hand; for I long to make another visit to England. Perhaps I may in two or three years. But I hope ere that to see you here, where you may depend upon a most hearty reception; and the Greenes (who send remembrances) join me strenuously in begging you will make us a visit. After Sir William and Lady Hooker (seniores priores), whom we cannot expect to see under present circumstances, there is nobody in England I could so much wish to see as yourself.
Had I time, I should fill this sheet with gossip about my occupations, plans, and prospects. Of these hereafter, for I hope our correspondence will not end here. But I am now exceedingly pressed for time, having just commenced my course of public lectures in Boston on physiological botany. Indeed I have the second lecture to give this evening, and much preparation yet to make for it. But I must tell you that in August next I am to take possession of the house which belongs to our little Botanic Garden,—a quiet pleasant place, where I am to set up a bachelor establishment, have room enough for my herbarium, which I shall arrange à la Hooker, and a bed and a plate for a friend. So, if you wish to take an autumnal excursion, step on board the steamer and so drop in upon me some morning, where you may depend upon—in a humble way—as cordial a reception as I once received in Scotland.
Sullivant, who is a good, spirited fellow, is delighted at the thought of receiving a set of your cryptogamic collections. As to your generous proposal to send another to some public collection in this country, we will see. I will write something about it in due time.