Don’t talk about our “hating” you, nor suppose that we want to rob you of Canada, for which nobody cares.
We think we have been ill-used by you, when you thought us weak and broken, and when we expected better things. We have learned that we must be strong to live in peace and comfort with England, otherwise we should have to eat much dirt. But now that we are on our feet again, all will go well, and hatred will disappear. Indeed I see little of that.
I must look to the Plantago dimorphism, for, as you say, these plants, fertilized by the wind, would gain nothing by being dimorphic. No dimorphic species grows very near here, nor can I now get seeds of P. Virginica. Perhaps a good look at even dried specimens, under your hints, may settle the matter.
I was exceedingly interested with the Lythrum paper (but had no time to write a notice of it), and I wait expectingly for your Climbing plants. You are the very prince of investigators. We hope presently to make Mrs. Wedgewood’s acquaintance.
July 24.
I am reading in snatches your admirable paper on Climbing plants,—as yet only eighty-eight pages of it, and am watching with great interest all the climbers I have at hand. What a nice piece of work you have made of it!
I see you explain and illustrate at length the double turn of a caught tendril. Is it not enough to say that, with both ends fixed, if it shortens, say by the contraction of one side, it must by mechanical necessity turn its coil different ways from a neutral point?
Ere this, Mrs. Wedgewood should be back from Canada, but I have not yet learned that she is so. She was to let me know, and we would have a day on the shore, where Mr. Loring lives in summer,—a pretty bit of country. But it is now too late.
I wish she could have been here on Friday, when we welcomed back our Harvard men who had been in the war,—over five hundred of them,—and remembered those who had died for their country. What a day we had!
Jefferson Davis richly deserves to be hanged. We are willing to leave the case in the hands of the government, who must take the responsibility. If I were responsible, I would have him tried for treason (the worst of crimes in a republic), convicted, sentenced to death; and then I think I should commute the penalty, not out of any consideration for him, but from policy, and for his more complete humiliation. The only letters I have received expressing a desire to hang him are from rebeldom itself,—from Alabama. You see slavery is dead, dead,—an absolute unanimity as to this. The revolted States will behave as badly as they can, but they are so thoroughly whipped that they can’t stir, hand or foot, and we are disbanding all our armies,—a corporal’s guard is enough to hold South Carolina. Seriously, there are difficult questions before us, but only one result is possible: the South must be renovated, and Yankeefied.