“How strong do you make the solution?”
I gave him the answer as well as I could, when he turned to one of his suite:—
“Please write that down.”
And it was done accordingly. In the library I had displayed, enough to attract the eye, the bound volumes of “Flora Brasiliensis,” which he glanced at, and asked:—
“Have you the work on the botany of the vicinity of Rio Janeiro?”
I answered, Yes, thanks to Mr. Agassiz,—to whom the emperor had given it.
But he seemed uneasy until he saw it, and I put two of the folio volumes into his hands, which seemed to satisfy him.
Then, as he was passing on to the lecture-room, I slipped off. At head of Common, in Boston, I met C., who told me Dom Pedro was down at his museum at 7½ A.M. C. was not going to Hunnewell’s....
I amused them with the account of the conversation with the emperor.
The rhododendrons, and azaleas too, most splendid. Nothing like it at Philadelphia. The best as well as the most he ever had....