So no more at present from your disobedient,
Jap. Puff.
Dr. Gray’s last dog was a beautiful spaniel, and had the same devoted love for him. He was very courteous and polite, and gentle and affectionate. He needed a great deal of outdoor exercise, and was so disconsolate and miserable at his master’s illness, that he was sent to kind friends, where he still keeps a warm and loving greeting for his old mistress.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
Cambridge, December 26, 1877.
Did I dispatch a line to you on or about October 1st,—one which would have crossed your last to me? If I did not, it shows how a continual and fixed intention works a sense of performance.
I took with me, on our travels, your letter of June 20, expecting to write you from the Rocky Mountains or some far-away Pacific region. But never were such busy people as Hooker and I the whole time. In fact, I was bound to make Hooker see just as much as possible within our limited time, and it seemed on the whole best for us to see very much in glimpses and snatches rather than far less more leisurely and thoroughly. He will have told you of our over nine thousand miles of travel together, and of how he liked it. I think Mrs. Gray and I enjoyed it most, and that we have a particular fancy for hurry-skurry journeying. We should like to do it all over, and more. But especially we should like to see California, in green attire. Not that we are not interested and taken with the sere aspect of these western regions in summer, which we fancy more than Hooker does. In fact, the greenness of England is so congenial to him that he took more delight in our eastern States, which he had mere glimpses of, than in all the wide western region, though of course there was more to learn in these.
How I wish you could have been of the party! We dream of doing some parts again, and of going both farther south and north, three years hence. You and Sir Joseph would not then be too old. But I can hardly expect then to be, as last summer, one of the most active and frisky members of the party.
Moreover, the cost in time is more than one counts on. From the middle of July to the end of September, one may, once in a way, fairly devote to holidaying. But then, after a week or two of work with Hooker over our notes and collections, I had to bring up long arrears, which I should have kept in hand if I had stayed at home, and so I have only now of late come to take up my regular work where I left it in July.
If you do not hear enough of our summer’s doings from Hooker,—and I know he must be busy indeed,—we must get Mrs. Gray to write a narrative; not that she is not also a busy soul.