What a charming book is that of Darwin on orchid fertilization!
TO CHARLES WRIGHT.
Cambridge, April 17, 1862.
I am at work in college now, you know, and it is very hard work. This last vacation I had to make a new edition and new additions to my “Manual,” etc., and to do it in a hurry, and I have at length, for the first time, found out that I am growing old. In fact I broke down under it, and have injured my health a little.... I doubt if I ever recover the spring and vim of former times. But we shall see....
My hard work has got correspondence all horridly behindhand, and determined me to draw in my horns, and drop a good deal of it. My desk has long been so covered deep with unanswered letters, etc., that I have abandoned it, and now sit over on the other side of the table.
If I sit down and answer a letter right off the day it comes, as I am now doing with yours, and as I do with purely business letters, etc., then it is safe. If I add it to the heap, it is a gone case, and I fear will never be really answered.
Eaton, too, as you know, has been very hard worked, in his father’s office.
Well, there is no State now in some part of which the star-spangled banner does not float. Lincoln is a trump, a second Washington, steady, conservative, no fanatical abolitionist. Foote, of your State of Connecticut, is putting down his foot on the Mississippi. McClellan is to fight a great battle at Yorktown. Another bloody battle may be fought near Corinth, Mississippi. New Orleans will soon be ours, please God, and then this wicked rebellion will be done for. I pray God I may live to see the end of it, and the States brought back, quietly if they will, forcibly if they must.
I know it will rejoice your heart to see the thing done. And it will be worth all it costs.
Come now, here is a good long letter for a man as tired as I to write, who has been five or six hours in lecture-room, working hard.