The sentiment of our country, you must see, at least I assure you, has settled, as I knew it would if the rebellion was obstinate enough, into a determination to do away with slavery. Homely, honest, ungainly Lincoln is the representative man of the country.
A Boston gentleman, at cost of $11,000 or more, is to build a fireproof house for my herbarium, which I give to the university, with my botanical library. A fund of $12,000 is raising to support it, which will relieve me of the expenditure of about $500 a year. But I shall have double care and bother all the coming spring and summer.
Dr. Scudder has gone to Cuba, to attend an invalid, and wishes to examine orchid fertilization, and asks me what in particular he should look at.
Pray get well, dear Darwin, and believe me to be ever,
Yours cordially,
Asa Gray.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
Cambridge, April 4, 1864.
My dear Mr. Church,—If you have long ago written your American correspondent off your books, as being a right shabby fellow, he could not complain.
Here is your agreeable letter of January 19th, a most prompt and more than kind response to mine of Christmas, still unacknowledged by me!
The fact simply is that I have been delaying week by week in the hope of being able to announce to you that the subscription for the support of our botanical establishment was filled up. I am sorry to say that this cannot yet be said. The matter has been privately conducted, that is, nothing said about it in the public prints; but the two gentlemen who took the matter in hand have quietly circulated the paper among their well-to-do acquaintances in Boston, not beginning till late in January, under the idea that the fair for the Sanitary Commission had perhaps exhausted their friends’ purses. Since then, far greater and more pressing demands have been made upon the benevolent and the public-spirited, for a variety of good objects; and our affair has gone slowly in consequence.