SIR:
I have received your letter with your check in it.
You are the first person that ever offered me money as a florist. I am not a florist, if I must take time to inform you. I had supposed it to be generally known throughout the United States and in Europe that I am professor of botany in this college, and have been for the past fifteen years. If Burns & Bruce really told you I am a florist—and I doubt it—they must be greater ignoramuses than I took them to be. I always knew that they did not have much sense, but I thought they had a little. It is true that they have at different times gathered specimens of ferns for me, and more than once have shipped them to Europe. But I never imagined they were fools enough to think this made me a florist. My collection of ferns embraces dried specimens for study in my classrooms and specimens growing on the college grounds. The ferns I have shipped to Europe have been sent to friends and correspondents. The President of the Royal Botanical Society of Great Britain is an old friend of mine. I have sent him some and I have also sent some to friends in Norway and Sweden and to other scientific students of botany.
It only shows that your next-door neighbour may know nothing about you, especially if you are a little over your neighbour's head.
My daughter, who is my secretary, will return your check, but I thought I had better write and tell you myself that I am not a florist.
Yours truly,
NOAH CHAMBERLAIN, A.M., B.S., Litt.D.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
Seminole, North Carolina,
May 29.
SIR:
I can but express my intense indignation, as Professor Chamberlain's only daughter, that you should send a sum of money to my distinguished father to hire his services as a nurseryman. I had supposed that my father was known to the entire intelligent American public as an eminent scientist, to be ranked with such men as Dana and Gray and Alexander von Humboldt.