1850 TO 1865 263 



From Spencer F. Baird to Geo. P. Marsh, U. S. Minister Resident, 



Constantinople. 



WASHINGTON, June 5, 1851. 

 MY DEAR MR. MARSH: 



I have but this instant received your welcome letter of May 3d, 

 and I hasten to answer it, and the one from the 2d. cataract of the 

 Nile at one heat. I am a thousand times obliged to you for writing 

 so often, especially when you have so much else to attend to. And 

 the inclosed letter from dear Mrs. Marsh was (shall I say it?) read 

 twice before taking up yours at all. Mary will be delighted with 

 her letter, and yours, when they are sent, which d. v., shall be to- 

 morrow. I am that most unfortunate of mortals, a bachelor pro tern, 

 keeping a suite of rooms all alone. Mary and Lucy (Baird) have gone 

 to Carlisle for the summer. I accompanied them to Baltimore last 

 Tuesday, and then returned solitary and alone. They are in rather 

 better health now than during the winter, and I hope that their 

 mountain climate of Carlisle will do them much good. I shall visit 

 them during Commencement week at Dickinson, June 26, and then 

 again about the beginning of August, on which latter occasion I hope 

 to carry them off to the seashore, nay perhaps to the Green Hills of 

 Vermont. I cannot tell why I should feel toward Vermont as I do, 

 whether that it is my wife's country and yours, or what, but on a 

 recent run down the North River a few weeks ago (of which more 

 anon) I sat on the upper deck of the boat all day, thinking in a perfect 

 ecstasy of homesickness of Lake Champlain, with its border of 

 Mountains, of Burlington, of the steamboats, and indeed of every- 

 thing connected in my mind with that region. It seems to me that 

 I ought to go there this summer, probably I will: I may take Mary 

 to Clarendon Springs, or Highgate. 



As permanent Secretary of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, I attended the meeting held in Cincinnati, 

 May 5th, in company with Profs. Henry, Bache, Coffin, Coakley, 

 Capt. Wilkes, Sears C. Walker, and other scientific notabilities of 

 this neighborhood. We had a capital meeting; and were treated like 

 princes, invited to revel in wine cellars, by the Longworths, Buchanans 

 and others, tea'd, dined, and otherwise eaten and drunken. I had 

 my hands full of business, and could not participate in any of these 



