LETTERS FROM BRAZIL 95 



baby, saying, *'I can do without it, perf'ly well, 

 Mamma." I can hear him. The next great event is 

 Christmas, of which we long for accounts. I do hope 

 it was just as pleasant as could be, and that the chil- 

 dren had a first-rate time. If Christmas is happy for 

 them, it 's happy for everybody. 



I am anxious to hear how our little book (Alex's 

 and mine) gets on. He has sent me some preliminary 

 notices of it, but these don't mean much. My home 

 letters say it looks well, but so far as I can find out 

 nobody has read it, which makes me quite wrathy. 

 I dreamed about it the other day, and thought it was 

 a most obnoxious looking volume, — a thin book with 

 very small, bad print, and that in order to make 

 it sell, Alex had introduced a number of extraor- 

 dinary sensation woodcuts, among which was a pic- 

 ture of a city with the plague. I suppose our next 

 letters will have something more about it. After all 

 writing books is rather a perilous business. 



Pardy March 8, 1866 

 ... As I retreat from my life of the last six months 

 and have it in memory only, I begin to feel more than 

 ever how much I have gained in picturesque images 

 — things that I shall always enjoy as much perhaps 

 in the retrospect as in the actual experience. I find too 

 in talking with the people here that I have seen a great 

 deal which persons who have lived all their lives in the 

 neighborhood of the Amazons have not seen; the fact 

 is that with the exception of the few naturalists who 

 have made the journey people go up and down this 



