BOSTON TO WASHINGTON in 



natural selection, and this was followed by some interesting 

 conversation. 



One evening I was invited to a meeting of the New England 

 Women's Club, where the Rev. J. G. Brooks gave an address 

 on " What Socialists Want." I could hardly make out 

 whether he was a Socialist or not, but I thought his views to 

 be very vague and unpractical. I was not at that time a 

 thorough Socialist, but considered that a true " social econ- 

 omy " founded on land nationalization and equality of oppor- 

 tunity was what was immediately required. When called 

 upon, I spoke in this sense for about half an hour. I after- 

 wards wrote it out, treating it more systematically, and read 

 it to a private meeting of my friends at Washington. Its 

 substance is embodied in the chapter on " Economic and 

 Social Justice " in my " Studies." 



After my earlier Lowell lectures were over, I was free to 

 give them elsewhere, and had a few very interesting engage- 

 ments. On November 19 I went to Williamstown, in the extreme 

 north-west corner of Massachusetts, to lecture at Williams Col- 

 lege on " Colours of Animals." The lecture was appreciated, 

 but unfortunately the lantern was so poor as not to show the 

 coloured slides to advantage. Williamstown is in a fine 

 mountainous country, and the next day one of the professors 

 drove me in a buggy over very rough roads, and sometimes 

 over snow, to a pretty waterfall, where I collected a few of 

 the characteristic American ferns, which I sent home, and 

 which lived for many years in my garden. I here first noticed 

 the very striking effect of the white-barked birches and yellow- 

 barked willows in the winter landscape. The fine Cypripcdium 

 spectabile, I was told, grew abundantly in the bogs of this 

 district. I was hospitably entertained by President Carter, 

 who invited me to visit him in the summer, when there are 

 abundance of pretty flowers — an invitation, I much regret, I 

 was unable to profit by. 



Between my two last lectures in Boston I had to give one 

 at Meriden, a small manufacturing town in Connecticut, 

 involving a railway journey of nearly two hundred miles each 

 way. I stayed with Mr. Robert Bowman, an Englishman 



