BOSTON TO WASHINGTON 115 



could make. His intimates declare that for weeks afterwards 

 he would say on meeting them in the morning, " I have got 



another rhyme for Miss ," and after all his friends 



had declared that no more were possible, he still kept on dis- 

 covering new ones till they amounted to some incredible 

 number. 



On December 11 I returned to Boston, the whole country 

 being snow-clad and the rivers all ice-bound. On calling 

 upon my agent I found he had got no more engagements for 

 me, so I determined to go to Washington at the end of the 

 month. Considering that my lectures were so well received 

 wherever I went and so well spoken of in the papers, I was 

 puzzled to know why there was not more demand for them. 

 But later on some of my friends told me that it was because 

 I had been preceded for two years by Rev. J. G. Wood, who, 

 though a very clever artist in colour on the blackboard and 

 an excellent field naturalist, put very little into his lectures. 

 Yet he had been well puffed up by the same agent as a " great 

 English naturalist," and had given lectures in most of the 

 colleges in the United States. Hence, when the same agent 

 announced another " great English naturalist," there were 

 few bidders, as I was not at that time sufficiently well known 

 in America. With one exception, I had no lectures whatever 

 for three months ! 



I spent the three weeks in Boston studying the museums, 

 reading at the public library, paying visits, etc. One evening 

 I dined with the Naturalists' Club at the Revere House Hotel, 

 with such well-known men as Hyatt, Hagen, Minot, Scudder, 

 James, Gould, etc.; and just before I left I was invited by a 

 wealthy merchant and yachtsman, Mr. John M. Forbes, to a 

 farewell dinner at Parker's Hotel to meet some of Boston's 

 most eminent men. These were Oliver Wendell Holmes; 

 James Russell Lowell; Edward Waldo Emerson, son of the 

 philosopher; Dr. Asa Gray; Rev. James Freeman Clarke; Dr. 

 William James ; General Francis Walker, President of the 

 Technological Institute; Sir William Dawson, the Canadian 

 geologist, who was lecturing at the Lowell Institute; and two 



