280 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. X. 



III. 



2(u) 

 Fishes are whispering. What can it be, 



2(u) 



So many hundred miles long? 

 For it's strange, strange, strange, 

 How they could spin out such durable stuff, 

 Lying all wiry, elastic, and tough, 



Without change, change, change, 

 In the salt water so strong. 



IV. 



2(u) 

 There let us leave it for fishes to see ; 



2(u) 



They'll see lots of cables ere long, 

 For we'll twine, twine, twine, 

 And spin a new cable, and try it again, 

 And settle our bargains of cotton and grain, 

 With a line, line, line, 



A line that will never go wrong. 

 Eeceive, etc. 



To E. B. LITCHFIELD, Esq. 



Glenlair, 23d Sept. 1857. 



I have just returned from the remote Highlands, and 

 have met all the Indian news on my way, and found your letter 

 at home. I suppose it is best to say what I think to you, 

 rather than what I feel, for that is confusion. You may 

 well ask " Why ?" I myself see a horrible despair waiting 

 for us if we knew or even paid enough attention to things 

 happening continually. Is it merely a reaction from our 

 animal life that makes us comfortable again ? or excitement 

 of some other kind ? or defective sympathy ? No ; I think 

 real sympathy is the very thing we want, and we suffer 

 more from want of union than from any other cause. I 

 cannot make the thing clearer either to you or to myself ; 

 but as I was coming % home and expecting bad news, I 

 thought of dead and absent friends, and how they endea- 



