242 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



The following letter written to his parents shows how well 

 pleased he was with Dresden. 



DRESDEN, SAXONY, Dec. 31st, 1867. 



. . . We both of us enter the New Year in better health than for a long 

 time. Personally I am, despite bad weather, in better shape than I have 

 ever been at this season within my memory. Stomach nearly right, no 

 rheumatism or any other bodily ill. I should like to remain in this insti- 

 tution for a month to come, and would do so but that on account of the 

 continued incapacity of the director [he was serving his time in jail] to 

 superintend the work things are getting somewhat out of gear with the ad- 

 ministration. On that account I expect to be again in motion within a fort- 

 night, first to Freiberg and then to Berlin. There we will remain perhaps a 

 fortnight before taking up our march for Paris via Brussels. We hope to 

 get into England by the middle of March or first of April and to be on the 

 ocean in the first days of June. ... I am tolerably confident that by the 

 continued use of water treatment I could safely make a lengthened visit 

 to Kentucky. However it would be very much more agreeable for you all 

 to come to us. So arrange your minds for the trip. I wish you could get 

 the courage to come over to us in May and spend the summer in Europe. 

 Epes Dixwell made the trip last summer, had a good time, and was back in 



season for his school. ... I am very glad to hear of 's improvement, 



but sorry to hear of his trying to study law; it is, as practised with us, a 

 loafing, dishonorable profession in the majority of cases and success of any 

 kind demands either high and brilliant talent or knavery of every descrip- 

 tion. I would rather see him raising garden vegetables, a thousand times 

 more profitable and honorable a calling. I am sorry to see by the American 

 papers that business is in bad order in the U.S. We may have some years 

 of depression as a reaction arising from the febrile condition during the war. 

 I am afraid the radical members of the Republican Party have killed it 

 beyond hope of revival ; no party can carry the load of negro suffrage and 

 white disfranchisement. The second stage of abolition will, I fear, soon 

 begin. The first was the abolition of slavery, the next will be abolition of 

 the negro, unhappy race! 



Winter is fairly upon us, and, from the sample we have already had, pro- 

 mises to be severe for this climate. For about a week the thermometer has 

 been nearly to zero every morning ; although about 14 farther north than 

 Cincinnati we have here less severe winters than you often have. It is nearly 

 always cloudy, and as the sun does not rise until about half-past eight 

 and sets about half-past three there is scant daylight. What it fails in day- 

 light and sunshine it takes out in blowing, a half gale being a slow pace 



