1850 TO 1865 263 
From Spencer F. Baird to Geo. P. Marsh, U. S. Minister Resident, 
Constantinople. 
WasHINGTON, June 5, 1851. 
My pear Mr. Marsu:— 
I have but this instant received your welcome letter of May 3d, 
and I hasten to answer it, and the one from the 2d. cataract of the 
Nile at one heat. I am a thousand times obliged to you for writing 
so often, especially when you have so much else to attend to. And 
the inclosed letter from dear Mrs. Marsh was (shall I say it?) read 
twice before taking up yours at all. Mary will be delighted with 
her letter, and yours, when they are sent, which d. v., shall be to- 
morrow. I am that most unfortunate of mortals, a bachelor pro tem, 
keeping a suite of rooms all alone. Mary and Lucy (Baird) have gone 
to Carlisle for the summer. I accompanied them to Baltimore last 
Tuesday, and then returned solitary and alone. They are in rather 
better health now than during the winter, and I hope that their 
mountain climate of Carlisle will do them much good. I shall visit 
them during Commencement week at Dickinson, June 26, and then 
again about the beginning of August, on which latter occasion I hope 
to carry them off to the seashore, nay perhaps to the Green Hills of 
Vermont. I cannot tell why I should feel toward Vermont as I do, 
whether that it is my wife’s country and yours, or what, but on a 
recent run down the North River a few weeks ago (of which more 
anon) I sat on the upper deck of the boat all day, thinking in a perfect 
ecstasy of homesickness of Lake Champlain, with its border of 
Mountains, of Burlington, of the steamboats, and indeed of every- 
thing connected in my mind with that region. It seems to me that 
I ought to go there this summer, probably I will: I may take Mary 
to Clarendon Springs, or Highgate. 
As permanent Secretary of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science, I attended the meeting held in Cincinnati, 
May 5th, in company with Profs. Henry, Bache, Coffin, Coakley, 
Capt. Wilkes, Sears C. Walker, and other scientific notabilities of 
this neighborhood. We had a capital meeting; and were treated like 
princes, invited to revel in wine cellars, by the Longworths, Buchanans 
and others, tea’d, dined, and otherwise eaten and drunken. I had 
my hands full of business, and could not participate in any of these 
