aa 
&T, 66.] TO R. W. CHURCH. 665 
isfaction, his article on the Reality of Duty. That 
naturally brought you to mind, and I vowed I would 
no longer be so negligent, but would acknowledge and 
thank you for your letter of August last, and for 
Professor Mozley’s sermons. They are excellent in- 
deed, and it is saddening to have a man of such 
insight laid aside by illness, of a sort which probably 
does not diminish his desire, but destroys his power, 
to work. ... 
I think Mrs. Gray has given some account of our 
summer vacation. I long to revisit those mountains 
when the Wiedotendveus and Kalmias are in bloom, 
and to have your company. 
We are just home, Mrs. Gray and I, from a fort- 
night with our friends at Washington, —a pleasant 
holiday, which of late I have always had at this season, 
the time of the annual meeting of the regents of the 
Smithsonian Institution, of which I am one of the lay 
G. e., non-congressional) members. It makes a break 
in the monotony of our winter, which is far milder 
there than in New England, and the society at Wash- 
ington is very pleasant. More and more men of mark, 
and intelligence, and cultivation reside there, at least 
for the winter months. We left on the day when the 
contested electoral count began, under the arrange- 
ment so happily and hopefully adopted. There is 
no excitement, and, outside of partisanship, little care 
which way it is determined, but much that it shall be 
legitimately determined by evidence, argument, and 
a decisive judgment. 
am deep in routine botanical work, and with a 
printer not far behind me, I can think of little else. 
