740 FINAL JOURNEYS AND WORK. [1882, 
A good number of our English acquaintances have 
been over this autumn. Dr. and Mrs. Carpenter are 
among the last to return. He has just closed a pop- 
ular course of Lowell lectures, and they go back a 
week or two hence. One hardly knows what brought 
Herbert Spencer. He seems most to have enjoyed 
Niagara, where he stayed a week. I do not think the 
dinner demonstration for him at New York amounted 
to very much; nor do I take stock in the statement, 
the truth of which he took for granted, that the hair 
turns gray in the United States ten years earlier than 
in England. I should say the only difference is, that 
there is more hair remaining here to turn gray at 
middle age or later. Spencer also told us of a dis- 
covery he had made, that all Americans had the outer 
corners of their eyes lower than the inner, the oppo- 
site of our antipodes, the Mongols. 
I have just returned from a “sleigh ride.” Snow, 
though a nuisance in towns, is a convenience in the 
country, greatly facilitating travel, and a drive upon 
runners instead of wheels, well wrapped in furs and 
with buffalo robes, is much enjoyed. 
At the end of August, Mrs. Gray and I went to 
Montreal, to the meeting of the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science, where we were guests 
of the president, Dr. Dawson. We made an excursion 
to wa, the new seat of government, and another 
down the noble St. Lawrence and up its picturesque 
tributary, the Saguenay. Otherwise we have been 
at home all the summer and autumn. And so we 
expect to be all winter, save perhaps a week in Wash- 
ington. 
... I think I have long owed your son Ports- 
mouth a letter, but, though I should be glad to hear 
