316 A DECADE OF WORK AT HOME.  [1844, 
and am a little hoarse, which was a good thing, for as 
to voice I filled the house. As I was full of illustra- 
tions, quite as much as would cover the whole side of 
a barn, I determined to try the experiment of lectur- 
ing by the general guidance of my notes only (which 
tndwed were but pavily written out). So with the 
long pole in hand to point at the pictures I set at 
mS and talked away for an hour and ten minutes. 
I felt like a person who can hardly swim, thrown 
into the river, fairly in for it, and had to kick and 
strike to keep my head above water. The results are 
these. I was by no means satisfied, and thought I 
had made almost a failure. I left out many important 
points, | repeated myself a little now and then, and, 
—the usual result of extemporizing, — I did not get 
through, but was obliged to break off in the midst of 
the best of it. But, in spite of some difficulties of ex- 
pression, and bad sentences, the whole was probably 
more spirited in appearance than if I had followed 
my notes. And the audience generally seemed more 
moved by it than by the first. 
I consider it thus far successful; that under unfa- 
vorable circumstances, for I had no time to look over 
my notes beforehand, 1 made a desperate lunge, and 
yet avoided a real failure. It will place me so much 
at ease that I can hereafter, with or without notes, 
look fairly at my audience without wincing. So I 
shall do better hereafter. . . . 
I send you my notes (on Vacciniums) as far as 
written before I left for the South last summer ; and 
with all Boott’s memoranda as material. It would be 
crazy for me now to attempt to make any memoranda, 
or even to make the corrections that the new data 
require. Conclusions formed in hurly-burly are good 
