492 LETTERS TO DARWIN AND OTHERS. [1862, 



No, dear Darwin, we don't scorn your joining in the 

 prayer that we daily offer that " God would help our 

 poor country," and I know and appreciate your honest 

 and right feeling. 



I see also, from the English papers I read, how you 

 must picture us as in the extreme of turmoil and con- 

 fusion and chaos. But if you were here, you would 

 open your eyes to see everything going on quietly, 

 hopefully, and comfortably as possible. I suppose we 

 do not appreciate our miseries. We accept our mis- 

 fortxmes and adversities, but mean to retrieve them, 

 and would sink all that we have before giving 

 up. We work hard, and persevere, and expect to 

 come out all right, to lay the foundations of a better 

 future, no matter if they be laid in suffering. That 

 wiU not hurt us now, and may bring great good here- 

 after. 



I never saw, and have scarcely heard of, Miss 

 Cooper's book you ask after. She is the daughter of 

 the late J. Eenimore Cooper, the novelist. The vil- 

 lage she describes must be Cooperstown, New York, 

 in the county adjacent to that in which I was brought 

 up, — a region which, every time I visit it, I say it is 

 the fairest of lands, and the people the happiest. 



Oh, as to the weeds ; Mrs. Gray says she allows that 

 our weeds give up to yours. Ours are modest, wood- 

 land, retiring things, and no match for the intrusive, 

 pretentious, self-asserting foreigners. But I send you 

 seeds of one native weed which, corrupted by bad com- 

 pany, is as nasty and troublesome as any I know, 

 namely, Sicyos angulatus ; also of a more genteel 

 Cucurbitacea, Echinocystis lobata (the larger seeds). 

 Upon these, especially upon the first, I made my ob- 

 servation of tendrils coiling to the touch. Put the 



