LETTERS FROM BRAZIL 95 
baby, saying, “I can do without it, perf’ly well, 
Mamma.” I can hear him. The next great event is 
Christmas, of which we long for accounts. I do hope 
it was just as pleasant as could be, and that the chil- 
dren had a first-rate time. If Christmas is happy for 
them, it’s happy for everybody. 
I am anxious to hear how our little book (Alex’s 
and mine) gets on. He has sent me some preliminary 
notices of it, but these don’t mean much. My home 
letters say it looks well, but so far as I can find out 
nobody has read it, which makes me quite wrathy. 
I dreamed about it the other day, and thought it was 
a most obnoxious looking volume, — a thin book with 
very small, bad print, and that in order to make 
it sell, Alex had introduced a number of extraor- 
dinary sensation woodcuts, among which was a pic- 
ture of a city with the plague. I suppose our next 
letters will have something more about it. After all 
writing books is rather a perilous business. 
Pard, March 8, 1866 
...AsI retreat from my life of the last six months 
and have it in memory only, I begin to feel more than 
ever how much I have gained in picturesque images 
— things that I shall always enjoy as much perhaps 
in the retrospect as in the actual experience. I find too 
in talking with the people here that I have seen a great 
deal which persons who have lived all their lives in the 
neighborhood of the Amazons have not seen; the fact 
is that with the exception of the few naturalists who 
have made the journey people go up and down this 
