322 A DECADE OF WORK AT HOME. [1844, 



find some place of service, in English if he could. He 

 enjoyed the Episcopal service, though early habit and 

 training had made him a Presbyterian ; but, as he 

 wrote in an early letter, " In fact I have no more 

 fondness for high Calvinistic theology than for Ger- 

 man neology. . . . But I have no penchant for mel- 

 ancholy, sober as I sometimes look, but turn always, 

 like the leaves, my face to the sun." 



He was a teacher in Sunday-schools in New York 

 (the lady with whom he boarded has still a lively re- 

 membrance of his enthusiastic study of German that 

 he might teach his class of German boys better), and 

 also in his early years of Cambridge life, until the 

 heavy load of work he was carrying made the Sunday 

 more imperative as a day of rest. It was his rule to 

 rest on Sunday. Rest for him was change of intellec- 

 tual occupation, and he read all of the day he was not 

 out at church ; more especially on the philosophical 

 questions, whether general or scientific, which next to 

 botany were his chief interest. Books on these sub- 

 jects were the few he bought outside of works on bot- 

 any ; as he said, he could only afford botanical books 

 and had no money or room for general literature. He 

 read the leading magazines, and occasionally biogra- 

 phies and travels, and if he had friends staying with 

 him, Sunday was the day for talk and discussion. 

 A friend writes such a lively reminiscence of one of 

 these Sunday discussions, on a stormy winter day 

 which shut all in the house, that it seems worth giving 

 as a vivid description of him. 



" Dr. Gray is more associated with the study and 

 the room next it, but I recall him there (in the par- 

 lor) also, esjDecially in the visit of which you wrote, 

 made when Mr. John Carey was with you. He and 



