
          while to return there to renew a struggle
 for a Competence. I suppose I may as well
 try this atmosphere, & see if I can live upon
 any stray waifs of Scientific Examinations
 which may float along here. Even in that I 
 expect my chance to be slight, inasmuch as
 the Laboratory department of the Smith'n [Smithsonian] Inst [Institution]
 was organized last fall by the appointment
 of a young chemist Dr. Easter (from Baltimore
  I believe) into whose hands we'll be thrown
 whatever business goes to that quarter.
 That same laboratory is at present a most
 ignoble representation of a chemists workroom,
 without furnace, sand Bath, dome, or any
 of the little neatnesses required for manipulation.
 I suspect however it is in vastly better order than
 when L. Smith worked in it. Indeed I think
 it was a room underneath the present one is on
 a level with the Entrance & library & hall.
 I sit & work chiefly in the laboratory & opening
 out from it is the large room at the East end- occupied
 as a "locus in quo" the minerals of the surveys lie strewn
 on tables scattered over one half the floor, while the 
 other portion of the room is the reception room for
 Books, contributions etc. forwarded to the Inst. [Institution] from which
 they are taken (having been dusted & sorted previously) to
 the Library. Could not a collection of minerals
 be made & a Geological department made in this
        