To the Same.

Cambridge, Aug. 31, 1866.

. . . This evening I start with Lesley and Thayer for a few days’ trip to Mount Desert. I expect to learn a good deal of geology, with so good a teacher and in a region so rich in geological interests.

In driving away from Ashfield, on our first turn to the left, about half way up the hill and on the right of the road, lay a great rock, much worn and with a quartz mass exposed on its surface shaped like a letter S. Lesley said that this was an excellent specimen of what Hitchcock calls compressed pebbles. In your next drive that way, you should look for it. I hear that the Buffalo meeting was a great success. I think the National Academy ought to satisfy ----’s ambition for control. Why is pettiness always ahead and so active; and why is magnanimity so stupid and slow? In short, what is the origin of evil? These problems, geological and spiritual, will last you a fortnight, when I hope to make you a visit and hear your answers.

It was during this promised visit to Ashfield, I think, that the excursion took place to which Mr. Norton refers in the following passage of a letter from which I have already quoted: —

“In 1865, I think, and again in 1866 and 1867, he spent some days with us in our summer home at Ashfield, where he learned to know, and became strongly attached to, our friend and summer neighbor, Mr. George William Curtis. I remember well an excursion in the autumn of 1866 or 1867, which we three made together from Ashfield to North Adams, where Mr. Curtis was to deliver a political address. The days were among the finest of the year, the country through which we drove was as beautiful as any part of Massachusetts, the

landscape was in its full autumnal glory, and the incidents of the little journey were various enough to give animation to the days. Wright was in excellent spirits: he was open to all the influences of the time, and, quickened by them to more than usual vivacity, he displayed, in a way not to be forgotten, the large resources of his thought, the wise conclusions of his mature judgment, in discussions of politics, of religion, of philosophy, and of practical life, and in his shrewd and kindly estimates of men. He often afterwards referred to these days, and especially to the scenery and the talk in harmony with it, on the morning of our return, as we crossed the Hoosac Mountain.

“The quality,” adds Mr. Norton, “of our relations with Wright, was unique. It was of complete, easy trust. There was no possibility of a misunderstanding, or of even the most transient irritation. His sweetness was absolute, his obligingness never at fault, he had no sharp points to be watched for and avoided. There were no intermittences of confidence. The only drawback on intimacy with him lay in one’s own liability to physical exhaustion. His powerful physical and intellectual frame prevented him from always recognizing the comparative feebleness of his companions. He could talk well, too long for average human nature, and sometimes when he was fresh for a new start at midnight others were weary; but he was not tyrannical, and, if not always perceptive of the moods and conditions of his friends, he was not vexed by being asked to conform to them. A man freer from pettiness of all sorts, freer from the sensitiveness of self-reference, I have never known.”

Among the friends whose acquaintance Chauncey especially valued were Miss Catherine Howard, of Springfield, Massachusetts, and her sisters. He first knew them at Cambridge. Miss Howard taught there at one time in Professor Agassiz’s

school, at which Chauncey was himself at the same time a teacher. From time to time afterwards, as he passed through Springfield on his way to and from Northampton or Ashfield, he was in the habit of passing some hours with this most agreeable household.

The following letters to Miss Howard are good specimens of the kindly humor with which he used to answer the questions which his friends often saved up to ask him: —