I should not wonder if my appointment were in some degree owing to a little piece of generosity in a small way that I played off not long since. The president has once or twice asked me to hear the Freshmen next term in a course of recitations from a text-book on general natural history as a matter of favor, as he did not wish Mr. Harris or any one else to perform this duty; and offering me, of course, additional compensation, I suppose $200 or so. I found, however, that this pay would come from the funds of the Garden, let who would perform the duty. So to prevent that, I offered to perform the duty, but to receive no pay for it. At the same time, however, I got the corporation to appropriate $100 for illustrative botanical drawings, which otherwise would have come out of my own pocket. So you see I have work enough ahead, if I live, to give me both occupation and anxiety. I have been driving away at the “Flora,” of late, very hard, hoping to come to New York to print next month; when all this matter must be laid aside, and I must prepare for my lectures, etc., for next term, which commences about the first of March. I am very tired, having been in Boston all day,--at tea at Mr. Albro’s, our good pastor, where I met Mr. Dana, father of “Two Years before the Mast” Dana, and passed the rest of the evening at Professor Peirce’s.[130] To-morrow I hope to have for study; but the next day I shall be obliged to go again to Boston, and perhaps stay till evening for a soirée at Mr. Ticknor’s. The Latimer case has greatly increased the abolition feeling in this State, besides showing that the recent decision of the Supreme Court will in fact operate in favor of the runaway slave. It is not probable that another slave will ever be again captured in Massachusetts. There is a petition to Congress in circulation, designed simply to express the feelings of Massachusetts, which will probably be signed by almost every person in the State. TO JOHN TORREY. CAMBRIDGE, January 3, 1843. Your letter, truly welcome after so long an interval, reached me yesterday. I should have been very glad to be with you during the holidays, but cannot think of leaving before I finish these interminable Compositæ. I hoped to have accomplished this on Saturday last; all but taking up some dropped stitches; but was a good deal interrupted last week. The December number of “Annals and Magazine of Natural History” (of which Professor Balfour is the botanical editor) contains a very complimentary notice of the “Botanical Text-Book,” accompanied with a few judicious selections, which shows that the writer has looked it over carefully; and winds up by terming it the best elementary treatise (as to structural botany) in the English language. So easy is it to get praise where it is not particularly deserved!...