Letter from GEORGE PERKINS MARSH to SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD, dated January 3, 1859.
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Dear Baird
We do wish you a jolly new year and many of them, less labor and more play, fewer
proofs to read, and more pence to pocket, and specially thousands of letters less to
write. 'Tis the pestilentest, most soul-distracting occupation on earth, that is
when you have anything to write about. But to scribble about nothing, as we used to
do before we came to be a couple of such sapless dry old sticks as time, trouble,
and Satan have made us, is good. It prolongeth life, health, and youth, drives away
blue devils and red, and comforteth the inward man exceedingly. Ah, happy day,
whither are ye fled!
I am newly returned from Vermont, where (at St Johnsbury)
on Christmas day, after one hour of clean bright sunshine. I saw the mercury at
-20, and on another day, being two hours or more in the open air, I
came home with a case of ice (I do wear a beard) about chin & cheeks. I have
a fortnight more of vacation, & then begin again my prelections, which I
wish were done, ended & forgotten.
I have read Quatrefages Souvenirs (I left out the nonsense about natural history, lungs & livers, pluck & gizzards, and such like rubbish as you delight in). How he describes coast scenery! Sicily is, to me a pearl inestimable. Wife and I cried to go back again. When I am rich, I will have me a yacht, & sail for Trinacria. You shall go too, and catch nasty sea-devils, and make 'otomies of 'em, & Mary & we will laugh at you
Well, I must end this and go to my
tread-mill.
In yours of Dec 21 from Phila. you said you had left certain books to be forwarded. Were they sent? None have been received. Do you know of anything of Timby's or Trimby's or Twombly's or Toumey's transportable barometers recommended by Prof. Hackley or be they a piece of quackery?
My wife did hope and believe in a journey to Washington, but she hath relapsed into debility, & cannot go. I hope Mary is well. What a diabolical outrage the treatment of Gilliss is! Things will never come right, till get the power.
Goodbye to both of youYours trulyG P Marsh
Prof Baird
References in this letter:
Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau was the author of the second volume of Recherches anatomique et zoologiques faite pendant un voyage sur les co)circumflex)tes de la Sicile.... 3 vols. Paris: V. Masson, 1845-1850. And The Rambles of a Naturalist on the Coasts of France, Spain and Sicily. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1857.
Trinacria is the ancient name of Sicily.
American inventor J. R. Timby obtained patents on several barometers, including a bottle-barometer and a cistern barometer.
James Melville Gilliss (1811-1865) was both a naval officer and astronomer. He was responsible for proposing and supervising the building of Naval Observatory in Washington, DC (1842-1844). In 1846 he was assigned to the U.S. Coast Survey and spent several years in Chile conducting astronomical observations. The Gilliss family, based in Washington, became close friends of the Marshes and the Bairds.