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Correspondence of Rhoda Waterbury and G. W.
Clinton |
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Correspondence
of Rhoda Waterbury
and G. W. Clinton 1865 -
1867 Edited by P. M.
P.O. Box 299, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri, 63166‑0299;
and Research Associate, Buffalo Museum of Science, Buffalo, New York,
14204. Email: mailto:patricia.eckel@mobot.org June 1867 Vol.4 no. 181 [G
39]
Gloversville June 2nd 1867 My Dear
Mentor, You do not know
how much good your last letter did me. It strengthens my poor weak faith
to know that your faith is firm. I am real happy when I can rest on the
faith of those who are so much wiser than I. This life is such a strange
thing and the hereafter so uncertain I am glad I was educated in the
faith. The sunlight and fields and flowers always set me right after a
time. By the way is the exhilaration and flow of spirits caused by fresh
air sunlight and pleasant surroundings real devotion? I begin to distrust
myself when I see that these things influence me so much. I have been
watching and waiting for the opening of the flowers to see if I could find
something new for you, and I did begin to think spring had forgotten us up
here so near the great north woods, but within the past week we have found
more than twenty spring treasures. I have a company of ten young people to
ramble with me and with the appearance of real flowers they are beginning
to get quite enthusiastic. I teach them entirely in the fields when the
weather will permit you to not wonder that they enjoy it. But rain seems
to be the order of things here and it is only now and then we can ramble
at all. I have found one or two species of moss that I have not in my
collection though nothing new I think. With my other duties I do not find
as much time to work with the mosses and the microscope as I did last
summer besides I have been teaching and practicing oil painting every
spare moment during the whole year and have injured my eyes so I dare not
tax them so much. I am ashamed of
myself to say I am busy and have not the time for study when I know what
you do every year, and what one may accomplish by close application but
there are but few women who can apply themselves so, and I do not believe
they are very happy either. I am ashamed to say it but I must acknowledge
I like to do as I please and study or ramble or read or sew or knit by
impulse, now I know that is perfectly shiftless as the yankee says and a
great deal of real life force is wasted, that might be used in the
accomplishment of some grand purpose, and so I just don’t amount to
anything in life, and I don’t believe I should enjoy it if I did amount to
anything after all, but I might do more for the race perhaps. I don’t
think I have any thing new or strange but I am just going to send some
little things to make the letter seem like old times, and if you have
already seen a bushel of them this spring they still will look good to you
in an envelope besides the anticipation while you are opening it. The
plants I take to be Panax trifolium and Uvularia perfoliata, the moss I
cannot name yet I think I ought. Please do write again soon and let me
know that with all my folly you have kind remembrances of me still and
send me a little scrap of something green, and tell me what time this
summer you are coming to see me and keep that promise and let me say I am
still
Your disciple
Rhoda Waterbury Hon. G. W.
Clinton Recd June
8 There appears to
be no further communication between them. The Uvularia perfoliata suggests
her second letter to Clinton (June 10, 1865). Perhaps this is the specimen
now in the Clinton Herbarium. “I am ashamed of
myself to say I am busy and have not the time for study when I know what
you do every year, and what one may accomplish by close application but
there are but few women who can apply themselves so, and I do not believe
they are very happy either”: her views on female
education. Her last paragraph perhaps is an acknowledgement to Clinton that Rhoda is no longer interested in providing bryophytes to Buffalo or Albany (Clinton or Peck) and so the correspondence ends. |
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