me Fischer's work on the _Flora
of Java_, and Latour's on _Indian Orchidaceae_, bound together, for
twenty guineas. Now, I am writing a book on botany just now, for young
people, chiefly on wild flowers, and I want these two books very much;
but I simply cannot afford to buy them, because I sent my last spare
twenty guineas to Mr. Shields yesterday for this widow. And though you
may think it not the affair of the public that I have not this book on
Indian flowers, it is their affair finally, that what I write for them
should be founded on as broad knowledge as possible; whatever value my
own book may or may not have, it will just be in a given degree worth
_less_ to them, because of my want of this knowledge.

116. So again--for having begun to speak of myself I will do so yet
more frankly--I suppose that when people see my name down for a
hundred pounds to the Cruikshank Memorial, and for another hundred to
the Eyre Defense Fund, they think only that I have more money than I
know what to do with. Well, the giving of those subscriptions simply
decides the question whether or no I shall be able to afford a journey
to Switzerland this year, in the negative; and I wanted to go, not
only for health's sake, but to examine the junctions of the molasse
sandstones and nagelfluh with the Alpine limestone, in order to
complete some notes I meant to publish next spring on the geology of
the great northern Swiss valley; notes which must now lie by me at
least for another year; and I believe this delay (though I say it)
will be really something of a loss to the traveling public, for the
little essay was intended to explain to them, in a familiar way, the
real wonderfulness of their favorite mountain, the Righi; and to give
them some amusement in trying to find out where the many-colored
pebbles of it had come from. But it is more important that I should,
with some stoutness, assert my respect for the genius and earnest
patriotism of Cruikshank, and my much more than disrespect for the
Jamaica Committee, than that I should see the Alps this year, or get
my essay finished next spring; but I tell you the fact, because I want
you to feel how, in thus leaving their men of worth to be assisted or
defended only by those who deeply care for them, the public more or
less cripple, to their own ultimate disadvantage, just the people
who could serve them in other ways; while the speculators and
money-seekers, who are only making their profit o