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[371] now got that burden off your shoulders. . . . . Your friends here feel very happy at the result, and at the manner in which it was obtained. You seem now to be resting yourself, while the rest of the house are trying their skill on the subject of fortifications and money bills. But I hope you will be on the floor again pretty soon, for we feel, when we take up the ‘Intelligencer’ and find you are not in the bill of fare, very much as the boys of Paris did in the Revolution, on those days when nobody's head was to be cut off, and they went home crying out, ‘Point de fete aujourd'hui.’

I wish I could tell you something from here that would interest you. But my shop is a small one, and no great assortment in it. The College is going on very well, as far as changes are concerned. Frank Gray is elected into the Corporation, and will no doubt be approved by the Overseers next Thursday. This is a good change . . . . Further we will tell you when you attend the meeting of the Overseers next June, and ask what has been done. For you promised last winter to ask the question, and I hope you will not cease to ask it until all has been done that ought to be . . . .

We are making quite a movement about libraries, lecture-rooms, Athenaeum, etc. I have a project, which may or may not succeed; but I hope it will. The project is, to unite into one establishment, viz. the Athenaeum, all the public libraries in town; such as the Arch Library, the Medical Library, the new Scientific Library, and so on, and then let the whole circulate, Athenaeum and all. In this way, there will be an end of buying duplicates, paying double rents, double librarians, etc.; the whole money raised will go to books, and all the books will be made usefuL To this great establishment I would attach all the lectures wanted, whether fashionable, popular, scientific,—for the mechanics, or their employers; and have the whole made a Capitol of the knowledge of the town, with its uses, which I would open to the public, according to the admirable direction in the Charter of the University of Gottingen, Quam commodissime, quamque latissime. Mr. Prescott, Judge Jackson, Dr. Bowditch, and a few young men are much in earnest about it. . . . .

We went the other night to a great ball at Colonel Thorndike's, a part of which extended into your house,1 which it was not altogether agreeable to enter without finding its owners there to welcome us. A few nights afterwards we had the whole town turned in upon ourselves, for the first time in our lives . . . . . I am very glad you like


1 The two houses were connected by doors, which could be opened on such occasions.

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