Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

[420] is leisure. I have never felt more forcibly what I owe to the king for enabling me to live for science alone, undisturbed by anxieties and distractions. Here, I do not lose a moment, and when I receive invitations outside the circle of men whom I care particularly to know, I decline, on the ground that I am not free to dispose for my pleasure of time which does not belong to me. For this no one can quarrel with me, and so far as I myself am concerned, it is much better.

I stopped at Baltimore only long enough to see the city. It was Sunday, and as I could make no visits, and was anxious to arrive in good time at Washington, I took advantage of the first train. The capital of the United States is laid out upon a gigantic scale, and, consequently, portions of the different quarters are often to be traced only by isolated houses here and there,—a condition which has caused it to be called the ‘City of Magnificent Distances.’ Some of the streets are very handsome, and the capitol itself is really imposing. Their profound veneration for the founder of their liberty and their republic is a noble trait of the American people. The evidences of this are to be seen everywhere. No less than two hundred towns, villages, and