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

[431] proportion as I become familiar with the environs of Boston, where I shall still remain a few weeks longer, I have so much to do in keeping up my journals, notes, and observations that I have not found a moment to write you since the last steamer. . . . Never did the future look brighter to me than now. If I could for a moment forget that I have a scientific mission to fulfill, to which I will never prove reccreant, I could easily make more than enough by lectures which would be admirably paid and are urged upon me, to put me completely at my ease hereafter. But I will limit myself to what I need in order to repay those who have helped me through a difficult crisis, and that I can do without even turning aside from my researches. Beyond that all must go again to science,—there lies my true mission. I rejoice in what I have been able to do thus far, and I hope that at Berlin they will be satisfied with the results which I shall submit to competent judges on my return. If I only have time to finish what I have begun! You know my plans are not wont to be too closely restricted.

Why do you not write to me? Am I then wholly forgotten in your pleasant circle while my thoughts are every day constantly with my Neuchatel friends? . . .