Like most
boys, he cared nothing for picture-galleries and the famous
sights, he was homesick and he wished to get back to what really
pleased him,--that is, collecting animals. He was already
interested in that. And only when he could go to a museum and see,
as he wrote in his diary, "birds and skeletons" or go "for a
spree" with his sister and buy two shillings worth of rock-candy,
did he enjoy himself in Europe.
His sister knew what he thought about the things one is supposed
to see in Europe, and in her diary set it down:
"I am so glad Mama has let me stay in the butiful hotel parlor
while the poor boys have been dragged off to the orful picture
galary."
These experiences are funny enough now, but probably they were
tragic to him at the time. In a church in Venice there were at
least some moments of happiness. He writes of his sister "Conie":
"Conie jumped over tombstones spanked me banged Ellies head &c."
But in Paris the trip becomes too monotonous; and his diary says:
November 26. "I stayed in the house all day, varying the day with
brushing my hair, washing my hands and thinking in fact having a
verry dull time."
November 27. "I did the same thing as yesterday."
They all came back to New York and again he could study and amuse
himself with natural history. This study was one of his great
pleasures throughout life and when he was a man he knew more about
the animals of America than anybody except the great scholars who
devoted their lives to this alone.
Pages:
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28