The Letters of William James, Vol. 1. William James
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logs a minute. It takes them two and one-half hours to put in as much wood as would go in at home in less than fifteen minutes.
Every note from home makes me proud of our country.... I have not been able to look at the papers, but I have heard a good deal. I do hope our people will not be such fools as to hang Jeff. Davis for treason. Can any one believe in revenge now? And if not for that, for what else should we hang the poor wretch? Lincoln's violent death did more to endear him to those indifferent and unfriendly to him than the whole prosperous remainder of his life could have done; and so will Jeff's if he is hung. Poor old Abe! What is it that moves you so about his simple, unprejudiced, unpretending, honest career? I can't tell why, but albeit unused to the melting mood, I can hardly ever think of Abraham Lincoln without feeling on the point of blubbering. Is it that he seems the representative of pure simple human nature against all conventional additions?…
To his Parents
I left the party up at Saõ Paulo the 20th of last month and got here the 16th of this, having gone up two rivers, the Içá and Jutay, and made collections of fishes which were very satisfactory to the Prof. as they contained almost one hundred new species. On the whole it was a most original month, and one which from its strangeness I shall remember to my dying day; much discomfort from insects and rain, much ecstasy from the lovely landscape, much hard work and heat, a very disagreeable companion, J– [added to the party in Brazil], the very best of fare, turtle and fresh fish every day, and running through all a delightful savor of freedom and gypsy-hood which sweetened all that might have been unpleasant. We slept on the beaches every night and fraternized with the Indians, who are socially very agreeable, but mentally a most barren people. I suppose they are the most exclusively practical race in the world. When I get home I shall bore you with all kinds of stories about them. I found the rest of the party at this most beautiful little place in a wonderful picturesque house. It was right pleasant to meet them again. The Prof. has been working himself out and is thin and nervous. That good woman, Mrs. Agassiz, is perfectly well. The boys, poor fellows, have all their legs in an awful condition from a kind of mite called "muguim" which gets under the skin and makes dreadful sores. You can't walk in the woods without getting them on you, and poor Hunney [Hunnewell] is ulcerated very badly. They have no mosquitoes though here.
Since last night we have had everything packed—our packing-work, its volume, its dirtyness, and its misery is wonderful. Twenty-nine full barrels of specimens from here, and hardly one tight barrel among them. The burly execrations of the burly Dexter when at the cooper's work would make your hair shiver. But when a good barrel presents itself, then the calm joy almost makes amends for the past. Dexter says he has the same feeling for a decent barrel that he has for a beautiful woman. When the steamer comes we are going down to Manaos, where we expect the gunboat which the government has promised the Prof. Dexter and Tal go up the Rio Negro for a month. The rest of us are going to the Madeira River in the steamer. I don't know what I shall do exactly, but there will probably be some canoeing to be done, in which case I'm ready; tho' the rainy season is beginning, which makes canoe traveling very uncomfortable. We shall be at Parâ by the middle of December certainly. I am very anxious to learn whether the New York and Brazilian steamers are to run. We may learn at Manaos, where there is also a chance for letters for us, and American papers. Why can't you send the "North American," with Father's and Harry's articles? It would be worth any price to me.
On board the old homestead, viz., Steamer Icamiaba. The only haven of rest we have in this country, and then only when she is in motion; for when we stop at a place, the Prof. is sure to come around and say how very desirable it would be to get a large number of fishes from this place, and willy-nilly you must trudge. I wrote in my last letter something about the possibility of my wishing to go down South again with the Professor. I don't think there is any more probability of it than of my wishing to explore Central Africa. If there is anything I hate, it is collecting. I don't think it is suited to my genius at all; but for that very reason this little exercise in it I am having here is the better for me. I am getting to be very practical, orderly, and businesslike. That fine disorder which used to prevail in my precincts, and which used to make Mother heave a beautiful sigh when she entered my room, is treated by the people with whom I am here as a heinous crime, and I feel very sensitive and ashamed about it. The 22nd of October!—what glorious weather you are having at home now, and how we should all like to be wound up by one day of it! I have often longed for a good, black, sour, sleety, sloshy winter's day in Washington Street. Oh, the bliss of standing on such a day half way between Roxbury and Boston and having all the horse-cars pass you full! It will be splendid to get home in mid-winter and revel in the cold.
I am delighted to hear how well Wilky is, and to hear from him. I wish Bob would write me a line—and only one letter from Alice in all this time—shame! Oh, the lovely white child! How the red man of the forest would like to hug her to his bosom once more! I proposed, beloved Alice, to write thee a long letter by this steamer describing my wonderful adventures with the wild Indians, and the tiger [jaguar?], and various details which interest thy lovely female mind; but I feel so darned heavy and seedy this morning that I cannot pump up the flow of words, and the letter goes on with the steamer from Manaos this evening. This expedition has been far less adventurous and far more picturesque than I expected. I have not yet seen a single snake wild here. The adventure with the tiger consisted in his approaching to within 30 paces of our mosquito net, and roaring so as to wake us, and then keeping us awake most of the rest of the night by roaring far and near. I confess I felt some skeert, on being suddenly awoke by him, tho' when I had laid me down I had mocked the apprehensions of Tal about tigers. The adventure with the wild Indians consisted in our seeing two of them naked at a distance on the edge of the forest. On shouting to them in Lingoa Geral they ran away. It gave me a very peculiar and unexpected thrilling sensation to come thus suddenly upon these children of Nature. But I now tell you in confidence, my beloved white child, what you must not tell any of the rest of the family (for it would spoil the adventure), that we discovered a few hours later that these wild Indians were a couple of mulattoes belonging to another canoe, who had been in bathing.
I shall have to stop now. Do you still go to school at Miss Clapp's? For Heaven's sake write to me, Bal! Tell Harry if he sees [John] Bancroft to tell him Bourkhardt is much better, having found an Indian remedy of great efficacy. Please give my best love to the Tweedies, Temples, Washburns, La Farges, Paine, Childs, Elly Van Buren and in fact everybody who is in any way connected with me. Best of love to Aunt Kate, Wilk and Bob, Harry and all the family. I pine for Harry's literary efforts and to see a number or so of the "Nation." You can't send too many magazines or papers—Care of James B. Bond, Parâ.
IV
1866-1867
JAMES returned from Brazil in March, 1866, and immediately entered the Massachusetts General Hospital for a summer's service as undergraduate interne. In the autumn he left the Hospital and resumed his studies in the Harvard Medical School.
The Faculty of the School then included Dr. O. W. Holmes and Professor Jeffries Wyman. Charles Ed. Brown-Séquard was lecturing on the pathology of the nervous system. During the years of James's interrupted course a number of men attended the school who were to be his friends and colleagues for many years thereafter—among them William G. Farlow, subsequently Professor of Cryptogamic Botany and a Cambridge neighbor for forty years, and Charles P. Putnam and James J. Putnam—two brothers in whose company he was later to spend many Adirondack vacations and to whom he became warmly attached. Henry P. Bowditch, whose instinct for physiological inquiry was already vigorous, and who was destined to become a leader of research in America, and the teacher and inspirer of a generation of younger investigators, was another Medical School contemporary with whom he formed an enduring friendship.
The instruction given in the Harvard Medical School in the sixties was as good as any obtainable in America, but it fell short of what is nowadays reckoned as essential for a medical education to an extent that none but a modern student of medicine can understand. The emphasis was still on lectures, demonstrations and reading, and the pupil's rôle was an almost completely passive one. James, according to the testimony of one of his classmates,