Your circular and personal note of 24th ulto were duly received.

Through all his mature life Mr Beecher was active in engaging the interest of the public in pleasure gardening and the results of pleasure gardening in all its forms but most beneficently so in those available for modest homes, for people of straitened means and living under conditions of horticultural difficulty. With these he was, I believe, more in sympathy than the world, of late, has been giving him credit for being, and I should be glad to give any help in my power to make him better understood in this respect.

I gratefully remember, also, the encouragement which at various times I received from Mr. Beecher and have a warm sense of what he did in cultivation of an appreciative public opinion in respect to the class of works in which I have been engaged.

I have thus every disposition to comply with your request and have been slow to decline to do so. But the theme you give me—Mr Beecher’s love of nature—can be justly treated only by one who has been in intimate communion with him in rural rambles, as I have not, and by one having some literary aptitude for the duty, as I have not.

Yours Truly,