Returning from Chicago I find your letter of 16th. I, also, had more than once come to my desk to write you, under the same impulse, (proceeding partly from Brace’s death and partly from our ‘Rick’s entering college), that moved me to write Mrs. Whitney and after the report of his marriage was confirmed, to Trask. The only reason I did not write was that, coming to my desk, I always found upon it some pressing business duty that took precedence. I was very glad to read your paper on Brace, and wanted to say so. It was an audacious sort of missive I sent Mrs Whitney and I should not have written her if I had not been kept in bed for a week in the chamber of a North Carolina farm house with the companionship only of a specially stupid negro field hand; nor, perhaps, if I had not been under the care of an old fashioned Southern doctor who dosed me excessively with calomel, quinine, whiskey and opium. But, in vino veritas, and with pencil and wrapping paper, I let myself out more or less vagariously. I have always had a fixed, and ever growingly grateful respect and regard for her. I have a good deal of that sort of freight in my hold which never comes to light and activity, &, in fact is hardly known to myself except for some occasional strange stir.

I had not known of Charley’s condition, except that after he sailed, I asked his daughter in law who was visiting us, if there was anything serious in the indisposition that sent him abroad and she replied that she feared there [291]was. His death was a shock to me, (I heard of it while in Carolina) and the shock has been growing greater since.

My letter to Mrs Whitney was written, as you suppose, from the Vanderbilt property but was mailed from Atlanta, where also we have a considerable work in preparation. (Our Southern circuit includes or has recently included Richmond, Montgomery, Knoxville, Nashville and Louisville). (In the far West we have works in progress, two in Colorado and one in California. Altogether, I have to do a great deal of long journeying and of late the jar of the cars has become rather seriously irritating to me but personal activity on the ground is my “lust holt,” and is the part of the work of our office that I can least turn over to my partners.

I take pretty nearly your view of the Vanderbilt property. It is in itself (i.e. regardless of its outlooks) a generally poor and vagabondish region but there are potentialities in parts of it, especially its little valleys, of which we can make something. Knowing that within fifty miles there was grand local scenery and almost the finest deciduous forest in the world, I was at my first visit greatly disappointed with its apparent barrenness and the miserable character of its woods. Standing at what is now the house site, Mr V. said to me: “I came to Asheville with my mother. We found the air mild and invigorating and I thought well of the climate. I enjoyed the distant scenery. I took long rambles and found pleasure in doing so. In one of them I came to this spot under favorable circumstances and thought the prospect finer than any other I had seen. It occurred to me that I would like to have a house here. The land was beyond the field of speculation and I bought a piece of it at a low rate. Then when I began to consider the matter more seriously I saw that if I built upon it I should not have pleasant neighbors, so I sent Mr. McNamee down here to buy some of them out, and, step by step, without any very definite end in view, I have acquired about 2000 acres. Now I have brought you here to examine it and tell me if I have been doing anything very foolish.” “What do you imagine you will do with all this land?” I asked. “Make a Park of it,” I suppose. “You bought the place then simply because you thought it had a good air and because, from this point, it had a good distant outlook. If that was what you wanted you have made no mistake. There is no question about the air and none about the prospect. But the soil seems to be generally poor. The woods are miserable, all the good trees having again & again been culled out and only runts left. The topography is most unsuitable for anything that can properly be called park scenery. It’s no place for a park. You could only get very poor results at great cost in attempting it.” “What could be done with it?” “Such land in Europe would be made a forest; partly, if it belonged to a gentleman of large means, as a preserve for game, mainly with a view to crops of timber. That would be a suitable and dignified business for you to engage in; it would, in the long run, be probably a fair investment of capital and it would be of great value to the country to have a thoroughly well organized and systematically conducted attempt in forestry made on a large scale. My advice would be to [292]make a small park into which to look from your house; make a small pleasure ground & garden; farm your river bottoms chiefly to keep and fatn livestock with a view to manure; and make the rest a forest, improving the existing woods and planting the old fields.” This advice struck him favorably and after thinking it over several months he told me that he was prepared to adopt it. Since then I have {been} giving it practical form and have each division of the scheme in operation. Having a commercial forest in view, he has since added to the property, piece after piece, until now it amounts to quite 6000 acres. We have been forming a nursery for the estate in which we already have growing 40,000 trees and shrubs and are propagating a much larger number; these for the borders of the roads and for the home grounds. We have planted on the “old fields” 300 acres of white pine, and are preparing schedules of stock for the forest planting and are instructing and breaking in two foremen with small gangs for taking out the poor and dilapidated trees of the existing woods. I am to meet Mr V. on the Estate next month and to initiate some new operations. He is a delicate, refined and bookish man, with considerable humor, but shrewd, sharp exacting and resolute in matters of business. We are in direction, under him, of two other places; his summer seat at Bar Harbor, and the “Mausoleum Ground” on Staten Island.

Our business is constantly increasing and in such a way that it is impossible to get the additional assistants for it—these being of a class of which there are but few accomplished in the world; so we {are} always personally under an agitating pressure and cloud of anxiety. The most serious point just now is Chicago. The site for the Fair is a swamp subject to overflow from the lake with narrow sand dunes dividing it, bearing scrubby oaks. But the great difficulty for the moment is that among our hundreds of masters, divided into several organizations— Commissioners, Directors, Committees; there is no one who will give us any exact instructions upon cardinal points, such as the extent of floor room there will be wanted for any department or subdepartment of the show. We keep making tentative plans but the most liberal of these would not allow a tenth part of the aggregate space which we are unofficially advised will be wanted. For example, the Californians say that at least 20 acres will be wanted for their special state exhibit. We think two acres would be an extravagant allowance, &c. In general we are allowing 25% more space than was used at the last French Exposition.

My wife has gone to Hartford on a visit to my mother (91 years old) Marion is visiting a friend in Boston.

With love to all of you,