I am sorry that I have not written you oftener and more fully. Since I came home I have been overloaded and have felt my age more than ever before. I have had {several} critical matters in hand and have had to let others wait. Partly for this reason, but perhaps more because you have not been writing to me in particular and in a manner to draw me out, I have not been writing as much as I otherwise should—certainly not as methodically and statedly as I should. And I somehow feel, as I don’t like to, that I have lost the run of you. I don’t at all like to feel so for really I depend for my comfort largely upon you and you must manage to write me so that I shall not feel so. Whatever you write the family and the firm and whether I write you or not, you must write something for my special comfort at least once a—well I will say—once a fortnight, not to tax you too heavily. Write in a personal way to me personally, giving some account of what you are doing and thinking; what you are studying; what progress you are making in any way. Give me some clue to your welfare in ways that you need not to others. Do not think that you are wasting time in doing so. You will be picking up something, for yourself as well as for me. Go about it in the right way, as you can with little reflection, and you will find that you cannot spend the necessary time better. The methodizing of your observations and thoughts that will be required will be of great value to your education. I know that I gained a good deal from writing to my father. Do not undervalue the educating effect of it. Make as much of this as you well can. You are pursuing your professional education and there is no more valuable agency of educating—drawing out yourself—than that which will be necessary for such collecting and arranging and making sure of your fugacious and nebulous thoughts as in writing to me. I am referring to the development of professional thoughts educationally. Think over what I am saying and see if you do not agree with me. There may be something gained from my comments but more will come from a habit of thinking about various matters of observation and debate with writing in view; with a view to writing to review as you write. “Writing makes the exact man,” and there is nothing wanted for our profession as much as exactness of thought. It is not the mere act of writing by which exactness, which in this case means practical clear-thoughtedness, is cultivated; it is the habit of thinking about various matters of observation and debate with a purpose, more or less definite, of writing upon them. It is the sort of definite reflection that one falls into when he is intending to write that I want you to give to evy subject that comes up bearing upon your profession. It is the educational process that I am advising. Do not underrate its importance. You have no professor to hold you to it, as the professional law or medical or architectural student has. You must [873] hold yourself to it. Keep it all the time well in mind that you are now in a school of which you are yourself the head-master. Your most important business is now that of school-master to yourself—Professor to yourself. What will you do with him? How best train him for his future responsibilities; to do his duty; to fairly, honestly and squarely earn the living for his wife & children, as well as fill a responsible place in the machinery of civilization? Do not neglect to think of your duty to others as well as to yourself in determining how this ward of yours (F.L.O. Jr.) is to be educated. There is no more important part of this education than that which you can, if you manage well, get out of writing to me. Do not be afraid of going as much slower in other parts of your education as may be necessary to make time to deliberately think out what you may first think of in writing to me. Have it in view to draw yourself out rather than to draw me. Nevertheless have some thought for me. I want to know a great deal more about you than I do. How is your health—physically, mentally, morally? Do not be backward in telling me. I also am a sinner and after a long and hard discipline am still awfully neglectful of my duty to myself, and to you and others. Do I not hate myself for it & keep stirring myself to do better? I hope so. But I do not want to sermonize.

Are you seeing much of the McNamees? the Thompsons, Galls, Woolseys, and others to whom you may have profitable access? Do you talk much with Gall and are you fairly successful in drawing instruction from him? If not, be sure it is your own want of skill in leading him. He has more special experience & skill in some directions than any one else you are likely to have a chance to make your assistant school master. Have you found that you could draw him into lecturing you and engaging condescendingly into friendly discussions with you? How is it about Thompson, and how about Boynton the plant collector. He is probably the most original man on the Estate. I mean the man of whom you can get more of what you cannot get from books, than you can from any one else. I say probably, not really knowing him. Knowing little more of him than that Profr. S. has got a good deal from him that he thinks of value. He must have, (hidden), a good deal that you can get from no other man. I don’t know that it would be of much value to you, but I shd think it might be. At any rate he must be from a social point of view a very interesting man to penetrate. He probably could give you more knowledge of the conditions and character of Southern poor whites than any one else at Biltmore if you could draw it out. Have you exploited the brick and tile man yet? Are you getting into usefully friendly relations with the building contractors? You can learn much from them; once {you} get them well tackled to you. But, whatever you can get from others, Beadle and Pinchot are your principle mines. You cannot work them too much. You are at Biltmore rather than in this office mainly that you may be drawing out Beadle—getting capital out of his head for your life’s business. To this end you must be helping him and, incidentally, as you help him, drawing instruction from him. Take a turn through the houses and the nurseries as often as you conveniently can; establish the names of the [874] plants in your memory & attach ideas, figures, pictures to these names. Daily reiterate what you can learn about them and attach what you can learn to these names. In any moment of time when not otherwise occupied be doing something at this. Make it your business, as if you had to pass an examination next month. You surely will have to pass examinations sooner or later on everything. Give your mind evy chance you can to gather in this sort of information and cultivate the power to fix it. Review! review! and train yourself. No one here has done half enough of this. And bear always in mind while at Biltmore that there is nothing else as to which you will have anything like the superior advantages for instruction while there as in this field of study—In nearly all others you may have opportunities for qualifying yourself here. You will here be under enormously greater disadvantages with reference to botany and dendrology. And this especially in getting good extensive foundation knowledge. Once get such knowledge as you may at Biltmore and you can build on it here. It is the want of such knowledge as you may acquire there; and such as Beadle & Manning have gained in nurseries, that is the weakest point of all of us. Keep it every day well in mind that this is your main business for the time being. Be open, intelligent, receptive, observant, reflective, and the rest of your business will grow upon you, but as to plants & planting you must bone down to work to get what you need for a point of departure.

Now, with this letter before you, think it out, if you have not well thought it out before, are you pursuing the best course that you can—making the best of this special opportunity, to get the best knowledge you can of plants, as a foundation for all future professional studies? Consider all the rest as subordinate and incidental to this. Not that it is not important, this the rest, but that it is not the specialty of the Biltmore School. All the rest you can gradually pick up, here and elsewhere, if you are not well grounded in it at Biltmore. But here, when you once get to professional work at the corner of Dudley and Warren Streets, how very poor will be your opportunities in comparison with what Biltmore and Beadle and Boynton can be made to yield to an industrious and well-planned, systematic siege. Remember that for your education in this respect you are really availing yourself not of our capital alone but of the capital of the richest man in the world. If Mr. Vanderbilt were putting all his wealth at your disposal you could not be much better situated than you are with reference to education in the most important branch of your professional education, which professional education will be your principal business capital. You have a better chance to accumulate wealth this year than you ever will again. Now is your time to be getting foundation work upon which you will next summer build through personal observation and practice in the open field of practice.

I send for your private consideration copy of letter about the proposed new outlet of Four Mile Creek. You may be able to help us through discussions of which this letter would be the text with the engineer. You know what I am thinking much better than he can. You will remember how dissatisfied I [875]was with most French and English work in brook-making. May you not by cautious reference to this, and to what you then got from me, to help Howard & Gall to a better understanding of what I am after and a better realization of the difficulties to be overcome? I want to have the work advanced to a point at which I can, in my hoped-for February visit, help mould it right. Go over the scheme when you can with Gall & Howard & try to help them, carefully, delicately, suggestively—by no means didactically—Theoretically it is comparatively a simple problem. Practically it is a problem with which artists of our profession fail oftener and more grievously than with any other. Do you not remember how extremely unsatisfactory all the made brooks in the Paris public grounds were? And again so many in England. Except “rock work.” this was the worst work we saw—caricature of nature. Do you remember the brooks in that Waterlow park that we visited South of Hampstead. You have seen, in fact, no end of awful examples. Help all you can to guard us from perpetrating similar atrocities. Ram Branch is not quite to my mind. I have talked to Beadle unsuccessfully about remedies for some of its defects. But it is the best example that I know of what a brook should be when there is a necessity for much artificializing it. But the conditions of the new work are vastly more difficult. There is hardly any comparison to be made. Think this matter out industriously. Give it your best study and stimulate Gall to study it. I hope to find the rough work well advanced in February. It is not a matter in which much can be done by drawings & written instructions. Gall’s tendency would have been to make it over-elaborate. But I hope that with the education he has had at Biltmore, he will be more disposed to look for results to come indirectly from what he does artificially in giving opportunities for Nature to work in her own way. Instill this idea all you can.

Is it best I should send you your English & French photographs? Could you not exhibit them to a select audience profitably; to Gall & Howard & Beadle and even to the foreman; giving a running commentary? You could make the latter better, less distastefully, perhaps, if your comments appeared to be in a great degree repetitions of what I had said for your instruction, calling attention to defects in artificially designed works, and to happy results of certain operations & yet oftener to such results that appear to have come from accidents. You, understand, of course, that your position toward the older superintending men is a very delicate one. You will need to use much discretion and tact to accomplish your objects without rousing their amour proper antagonistically to your purpose. It is excellent practice for you.

Again I urge you to keep clearly in mind that which is the main essential object of this Biltmore school; gaining such knowledge of plants as you can get in no other school, knowledge and more than knowledge—wisdom—in plants. If you don’t get it now you never will. Book knowledge cannot be made to answer the purpose. Knowledge that you can pick up in the office will not suffice. There is a great deal more to be learned at Biltmore and it is of high importance, but, comparatively speaking, nearly all the rest will come almost [876]by itself. For much of it you have mainly to keep your eyes open & move about and converse and read and let your mind willingly work. But for the knowledge you mainly need—that of plants & that of trees as elements of scenery, that of lower vegetations as elements, not only of landscape scenery but, of gardens & house decorations, conservatories, &c, for this you must study hard, systematically, as a methodical scholar. Make sure of yourself that that is clearly what you are bent upon. Let there be no doubt about it; no mistake; by no possibility a miscarriage. Be sure that you are pursuing the best course open to you. Tell me now when you answer this letter, are your arrangements for this purpose, the best that we can make them? Are you doing the best that you can? Are your relations with your master Beadle as good as they can be made? Is he taking pains with you? Does he feel a responsibility for your advance in this way? Can we in any way increase his sense of responsibility—as by paying him a tuition fee, or by presents? Of course we should be glad to aid you in any such way. The pecuniary cost of anything we can do to give you facilities for better opportunities of study, for benefitting by painstaking guidance & instruction, is not to be considered. I am as ready to give Beadle a tuition fee of a thousand dollars as I was to give it to Harvard college. I will do so at once, and in any form that you may advise, if you think that it will help you to benefit by his instruction.

Have it clearly in mind that never afterwards will you have nearly as good opportunities of education in your profession as you have now, provided you are able to use them, and that whether you are able to use them is largely a question of your skill in drawing out oral instructions from the several specialists that you have the opportunity to place yourself in suitable relations with. By drawing out oral instructions and by stimulating and leading along courses of inquiry and debate. Now, now, is your time for gaining wealth in this way. Next summer will be your time to gain it by searching for and laying up such elementary knowledge as you must acquire in order to make yourself a master in the productions of effects of foliage. Something of very great value you will be able to learn about plants during the winter; something you can learn now that will make it practicable for you to learn more from the study of plants that you will make when they are in foliage next summer. Do not undervalue the opportunity you have in this respect. But all the time as you pursue your study now, have it in mind that what you are gaining is a foundation for what you are going to do in the summer when the leaves are out. Of course this does not apply to the conservatory part of your business and you want to make the most of what you can get out of Bottomley and by study under glass but I should suppose that if you went about under glass with him for a few hours one day in a week you would be doing that part of your duty. The same of the propagating business and all of the actual work with plants that is in progress in the nursery. Something, I say, you will be learning during the winter in this direction. Do not underrate its value. It would have been worth many thousand dollars to me to have gained at your age what you can thus pick up. But mainly keep it [877]in mind that what you are to learn during the winter—say, especially during the next five weeks,— is to be of value as a foundation of the work you are to do next summer; of the study that you are then to pursue out of doors, out of the nursery, even more or less off the Estate—perhaps at Pisgah, at Roan Mountain, at Caesar’s Head, in the Dismal Swamp, and by reminiscence in the Rocky Mountains; by reminiscence also, in New Forest and Sherwood Forest and Windsor Forest; on the Wye and on the Loire.

But I must not urge you to be now getting prepared for the work that you will have before you next summer, to a degree that will prevent you from lecturing yourself. Don’t fail to think for yourself, what ten or twenty or forty years, hence, you will be wishing that you had thought, as I do of my failure to have studied expressly for my profession at your age. But I had absolutely no advisor on this point, and my fundamental knowledge; the gain in which has been my chief capital of my professional career, came to me incidentally, from seeking my own pleasure, not through intelligently directed study. Of course, I feel the want of such intelligently directed study, such exactness of knowledge as it would have given me; such clearness of purpose as it would have given me, very much, and I want you not merely to be better fitted in this respect than I have been, but enough better to make good to the world what of the {duties} of my profession I have been unable to supply. You must, with the aid of such inheritance as I can give you, make good my failings. That is one of the thoughts that dwell with me. Also, I recognize wherein John, (& wherein Eliot), is imperfectly fitted, and I want you to be fitted to make good, years to come, that in which they are inadequately provided. Therefore look you sharp to benefit by that in which you have special opportunities to benefit at Biltmore. There are many requirements of your profession which can be provided elsewhere. Your school for nearly all wisdom in trees and plants and planting is at Biltmore. For the rest, if Biltmore does not incidentally supply it, you will have other schools. Certainly it is desirable that you should be advancing in much else and you are and will be, as for example, in matters of drainage and agriculture and stock raising & gardening, by what you will be getting by conversation with the Baron and Weston and Gall and their under-workers, and by observation and reflection upon their several proceedings. You will not neglect your opportunities in these respects. But you must be careful to use them secondarily to your opportunities to acquire knowledge and skill in respect to trees and planting; to that which you will mainly acquire by working with Mr Beadle and his assistants, and questioning them.

Now, take time before long and write me how far you are on the right course in the respects that I have been touching upon. And tell me if I can help you to better your position in any way for the purposes in question; as, for instance, by sending you any books; by writing to Mr Beadle, Mr Gall, Mr Mc-Namee or Mr Vanderbilt; by adding to your outfit in any particular. Do you get the journals, the magazines and the books that you can read with advantage? [878]Are you gaining in the education of yourself in regard to sleep, going to bed at a reasonable hour; rising surely when you should? Are you gaining any in the art of putting yourself to sleep when you will—the art of which Napoleon and Grant were equally masters? Are you going regularly to church—to what; and are you training yourself to avoid a critical view of it & cultivating devout-ness & the childlike religion which Christ advised in spite of the theological wrangling of the clergy? Do you succeed in avoiding theological disputes with Mr. McNamee? Are you helping Mr Pinchot in his negro Sunday School?

Are you getting any practice in shooting, fishing or hunting? (Are the hunts kept up this year?) Have you shot a wild turkey?

Are you going to any balls, or dances? Are you punctual and regular in your social—“Society”—duties? Are you making acquaintances at the Hotels? Are you often calling on the McNamees and the Thompsons? Are you often calling on other people? There are several nice people living within a few miles of you and you must not neglect social duties or opportunities. Recognize yourself & be sure that you are recognized as a gentleman of Society. Be punctilious & exacting with yourself in all those rites and forms and manners by which gentlemen and ladies recognize a gentleman.

I am sorry that I did not know that you were going to Charleston & that I was not able to give you suggestions what and whom to see there. I should have been sure to have had you visit Savannah and the great live oak burying ground there which is one of the finest things that I ever saw. I think that you will have to go to the Eastern part of the state & perhaps to the Sea Islands of South Carolina & Georgia to study the special vegetation there; perhaps with Boynton. I wish very much that you could have Beadle with you, and I am not sure that it would not be reasonable to send him on account of the Estate. There is a great deal there that might serve at Biltmore.

I suppose that you will have seen my letter, to the Park Comsn, vindicating of Vaux. I apprehend that the engineers as a body are inclined to be offended by it. But have you any doubt that I am right? No engineer seems to think so & I expect to see some demonstrations from the engineers’ point of view. I recall three distinct and prominent instances in which engineers after being employed under my instructions have set themselves up as “Landscape Engineers.” Not one of them has done a single good piece of work. Not one has succeeded in getting business of value. Every one has gone back on my precepts and training and has made Landscape Architecture (or gardening) a decoration of engineering construction, not engineering an instrument to landscape. (This is private, for discussion of the question seems to serve no good purpose and any recognition of rivalry; of rival fields, is to be avoided.) The training of an engineer forces him to a wrong point of view. In this respect, so far, everything is as it should be at Biltmore. Define engineering; then define landscape, and you will see what is right. But as engineers will continue to [879]look at the question from their own point of view and from human nature will be jealous & will magnify their own specialty & will minimize in their careless everyday thoughts on the subject, the speciality of our art.

Here I am called off.

Now, at your early convenience, take a day’s vacation to sit in the house and write me about yourself & your fortunes and your thoughts.

Your affectionate father,