Your letter of Thursday, informing me of your illness, I received last evening. I was very sorry to hear of it, but I must confess I never hardly thought you’d get comfortably through this term. I do think these colleges are a most grievous nuisance, and I’d almost make one of a mob to raze ’em all down about the besotted faculty’s ears, if I could not make reason reach ’em any other way.

I don’t think we were placed in this world to ruin the body in an attempt at perfection of the soul, which we can only look for in another, and not there, if we live as murderers or suicides here. Moreover, it can’t be. For on a healthy state of one depends the proper action of the other—while here. And if it didn’t, is there no credit to be given to physical excellence? If not, why is it placed in our power, by proper cultivation & study, to excel? The German universities—the best in the world in other respects, too—are right in having their Gymnastic Department with its professors and other machinery rank with the Classical and Mathematical.

I suppose you will have left now for the summer, and I shouldn’t be careless in advising you to keep away—if it were not in deference to Father’s wishes and if you had a reasonable taste or inclination for anything else of your own. At all events, I hope you won’t again subject yourself to the routine with all its absurd requirements, merely for a bit of sheep’s skin, the acquirement of which would never be of value except to disguise a jackass. That is, I should hope you wouldn’t re-enter at all, unless you are convinced [218]

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I hope that anyway, you will let your views and wishes be known without reserve. You are old enough to judge yourself, and as father’s observation has not trended much near this line, he will be willing to give yours some credit. I think, like most persons who did not when young enjoy those privileges which he has so liberally afforded us. he considers as too important the advantages of a superior education.

I see from some of your reflections—as your “rather” choosing to “be a healthy” laborer, “than a sickly professor”—you’re in a measure prepared to give up your favorite pursuits, if it should prove advisable. You ask if I think you could ever be contented as a farmer or merchant. As the latter, I’m sure you ought not to be, nor any other man. No man of respectable mind is altogether, I believe. The best of them are either half engaged with other things, or are looking forward with impatience to the time when they shall be.

I believe that was a true remark; that the passengers by the Drydock omnibuses were of a better & bolder physiognomy than most of the omnibus freights taken elsewhere. And accounted for by the effect of their different habits in business—they being mostly mechanicks & men whose labor always commands their support—their smiles & manners not being business capital, like one whose suavity furnishes him with his salary or income, and who must appear pleas’d, anxious, indifferent, or sad according to his customer’s humor and not his own. And I think you’d be no better off, for the matter of health, either at the desk or counter.

Rural pursuits, on the other hand, tend to elevate and enlarge the ideas, for all the proudest aims of Science are involved in them. They require a constant application of the principles and objects of the Chemist, Naturalist, Geologist, Mechanic, &c. More than all of them, it cultivates, or should, the taste & sentiment. And there is no more occasion for anything vulgar or offensive in its operations, than in theirs.

The objects of a farmer, too, are such as to relieve him from the annoyances which the envy and opposition of rivals constantly inflict on most other active occupations. And the higher you rise in distinction, the more are you marked with the shafts of malice. Even lawyers and politicians, too, have proverbially a crafty look. And did you never notice what a mysterious, self satisfied air all young ministerial railroad passengers and [. . .] have? Meaning “I’m driving the right team, I don’t care what you say, and I’ll bring arguments & curses till I’ve hollered my lungs out of me, if you won’t take my ticket.”

But the objects of a farmer are such as benefit others, and will not subject his motives to harsh investigation. For my part, I believe that our [220]farmers are, and have cause to be, the most contented men in the world. And for the matter of profit, it is sufficient to know that they live & bring up their families in what they consider comfortable circumstances, with their usual system & management. I should think by the use of the proper tools and machinery which a man of intelligence and information would procure and invent, at least half of the most disagreeable and hard labor of our old-fashion’d farmers might be dispensed with to advantage.

But I doubt whether taste for its peculiar pleasures, or inclination or ability for its manual exertions, will make you a farmer. If you could, however—and of this you are the best judge—become interested in its operations for a year or two & connect yourself with its present rapid advance as an honorable & learned profession, you would not only find it a sufficient means of support, but an agreeable and healthful pursuit.

I sent your jacket with a letter—by Express—last Friday to be left at the Professor’s.

Very affectionately, yours with what I have to look at—only, unfortunately I’ve forgot to put in the sashes, if I have not the curtain.