Things have gone very well with me so far. I reached Boston Sunday night
at 9:05. I went to the Adams house that night. Monday at 3 P. M. I went
out to Lowell and spoke before the women--a fine lot of them. I got
along very well. One of them took me home to dinner. I came back to the
Adams house at 9 o'clock. Tuesday night I went home with Kennedy and
stayed all night. Wednesday I came out to Cambridge to the house of
Mrs. Ole Bull, who had sent me an invitation. I am with her now: it is
raining furiously all day. To-night I am to speak before the Procopeia
club, and to-morrow night before the Metaphysical Society. I met Clifton
Johnson in Boston and I am going to his place on Saturday and may stay
over Sunday or I may come home on the 5:04 train Sunday.... I saw some
Harvard professors last night. I hope you and your mother keep well and
live in peace and quiet. Love to you both.
Your affectionate father, JOHN BURROUGHS.
One of the enemies we had to fight in the vineyard was the rot, the
black rot, an imported disease of the grape that for a few years swept
everything. Then spraying with the Bordeaux mixture of lime and copper
sulphate checked and finally stopped it altogether--but it was the early
sprayings that counted. One year I remember Father neglected this, in
his easy, optimistic way, and later, when the rot began, spraying was in
vain, and I know that I took him to task for it, to my regret now. The
following letter speaks of this and of my going to college, something we
did not consider until the last moment. Father, not being a college man,
had not thought of it:
Lee, Mass., July 21 {1897}.