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I am reading "India, China, & Japan" by Bayaset Layse,
and my dreams are enviously interspersed with mosques,
minarets, domes, [illegible] carts, sahibs salaams & all the
most interesting charactistics of "grorgeous [illegible]". You see, I have
not got to the Celestials yet. I was a very warm actruism of
N. Taylor until I found that it was quite fashionable that
he was a lion of the first (^{I cant think for} appropriate term supply it yourself.) in great Gotham, and
since I made this discovery I have kept my[illegible letter] enthusiasm to
myself. I still presist however in thinking that he has written
some very fine poetry.

I have read "Hiawatha", and think it very fine. Do
you write poetry much? Or do you belong to that class who
repudiate such nonsense? A few weeks ago, while I was teaching
a gentleman & a teacher, called on me at my boarding place,
and thinking to interest him, I showed him some new books,
one a scrapbook I had just got from the [illegible] which I thought
rather nice, and the other a large & copiously illustrated work on
Natural History. He turned the latter volume over carefully
examined several engravings particularly, to which I had called
his attention, then deliberately laying it down said with a very
pompous frankness (if you can imagine such a combination of manners)
"I tell you plainly Miss Kennicott I feel above such things."

Poor fellow! Heaven help you! I came near saying when he had
concluded, I do truly comiserate those people who feel above studying
Nature in any place.

You will pardon my prosy wanderings. I hope there is so
little of importance or interest to anyone and least of all to a stranger
transpiring in the sphere of my observation that I am of necessity [illegible]
I will