Page:A Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury.pdf/49

Rh as I walked the deck. That with so much perseverance I should have failed in my prime object, I attribute to the want of books and proper teachers in the navy. Therefore, if the next collection of Scraps from the Lucky Bag should appear to you a little outré, you will know the cause. I have sent them to Mat to be overhauled by him.

I have not been long enough at home yet to systematise my time, and therefore have not set about anything in particular. In fact, I am not yet done playing with the children.

Sometimes I think—when I become desperate—that I'll write. Sometimes I have a notion to take to books and be learned; but then such vast fields and pastures and wastes and seas of unexplored knowledge appear on the horizon, my ignorance sickens at the prospect. I am reminded of how little, how very little, I do know; just enough to be sensible of this fact. Then I'll content myself with cultivating a few little patches of knowledge. What shall they be? Shall they be light or heat?—storms or currents?—ship building or ship sailing?—steam or trajectiles?—hollow shot or gravitation?—gases or fluids?—winds or tides?—or And in the wilderness of subjects, the mind is confused, and knows not which to choose; so I play with the children and bend the knee, which, though now more readily bent, does not admit of but very little more flexion than it did when I saw you. I have disrobed the leg of its bandages, and flung away the splints, and taken to going through the motions of walking, by putting "the pet" to the floor every time the crutches are planted ahead for a step. The effects of all this have been to make the size of the "pet" equal that of its fellow, and I am beginning to regain the use of the muscles—all excepting