A Letter Written on Jul 31, 1888

The Marine Biological Laboratory.
C. O. Whitman, Director.
B. H. Van Vleck, Instructor.

Wood's Holl, Mass. July 31 1888

My Dear Mary,

I recognized your hand writing on a package received yesterday, I heard that you were observed to giggle during a recent marriage ceremony, more than this I have not known concerning you since "the 10th" I did intend to write to H. on her birth day - for I remembered it, & puzzled my brain for sometime in trying to decide how many candles I should need for a celebration.

The buttons arrived all right but are of a variety size twice as large as those on my dress, the kind was all right, even the variety, but the size is the difficulty. Now will you look once more for a smaller pattern of that same button. I am sorry to trouble you.

I suppose Cornelia Alford & Uncle C's folks are, or have been there.

Tell Uncle C. that he & Aunt Agnes ought to take a trip to the sea shore - say Nantucket - (buy round trip tickets from G.) and so stop at Wood's Holl and see me. There is not much in Wood's Holl to attract them but I suppose Nantucket is worth seeing.

I am so deep in business, that a day or two off would "spoil my fun," as I am putting up toadfish as they develop from day to day, & it is hard for an embryologist to keep Sunday, so that I am quite tied down to this spot this summer.

Yesterday, I saw what I have long desired, the actual cleavage of the egg of a sea urchin. Under my eye, in less than an hour, I saw the one cell - the egg - become an eight celled creature.

Went out "skimming" last evening, and fished up in our net some interesting forms that kept us at the Lab. until rather late hours - Van Vleck usually leaves the Lab about 12 or 1 oclock [sic], I expect. He is an awful owl -

The Whitmans have gone from the cottage to a place where they can board & have rooms - so I am relieved of the presence of the "great American nuisance[.]" There is many a tale that I should tell could I see you, but there is no such thing as writing the stuff - about Mrs. W. of course -

Everybody feels the same way I find when they get a chance to know her -

I must tell you what she said to me at table just before she left. "It does not seem as tho' you could be as old, as to have been at Penikese". I replied "Oh yes, I am quite advanced" - where at there was silence -

We have real good times here at table. Dr. Gardner is quite an entertaining character, get him out of Lab. & to talking of his "cruises", or his "tramps" & we talk Adirondack, Switzerland & ocean travel most of the time.

How disappointed I shall feel to miss seeing Uncle C & Aunt A. I am not quite reconciled to it, but -

Fare well - Cornelia