Sunday July 12Dear Mamma:-
I'm thankful to see the showers, but I must say that I got rather wet getting home from church. I went to the Episcopal church - the rector prayed for rain, and before he got hardly begun in his sermon the showers arrived. Since then it has rained most of the time, but so hard that most of it will run off. It has been terribly dry - grass and other things all burned up. We had one other afternoon of showers but so much more heat that they did little good.
Ithaca is quite a place, and the university is big - it shows in the number of second-hand book-stores, tailor shops, barber shops &c. This summer there are about 800 students in all departments. There is a graduate school for agriculture meeting here this summer that seems to be quite important - about a hundred people from all parts of the country. Some of the lectures are to be physiological and I expect to find them very profitable, tho it breaks up my lab. time to go. I have chemistry lectures each morning except Sat. at 8 and then lab. work in either chemistry or physiology until twelve or one, according as it happens to come out. I can't stop at any particular time. Then four afternoons, perhaps five I'll give to chemistry, either lab. or studying, with a little evening work. But our rooms are so hot that we can't bear to come in from the verandah until late.
Wednesday was a cool day - but it is the only one so far. I'm getting used to the heat now, however, and don't mind as much. The laboratories are far cooler than our rooms any way, and cooler than out-of-doors. I don't enjoy the chemistry as I should zoölogy, but I like it pretty well. The course is a good one. We have a written quiz tomorrow morning. Haven't taken a quiz since I was in Chicago.
Yesterday I went with Anne [perhaps Anna Morgan] to one of the glens where she goes collecting - about a mile and a half from the city, I guess. It was lovely - a deep glen with a little brook and beautiful trees, ferns and mosses. I'd like to go tomorrow after the rain. Anne has found a new insect, one never described before, but she can't keep it alive to get it home so she is trying to keep some in cages out there to see how they transform. I'm afraid this rain will float her cages away, or at any rate kill the insects. The water must rise tremendously fast in these gorges.
One night at the opening exercises of this school of agriculture I heard Pres. Schurman give a brief address - not particularly impressive. But I happened to sit down beside Dr. Morrill, a Woods Holer whom Dr. Clapp knows very well, and whom I know somewhat well myself. It was good to see him, and I'll probably meet him at lectures again. He's a fine man.
There are two or three women whom I have known before - one at Mt. H-, one at Wellesley &c. Lucy Baker is not here but I may see her as she comes to Elmira to visit her aunt before the close of the session.
Our boarding place is very good - better than Mrs. Lovell's I think - and with dinner at night, thanks be. I have gotten a laundry woman but she isn't very good. Wish I could find another better. Don't know what I'd do without those two gingham dresses. The lab. smells so in chem. that I can't bear to wear anything but a cotton dress. It's dirty, too, very.
I want to have some time to see all these glens around here, for they are quite different, people say. Hope Anne will need to collect in others.
I don't know how you ought to have your dress made. I haven't thought a thing about clothes and have no chances to see them here. I like plaits very well, and folds around the bottom, but that may be going out of style. Better ask Mrs. Libbey. She ought to know. About the waist I don't know a thing. They seemed very varied to me earlier in the spring.
I'm so sleepy I must take a nap. It was so hot last night that I lost a good deal of sleep.
Love to you and Mittie and Louise,
Abby