Washington, May 6, 1850.
My Dear Sumner:
I am glad that it was an “unaccustomed pressure of business” which has deprived
me of the pleasure of hearing from you for some time past, and no calamity of
any sort. I wish you to have enough of that business which brings the “vile dust”
to make you independent of its call, hereafter, and to enable you to devote
your powers to more congenial avocation.
I have just been looking over the life of Pascal prefixed to
his immortal “Pensees.” What a mind! and what humility! Angelic in both. Do you
believe that at the age of twelve or fourteen he invented geometry for himself —
framed definitions and pursued demonstrations until he was found engaged upon
the propositions which form the 32nd of the first book of Euclid? It almost
transcends my capacity of belief. It made me think of young Safford1 now at Cambridge under
the care of Professor Peirce. He too like Pascal is, I hear, injuring his
health by too great assiduity. This should be prevented.
But what am I about? Running on about Pascal and Safford
when my whole purpose in writing was to beg you, if a pamphlet edition of my
speech is to be issued in Boston, to have the proof corrected by the Globe
Edition which I sent you and of which I send you another by this mail. There is
one very awkward mistake in the table of Decennial Periods, Slave
Representation, &c of “47.680,” for 70.680, and there (are) some others not
quite so egregious.
With many thanks to you for your kind foster care of my
offspring, I remain, as ever, most cordially your friend,
[SALMON P. CHASE.]
_______________
1 Truman Henry Safford, 1836-1902(?), for many
years Professor of Mathematics at Williams College and an eminent astronomer.
SOURCE: Diary and correspondence of Salmon P. Chase, Annual
Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1902, Vol.
2, p. 210-1
