Note 38 — Chapter XVI

Mr. Beecher was invited to one of the preliminary meetings held during the summer and thus replied: "I can not come to Syracuse, much as I should like to, for I am, from the middle of August, a victim of ophthalmic catarrh, often called hay-fever or hay cold, which unfits me for any serious duty except that of sneezing and crying. That which the prophet longed for—that his eyes might become a fountain of tears—I have, unlonged for, and I am persuaded that Jeremiah would never have asked for it a second time, if he had but once tried it. The visit to Gerrit Smith's is tempting but at this, like many another good thing, I look and pass on."