17 th 1875

Dearest mother,

I haven't heard from you since the monster letter I wrote from Geneva & now write not because I can write in a pleasant vein but because I am so anxious to hear that I am writing to everybody in the hopes of eliciting some response. Patterson has left me without any means of making up my accounts because he wont tell me wether they are to be expressed for payment in gold or in paper. Thus suppose I spend 5 francs and that five francs is $1 in gold and $1.17 in paper. I have got to express the amount in dollars, so much is vouchsafed me but whether I am to call it $1 or $1 17/100 is

I am naturally as disgusted with my journey & in fact with life as it is possible to be. I came to do my duty but Patterson has so failed in his duty to me that I feel indifferent to doing my duty to him. I shall do it however. But I am very sorry I ever had anything to do with the Coast Survey. Still, I suppose anywhere else I should have found people equally untrustworthy.

Paris is a detestable place. Of all the cities I have been in it seems to me the vilest. When I think of sweet Geneva the thought seems to bring a little breath of fresh air. How people can like Paris, I dont understand. Unless they are content to see the grandeurs, & the art, & the theatres, without making any reflections, & to consider the French as they do the

But generally they are a vile set. The newspapers, the casual conversations one has with people in the cafés etc. oppress one dreadfully with the intense pigstye-ness of ideas here. What they call cynique. No believe in any human elevation because conscious of not having any one's self.

I am waiting now for the completion of an instrument & meantime I study French.

I can write pretty well but I stammer in talking, particularly in beginning conversation. Some people whom I meet seem to assume that I can't talk & then I can’t & other assume that I can & then I can but still I make innumerable mistakes in talking. I never think of anything I have said without perceiving that I have said it wrong. I pronounce tolerably. But it seems to me that everybody speaks better French than I. I mean English & Americans whom I hear speaking. It is astonishing how well some Englishmen speak, not merely perfectly gramatically but comme il faut as to what they say, which is extraordinary as they would certainly say totally different things in English. I enclose a rule of French grammar which I have invented in order to enable a person to remember when to use à and when de before an infinitive. I have found it extremely useful.

Also a Solitaire, of the 3-in-a-pile kind, which happened to me. Love to all. Your ever loving.