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dear
Son:
The
announcement contained in your
two letters to myself and Theresa of
the
marriage upon which you have resolved and which is to take place soon,
I have
received with pleasure in several respects. Under the
impossibility
to form an opinion
in regard to conditions and persons from my own knowledge, I willingly
submit to the
confidence that your age and your experience will protect you against
such
disappointment as indeed thoughtless and inexperienced youths fall prey
to. I
therefore wish and hope sincerely that all the beautiful virtues which
you praise in your
future life companion and which well balance the absence of material
endowments
for
a sensible man who feels that he stands firmly on his own feet, - will
always prove
themselves genuine, but also that you will always prove yourself worthy
of the possession of such a treasure and that in this way the
union will
result
in the true
happiness of both of you. |
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Your two brothers have also chosen life companions without
fortunes.
That you
overlook this lack of fortune with so much equanimity is pleasant to me
also, in so far
as I therein presuppose a confirmation of what Mr. Eggers stated here a
few months
ago, that is, - that your circumstances and business are in a
prospering
condition.
Mr. Eggers' visit was so short that in regard to much that I should
like
to know I have
received only very incomplete information or none at all.
Thus I
know, especially of
your business, only in a general way that it is of commercial character
and that you are associated with a partner; but I have not
learned
for example of
what
kind that
business is, - whether your partner is a German or an American,
etc.
In
one of your former letters you
mentioned at one time a young
Frenchman
by the name of Nicollet, whose acquaintance you had
made. He
was some
time
ago an assistant in the Paris Observatory and has furnished several
works
which
are not without merit. Why he had to leave France I have not
learned.
Later (perhaps seven or eight years ago) he furnished (I do not know
whether anonymously or
over his own name) in an American newspaper of journal a clownish
article about
truly absurd discoveries which he alleged Herschell had made at the
Cape of Good
Hope.
This article at that time was even translated into German and
furnished a
remarkable
proof of how very coarse a mystification may be without losing the
power to
fool
many people. This Nicollet is said to have died in America a
short
time
ago. I should like very much to learn something
more in
regard to his course there.
Also another astronomer, a native of Switzerland who had made
his
home in America
for
nearly fifty years and with whom I kept up some correspondence
from time to
time,
namely,
Rudolph Hassler, chief of the North American (United States) Coast
Survey,
died a
short time ago, as I learned from the newspapers.
With the sincerest wishes for the enduring happiness of your
union,
Your affectionate father,
C. F. Gauss
Goettingen, February 15,
1844.
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