Transcribe Hornaday, W. T. Letter to Ward, Henry A. (1883-04-12)

ybg </em Society of American Taxidermists > FOR THE ADVANCEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ART. Office of the Executive Committee U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM. </EM Washington , D.C. >,. Apr 12th 1883.

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My dear Professor:

    A week ago I settled myself to

write you, and wrote three lines, when I was suddenly unsettled. Mow I will try again, in answer to yours of the 8th. But first, last and all the time let me say </u "Courage! Le diable est mort!" > I am so much worked that I feel sick with fatigue about every night but I'm not discouraged in the least. As usual I am making sacrifices right and left of my time & my \cherished plans not to mention money at all, and while I am sometimes tempted to kick because it can't possibly ever do me the slightest good my sober second thought tells me that it is on;y men of small minds and narrow views who are willing to go through life wholly devoted to self, sacrificing nothing for the good of their inferiors, and dying finally without a friend. I would not live or die like either John Jacob Astor or A. T.Stewart, with all their millions. You & I will </s both > have better epitaphs than they. In supporting the S. A. T. as you and I and Lucas are doing what ought to have been done fifty years ago, which, had it been done then would have found us on a much better footing with the world today.

  I feel that in supporting the Society as we