Transcribe Ward, Henry A. Letter to Macoun, John (1879-12-31)

delay, because, having to work in your plants, with a greatly larger series, (some 8000 species), my botanist here could not begin </u any > till yours came. But I depended on your promise, and went to Europe (and S. America) on the 16th Dec., A fortnight before your plants were to come. What was my surprise and disappointment when on my return to this country in May last I learned that your plants had not come, and that their absence had postponed work in my own, which I had expected to find </u done>. I wrote you about it, and you answered that you were going off on a trip, but would give me the plants on your return in the fall or winter. I felt (justly, as I think) outraged by this treatment, and wrote you so. And I told you, and explained it fully. that the plants sent at the time you then proposed would be </u of no use to me whatever > : that my cabinet would be deliver- ed, and that I never expected in the future (as I had not in the past,) to han- dle Botanical specimens. You made me no reply. I finished my cabinet and delivered it. I was, - solely on your ac- -count, - several months in delay with my delivery, thereby losing prestige for business promptness, and losing several months