Christian Friedrich Schoenbein to Faraday   25 March 1856

My dear Faraday,

I hasten to tell you that there is not the slightest occasion for your being in a hurry regarding the parcel you talk of in your last letter¹. I do not know what it contains nor who sent it to you. Any opportunity therefore, an early or a late one, will do for sending the thing over to Basle.

I think I told you some months ago that the friend whom you charged with delivering the third volume of your researches² to me last year, has not performed his task, and not liking at all the idea of losing your valuable gift, I repeatedly ask you the favor of looking a little after the miscarried book.

This time I shall keep my peace on scientific matters from the simple reason that I could not tell you much even if I had the inclination to do so. It is true, I was not quite lazy nor did I work quite for nothing last winter, but the exploits I performed are, as we Germans use to say, but half-laid eggs and of such embryonic things it is not safe to talk.

I have however a mind to entertain you of another matter more interesting, at least less dry than that never ending subject of Oxigen.

Yesterday it was Easter-Monday and you must know that in our teutonic lands it is a great day to the whole juvenile world. I consider it as one of our specific national qualities that we are very fond of children and have marked out a number of days and times of the year round for the enjoyments of our little ones. Now such a time is Easter-time and such a day easter-Monday. Many, many weeks before it comes, the little prattlers talk of nothing but of the Easter-hare (Oster haase in german) and the gifts he may chance to bring and what that Easter hare means you will easily infer from what passed in the garden of Mrs. Wiedemann³ yesterday afternoon. A host of children were invited by that Lady (having herself a little boy of four years of age⁴) to make their appearence at her house at three o’clock, punctually. Mothers and elder sisters conducted the little guests to the appointed place at the fixed time and being assembled in a room they anxiously and impatiently expected there the announcement of “The hare has laid his eggs”. No sooner had these words been finished than the rogues were seen running down the staircase into the garden, dispersing themselves in all directions and eagerly seeking for the eggs being put in hidden places: within hedges, behind bushes &c. The discovery of each egg was hailed with joyful exclamations and never failed proving both to the happy finders and the unsuccessful seekers a fresh stimulus to continue their searches. But you must not imagine those “hare eggs” to have been ordinary ones; they were beautifully colored: blue, red, yellow, lilac, brown, even variegated, and bearing all sorts of inscriptions: the names of the Children invited, the drafts of hares, foxes and other animals.

The eggs found by the boys and girls were put in a basket placed in the centre of the garden, as property of the little common-wealth to be equally divided at the end of the festival and carried home by the Children as the trophies of the day.

Such like fêtes there were hundreds in our town yesterday and I dare say millions all over the german lands. Great a philosopher as you are, sure am I, that such a sight would give you more pleasure than all the scientific institutions and all the curiosities of the whole civilized world together. Now I am at the end of my letter and have nothing more to say than that I shall ever remain

Your’s | most faithfully | C.F. Schoenbein.

Easter-Tuesday 1856.

Endorsed by Faraday: Sent by Mr Roscoe about April 6th

Address: Dr Michael Faraday | &c &c &c | Royal Institution | London