To John Conwill   Thursday night, (Feb. 17th, 1842)

Thursday night

My dear Sir

The thanks which you have awarded me in your last letter¹ are quite unmerited. The statement of my opinion as to the difference existing between you and Hennessy was merely a tribute due to your abilities; justice and truth demanded it, and shall Tyndall refrain from giving his teacher his well won meed when thus circumstanced. No! I would assert it in the teeth of Hennessy himself and those of any other boord popinjay,² nor would I shrink to declare the same from the mountain fastnessess of the ridge³ where Mickey Byrne’s⁴ eloquence wakes the echoes of the hill to Newtown Chapel⁵ whose walls have often rung in answering peals to the vociferations of Professor Murphy.⁶ Aye if occasion required I’d assert your superiority amid the threatening scowls of the sons of science in Carlow College.⁷ I would not cower before the mighty O’neill,⁸ nor should the classic Hennessy call an additional streak of paleness to my cheek!

‘Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just’.⁹ What I have said then, being merely your due, it was an act of duty not of merit on my part to state my opinion.

So Mick¹⁰ has at length found the want of a friend, I told you time would teach him sense, it is not until a man is deprived of a benefit that he is able to appreciate its value, and it was not till Hennessy found himself on his own hands, unsupported, that he was able to form a true estimate of your assistance. Never mind, each day will waft away its own cloud of vanity, and observation and experience will shake from Mick’s mind the dusty tinsel which he may have borrowed from the great fellows in the Metropolis.

I am now going to trouble you. I as well as Hennessy feel the want of a helping hand. God forbid that my opinion of myself should ever mount so high as to induce me to think myself independent of others; each day’s experience teaches me the folly of such a notion and I firmly hope that time, instead of effacing the idea, shall like a stream in its bed imprint it the deeper. But you are asking by this time what I want. Well I want to know how a table of natural sines¹¹ is constructed—I know everything about the projection of them—now by having the radius BA and the angle ABC, how am I to find the line AC?¹² Mind I can do it in quick time by the aid of the table, but what I want to know is how the foundation is laid — how the table is constructed. I’m amusing myself these evenings going over Gibson,¹³ it will refresh my memory. I wish I was near you till you’d give me a good raking on Log^s.¹⁴ Do you think I’ll understand the algebraic formation of them? I’m improving myself greatly in my office business, my drawing of the city of Cork is thought a good deal about. Remember me to your mother.

good bye | Your affectionate pupil | John Tyndall

RI MS JT 1/11/3529

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