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  My dear Mr. Whitman,

Your kind remembrance of me on your birthday, & the gifts of copies of your new edition of Leaves of Grass have given me the greatest pleasure. I have to thank you also for November Boughs, a most welcome gift, which reached me after some delay  through Mr Lewis Fry of Bristol. But more even than your kind thought of me it rejoices me to know that you are somewhat better in health, & that the love & honour due to you by your own country has come to you—all in good time. I wrote a  few lines to a friend of yours on the occasion of your 70th birthday which I believe will be printed in a pamphlet. But I want also, at least in fancy, to reach my hand across the sea, & to take your hand, & to tell you that your friendship is a good possession for me.  I think of seventy years as quite the vestibule of age, because my own father is rigorous, at least in mind, now in his ninetieth year. And the recent songs you have sung have only the maturity & flavour of well-ripened fruit, growing on a sound-timbered tree. At eighty perhaps you may have even a happier birthday, with yet more new friends & still the old ones.

Always dear friend yours Edward Dowden