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My Dearest Friend:

Welcome was your postcard announcing recovered health & return to Camden! May this find you safe there, well & hearty, able to go freely to & fro on the ferries & streets. I wish one of those old red Market Ferry cars were going to land you at our door once more! What you would have to tell us of western scenes & life! What teas & what evenings we would have—you would certainly have to say "there is a point beyond which"—& would have pretty late trips back of moonlight. Strange episode in my life! so unlike what went before & what comes after—those evenings in Philadelphia—yet so natural, familiar, dear! If I were American-born, I certainly should not want to change it for any country in the world, and if as you have dreamed—as I too have dreamed—it is given us hereafter to have another spell of life on this old earth, may my lot be cast there when the great time dimly preparing is actually come. But meanwhile, dear Friend, my work lies here: innumerable are the ties that bind us. And I can only hope & dream that you will come & stay with us awhile when we have a home of our own. That dear little grandson stayed with me two months till I really didn't know how to part with him, & grew more & more engaging & pretty in his ways every day—rapid indeed is the opening of the little bud at that age—between 1 & 3—& the way he had of looking up & giving you little kisses of his own accord would win anybody's heart. Bee's letters continue as cheery as ever—she is heartily enjoying work & life, and accomplishing the purpose she has set her heart upon, & the people she is with are so good and kindly, it is quite a home. She is working a good deal with the microscope. Her outdoor recreation is skating. Herby is getting on very nicely. He has had a commission to make some designs for a new kind of painted tapestry—and his figures "Audrey & Touchstone" are very much admired & have been bought by a rich American, & he has a commission for more. But the summer work he has set his heart upon is a portrait of you from all the material he brought with him—the many attempts he made there—handled with his present improved skill with the brush. I hope you will be able by & bye to send him the photograph he asked for—but no hurry. Edward Carpenter came up from Sheffield and spent an evening with us—which we all heartily enjoyed—he is a dear fellow. We talked much of you. He has been giving lectures this winter on the Lives of the Great Discoverers in Science. Carpenter knows intimately, goes freely among, a greater range & variety of men than any Englishman I know—he has a way of making himself thoroughly welcome by the firesides of mechanics & factory workers—his own kith & kin are aristocratic.

Giddy is taking singing lessons again, & hoping by the time you next see her to be able to contribute her share of the evening's pleasure. Percy is still working away indomitably at the "process," which is gaining ground rapidly on the continent, & I hope I may say slowly & surely in England. I see the Gilders now & then—indeed they are coming up to lunch with us to-morrow—Mr. Gilder is the better for rest—& they seem to enjoy England; but England has done her very worst in the way of climate ever since they have been here. O I do long for a little American sunshine. We met Henry James at the Conways last Sunday & found him one of the pleasantest of talkers. Rossetti & all your friends are well. Please give my love to your brothers & sister. Were Jessie & Hattie at home in St. Louis, I wonder, when you were there? Love from us all.

Good-bye, Dearest Friend. A. Gilchrist.

Please give my love to John Burroughs when you write or see him.