Thanks, dear friend, for your love & remembrance & faith & liberality—And thanks with same to Bessie & Isabella Ford & William & Ethel & Arthur Thompson—(The letter—somehow one of the best I ever rec'd—goes to my heart—of May 18 with the draft 194:95 reaches me safely)—
I am here yet, much the same, to say it summarily, fairly jolly—go out now sometimes in a wheel chair, exceptionally for an hour or two to the river shore when I feel like it—have a good strong young Canadian (Ed Wilkins) for my helper & nurse—have just had what I call my currying for the mid-day—& am probably getting along better than you all might suppose—fortunately my right & left arms are left me in good strength & volition, (in the terrible wreck & almost helplessness of the rest of the body)—There is somewhat against my wish & advice to be a sort of public & speechifying dinner &c. in compliment to my finishing my 70th year, here in Camden, towards even'g May 31—I will send you any acc't may be—
I have lately seen Herbert Gilchrist—he is well & flourishing—The Staffords are well & much the same—I have not sent your & the Misses Fords' big books (Complete Works) yet—Shall probably send in a box to Mrs: Costelloe, 40 Grosvenor Road, the Embankment, London, but I shall send you word when—You & the Fords & the rest have help'd me more than you know—
Love— Walt Whitman