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  My dear friend

I cannot tell you what joy your message has given me, both as proof of your improvement and your remembrance. I had feared that you were too ill to look at flowers or to identify, even in thoughts, those who think of you. With what joyful smiling I thank God that you are better, as I wept  from my heart, at hearing of your extremity.

In Specimen Days I found that an ancestor of yours settled very early in Weymouth, this portion of which where I am now staying was my father's native place. I suppose from what I gather, that Whitman's Pond takes its name from a branch of your family-tree.

I am hoping some day of late summer or early autumn to see you at Camden. If you should then be able to say a few words yourself  and hear me talk a little, without exhaustion, the visit would be a satisfaction.

During your illness I have often wished to tell you what I have said both in public and private:—what, in one sense, no other writer of any age, has, in his work, laid so far-reaching and sympathetic a grasp on the heart of the future as you have done. Hundreds of years hence yes, as long as books last, men will feel on reading the Sun-Down Poem and others  of like nature, that your very existence touches theirs: that your vital presence is with them: and, with what comforting confirmation of immortality, will these words meet them:—

"This is no book, Who touches this, touches a  
  man,
It is I you hold, and who  
  holds you &c."

God give you his nearness, yes keep you with us in the body's book many a happy year!

Your affectionate friend, Charlotte Fiske Bates.