
for the Insane London. Ontario London, Ont., 31 Dec 1888 Goodby poor old '88! Hurra for 89!
This morning arrived your post card of 28th your letter enclosing Kennedy's of
29th and the "Springfield
Repn for all which thanks.
Yesterday I read over again (for the 3d 4th or 5th time) "A Backward
Glance" and "Elias Hicks" and dipped into a lot of other
old favorites in the big Volume. Superficial readers will not
of course detect the fine, oblique, personal touches running everywhere, through
every page of this wonderfull book—nor do I pretend that I see the last
meanings everywhere—but I see alot! More than in any other writing—but
the subtlety of much of it is wonderful and when seen that very elusiveness gives it an extraordinary
piquancy: yes, I think you need not doubt that you have put in so much of yourself
and contemporary America that a 'cute man reading the "C.W." hundreds of years from
now could reconstruct in his own mind both you and your time & land in a truer
and more radical sense than any past time of even 50 or 100 years back can be
reconstituted from any book in actual existence and this for many reasons but
cheifly for the reason of the unique vitality and
suggestiveness of L. of G. Yes, I think you may trust me to know something of your book & you, I have not studied them
this past twenty years for nothing! If I did not know you both and love you both
there would be something wrong on the one side or the other—but I don't think
there is much wrong!



