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Just a line of birthday greeting, my dearest Friend. May it find you enjoying the beautiful spring-time & the grand sights of people & products & the music at Philadelphia notwithstanding drawbacks (but lessening drawbacks I earnestly hope) of health, lameness. Rejoiced, too, perhaps with the sight of many dear old friends whom   occasion has brought to your city. May all that will do you good come my dearest Friend–and not least the sense of relief & joy in having fulfilled the great task, in the teeth of such difficulties, re-launched safely, more fully, richly equipt the ship to sail down the great ocean of Time, bearing precious precious freight of seed to be planted in countless successions of human souls; helping forward more than even the best lovers of your   poems dream, the great future of humanity. That is what I believe as surely as I believe in my own existence.

The "low star," the great star drooping low in the west has been unusually resplendent of a night here lately & by day lilacs & the labernums wonderfully brightening dear old smoky London, constant reminders all, if I needed any, of the Poet & the Poems so dear to me.

 

If I do not hear from you to the contrary I aim to take our passage by one of the "States" Line of Steamers that come straight to Philadelphia sailing about the 1st Sept.—& I am told one ought to secure one's cabin a couple of months or so beforehand. But if there be indeed an increasing hope of your coming here in the course of the summer or if you think it would be best for us to go to New York (only I want to go at once where we are likeliest to stop, because of my   furniture) let me hear as soon as may be dear Friend. Looking at it purely as concerns the young ones, for some reasons it is very desirable to come this year & for others to wait till next. With Bee for instance we are both losing time & wasting money by going over another winter here when there is no complete & satisfactory medical course to be had. Then as regards dear Per he writes me word that though he is doing fairly well he does not   think he will be able to take a house & marry till next summer—& that I am very sorry for. But then I think that as I could not be with him nor help him forward the balance goes down on Beatrice's side, if I am able to accomplish it—

Good bye my dearest Friend—Loving tender thoughts shall I send you on the 30th. Solemn thoughts outleaping life, immortal aspirations of my Soul toward your soul. The childrens​ children's​ love too please dearest Friend.

Anne Gilchrist