
Fine sunny day—perfect temperature—bowel action—Alys Smith here last evn'g, (a beautiful holly branch with red berries & green leaves), a nice long visit—Mary C not at all well as c'd be expected—(her letter to me enclosed)—She is going off to Spain and France on a half-jaunt half-racket (by advice of the doctor)—also rec'd a good letter from Ernest Rhys (wh I will send you)—by this time E R is back in London—I don't hear any thing of Mrs. O'Connor but I suppose she is yet in Boston—I hear often (& very welcome) f'm Kennedy—Tom Harned was here—he has sent off the Compliment to nearly a dozen people (purchasers) in parcels of f'm one or two copies to a dozen—all like it—(T H you know signed to take & pay for 200 copies to McK)—
The big general Unitarian Conference in Phila: is over—had lots of speeches, discussions, advices pro & con &c: I suppose all part of the great intestinal agitation that seems to be perhaps the great feature of the civilized world old & new our times—& no or few markedly individualized specimens (perhaps a good mark—"happy is that era country that has no history")—have sent off the little MS cluster "Old Age Echoes" to English "Nineteenth Century"—if not rejected I will of course send you a slip—I am sending a Compliment to Sarrazin and to Bertz, Berlin—Of course, very dull & stupid with me here, but I guess every thing going with me me fairly considering—Am sitting here alone in my den by the oak-wood fire alone as usual—my sailor boy is off to the dentist, for a long bad job with teeth—Fair appetite & night's rest continued—Fair spirits &c —In fact congratulating myself I get along as well as I am & do—
Walt Whitman
I think it must have been my guardian angel that gave thee the "impalpable nudge" to write to me. Thy card has
come to cheer me just at a time when I am feeling unusually low in spirits & discouraged. I have been quite ill all
summer—"over-work," "nervous prostration," the rest—& in
spite of many weeks of tedious "absolute rest," I am worse & not better, & now I have to go off for I don't know
how long to the Pyrennees, leaving my husband & the two little ones in England. I start tomorrow. The one bright
spot is that mother is going with me. But thy letter has really cheered me—it reminds me that absence is not the
end of everything
& it sings, without the definite words, the "Song of the Open Road." My road has seemed so shut up—I am laid
aside in the midst of all the work I care for—fit for nothing—and oh! the horror of feeling one's
mind, as well as one's physical powers, under an eclipse. I have not been able to read
or study or write or do anything I cared
to all summer long.
But thy remembrance reminds me not to complain, & thy example encourages me to keep sound in spirits—"which is the main thing." Thank thee for writing.
I will write from the Pyrennees in a few days—& I hope I shall not be so egotistic & gloomy. I am sure thee will have seen Alys by this time & that she will have told thee all our news.
Gratefully & lovingly, Mary Costelloe.
