
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:—
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.