
I have just read an article in New England Magazine posting your friends up to date in regard to your condition &c and was much pleased with it.
It seems to me the best thing I have seen from Traubels pen. His earlier pieces were a little Foreign to the English idiom. I know nothing about him but I suspect he is a German from certain peculiarities of style & I guess I am right about that—I am glad you have got so good and true a friend; and that other new friends have taken the places made vacant by death and absence.—Alas! Alas! "the old familiar faces." How fast they are fading away on this side of the river. Soon there will be more over there than here to greet us on that shining shore.—But enough of this pensive strain—
I was prompted to write particularly because next Sunday is your birthday—72
years old. I send lots of love and all good wishes—I hope to see you sometime
next month—I expect to come East on a short visit, and will spend a day with
you on my way from Washington to Boston. Deo Volente.
Probably the last of June or first of July.—My dear mother is yet living in
Boston at the age of 77.—one of the principal objects of my visit is of course
to see her once more. I shall probably stay in San Francisco for a year or two
longer in the internal revenue service—I am happily married to a loving and
devoted wife. We keep house in a cosy flat near Golden Gate Park where we have
plenty of fresh ocean breezes, laden morning and evening with the fragrance of
grass, trees and flowers.—I was surprised and saddened some time ago to read
of the death of your brother Jeff.—I have very pleasant
memories of him.—I get a Boston transcript from you occasionally. For which much thanks—I
subscribe for the Saturday Evn'g Transcript so you need
not send that number, but you seldom do so—God bless
you my dear friend and may the physical burdens which
have weighed on you so heavily the
last few years be lifted during the coming year.


