All echoes are delightful, especially such as this one: I was sitting at breakfast yesterday morning, when the lines came into my head which someone has written of Milton:
"Chief of organic numbers, Old poet of the spheres—"
And I thought how much more applicable they were to you than to Milton. Just then the postman rang and left me your letter of the 12th! This may have been an Irish echo, but all the same an echo.
I was very glad to hear from you. I have been longing to send you a word, but you can't imagine how hard it is for me to rouse myself to write, in my condition of lameness and lethargy. I have lately been undergoing massage, and it certainly was doing me good, but about the first of the month my poor massager, a sturdy young German, fell ill with typhoid fever, and I am now sliding backward.
Today is your day for talking about Mr. Lincoln, but I suppose you will not.
April 16.—I was interrupted here, and could not resume until now. I must certainly try to write to Dr. Bucke. His visit here en route to Florida was very pleasant. I am glad to hear that Kennedy's book is to come out. I tried to get him some subscribers here, but, alas! my wretched lameness prevents me from exerting myself as I want to. Stedman was here during the Authors' week, and told me he had subscribed, which was good of him. He spent an evening with us and spoke of you with enthusiasm. I read over lately, for the first time, his article on you as it appears in the book, and find he has greatly improved it, making many excisions and modifications. It gratified me to see that my talk with him after the magazine article came out had impressed him. His face is Zionward, and he will be a credit to the family yet. He gave me a beautiful account of your last reading of the Lincoln Memorial—the look at the theater, the magic scene of you on the stage inorbed by the light of the lamp on the table, the little girl coming up to you with the basket of flowers, &c., &c. It must all have been very charming.
I did not even know that you were writing little pieces for the Herald until some time after you had begun; then I got the back numbers as far as I could, and cut out the pieces, but could not get them all. So I shall be glad to see them in November Boughs. I should like to know what arrangement Bennett made with you, whether it still continues, &c. I am all in the dark about it. And what is the meaning of this onslaught that Tucker makes on you in Liberty—Tucker, who did such yeoman's service for us in the fight with Oliver Stevens and Company? I don't understand it at all. I hope you have not been writing anything in praise of that old dead werewolf, Emperor William. It would be an awful mistake. His was a black record. I cannot help thinking that Tucker has made some egregious blunder, but I have no light on the matter at all.
Donnelly's book is announced for May, the printer's strike in Chicago having delayed it. All is blooming for him. He is now in England, and there is a good deal of excitement about him. The delay in publication has enabled him to translate about fifty pages more of the cipher for his volume, which is a decided gain for the true believer. Despite my illness and inanition, I am all agog for the result.
"O for the light of another sun, With my Bazra sword in my hand!"
Donnelly has made lately a remarkable discovery—that the two folio editions of the play following the edition of 1623, at intervals of nine and twelve years respectively, long after Bacon's death, are absolute facsimiles of the first, even the same number of words on each page being preserved. As stereotype did not then exist, these editions were manifestly in each case reset, which could only have been done in this way with great painstaking: and it proves that somebody in the interest of Bacon was alive and busy in preserving carefully the form of the original folio! This is a swashing blow for the Shakespeareans!
What an idyl of your room you opened to me in your flash of description—you in the big chair, the window open to the sunset, the Easter lilies on the sill, and the little bird singing his furious carol! It was quite divine. How I wish you could get active and well!
If Nelly knew I were writing she would surely send you her love. She has not been very well this spring—colds being rampant with everyone.
Good-bye, dear Walt—that is, au revoir. I hope you will keep fairly well at any rate, and that I shall see you before long.
Always affectionately, W. D. O'Connor.