
Through one & another source we hear of you from time to time—sometimes by your postals, sometimes by the press & again through mutual friends. The latest accounts seem to be that you are better in health in which we rejoice. But both you & I have the one disease which has never in the ages been cured—old age! The Phoenix business of fable don't & won't come to us! What the beyond has or has not for us we may not know.
We have come for the summer to a wonderfully beautiful country home—perfectly
ideal in its fascinations & scenery. Probably one third of the country around us is in
reserved public commons and
woods which the mountainous country displays grandly—and all only 40 miles
south of London. For near neighbors we have Tennyson,
Tyndall & quite a host of lesser lights in literature science & art.
Mary has a cottage close at hand and her two little girls are the poetry of our old age. Your admirer & friend the truly noble Lady Mount Temple is now our guest and we have been together reading your Autumn boughs this evening. I greatly wish that you could be with us here to let us minister to you!

Alys returns to Philadelphia next month to finish her
college course and she will see you soon now & tell us all about you. Logan is working hard in his college course of which he is making the
best use. We hope for the best things for him in the future through the skilful skillful
use of his pen for which all this work is preparing him. He writes very
bright plays for us & then acts them for us with his sisters. I have full use of my
one remaining eye and am in much better health in this much criticised but really
best of all known climates. I do not see any present prospect of our return home for at our
age it is everything to us to be near our children in whom we mostly live what
remains to us of life.
Goodbye dear friend—let us hear from you (here till October 1st & then to the old address of 44 Grosvenor Road Westminster London) when the spirit moves you.
Affectionately yours Robert Pearsall Smith