"The older he gets," wrote a correspondent of the _New York Evening Mail_, "the more cheerful and gay-hearted he grows."[521] Though he was now beginning to wear glasses, his jolly voice as he sang blithely over his bath, and his thrush-like whistle,[522] his hearty appetite and love of exercise, bore witness to vigour and good spirits. The circle of his friends grew daily wider, and a measure of international fame began to come to him. Both in Germany and in France his book was being read, criticised and admired.[523] Rossetti's selections had given him an English public, which was eager now for new editions of his complete poems; he had cordial letters from Tennyson and Addington Symonds; Swinburne addressed him in one of his "Songs before Sunrise," and there were many others.[524] From time to time he would receive an invitation from some academic or other body to recite a poem at a public function. Thus, in the autumn of 1871, he gave his "Song of the Exposition" at the opening of the annual exhibition of the American Institute;[525] it is a half-humorous poem, which follows some of the political themes suggested in _Democratic Vistas_. Again, at midsummer, 1872, he recited "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free"[526] on the invitation of the United Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire; making at this time a further tour as far as Lake Champlain, to visit his sister Hannah, who was married unhappily and far from all her people.[527] Later the same autumn, old Mrs. Whitman left Brooklyn to live with her son, the colonel, in Camden; a quiet unattractive artisan suburb of Philadelphia. The old lady, now nearly eighty, partially crippled by rheumatism, and a widow for some eighteen years, did not long survive this transplanting. But sorrows came thick upon the Whitmans at this time. And first of all, it was Walt himself who broke down and was house-tied. FOOTNOTES: [458] Camden, viii., 218. [459] _Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person_, 1867. [460] _Poems of W. W._, 1868. [461] See also Preface to _Poems of W. W._, and _Rossetti Papers_, 240. [462] _Rossetti Papers_, 270, 287, etc. [463] Symonds, 4; _J. A. Symonds, a Biography_, by H. R. F. Brown. [464] Symonds, 158. [465] _Supra_, 133 n. [466] _J. A. Symonds_, ii., 70; _Camden's Compliment_, 73. [467] _J. A. Symonds_, ii., 15. [468] _Ib._, ii., 82. [469] _Ib._, ii., 130, 131. [470] Symonds in _Fortnightly Rev._, xlii., 459; A. C. S. in _ib._, 170. [471] _Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings_, by H. H. G., 1887; and _In re_, 41, 42. [472] _Rossetti Papers_, 459, 460. [473] Bucke, 31. [474] _In re_, 72. [475] _Fort. Rev._, _loc. cit._ [476] _In re_, 42. [477] See _infra_, 264. [478] In _Putnam's Magazine_, Jan., 1868. [479] See _supra_, 167. [480] In the _Good Gray Poet_. [481] Burroughs, 85. [482] Potter, _op. cit._ [483] See _infra_, 262. [484] O'Connor, qu. in Bucke, 62. [485] Calamus, 21. [486] MSS. Wallace.