It was not till the following summer that Whitman's old spirits began to return. Since his mother died he had passed three years in the valley of the shadow, and he was still lonely, sick and poor when his English friends came to his rescue. He and his writings had been pulverised between the heavy millstones of Mr. Peter Bayne's adjectives in the _Contemporary Review_ for the month of December. In England, as well as in America, he had literary enemies in high places. But on the 13th of March the _Daily News_[559] published a long and characteristically fervid letter, full of generous feeling, from Mr. Robert Buchanan, who dilated upon the old poet's isolation, neglect and poverty. It aroused wide comment, and some indignation on both sides of the Atlantic, among Whitman's friends as well as among his enemies. That he was never deserted by his faithful American friends a series of articles upon his condition, published in the Springfield (Mass.) _Republican_, bears witness.[560] But Buchanan's letter evoked new and widespread sympathy, which was the means of saving Whitman from his melancholy plight. A fortnight later the _Athenæum_ printed his short sonnet-like poem, "The Man-o'-War Bird". In the meantime, Mr. Rossetti, always faithful to his friend, had learned of his condition, and had written asking how best his English admirers might offer him assistance. Walt wrote in reply, stating that his savings were exhausted, that he had been cheated by his New York agents, and that in consequence he was now, for the new Centennial edition, which had just appeared, his own sole publisher.[561] If any of his English friends desired to help him, they could best do so by the purchase of the book. He wrote with affectionate gratitude, and quiet dignity. He was poor, but he was not in want. There came, through Mr. Rossetti, an immediate, generous and most cordial response, and in the list of English and Irish subscribers appear many illustrious names. The invalid revived; "both the cash and the emotional cheer," he wrote at a later time, "were deep medicine".[562] He could now afford to overlook the bitter and contemptuous attacks which were being made upon him by an old acquaintance in the editorials of the _New York Tribune_.[563] And, which was at least equally important, he could contrive to take a country holiday. [Illustration: TIMBER CREEK: THE POOL, 1904] * * * * * About the end of April, or early in May, he drove out through the gently undulating dairy lands and the fields of young corn to the New Jersey hamlet of Whitehorse, some ten miles down the turnpike which leads to Atlantic City and Cape May.[564] A little beyond the village, and close to the Reading Railroad, there still stands an old farmhouse, then tenanted by Mr. George Stafford, and to-day the centre of a group of pleasant villas known as Laurel Springs.