In mid-January, however, he rallied. The Fritzinger baby was born and called after him, and Walt had it brought in to be fondled upon his breast.[767] Colonel Ingersoll called, and his magnetic spontaneous presence and words of profound affection comforted and sustained his friend. Then, to his great satisfaction, the tenth edition of his works appeared,[768] and special copies were forwarded to his friends. He contrived to write brief notes to Dr. Bucke and to his favourite sister, telling them of the publication and of his condition. On the 6th and 7th of February he wrote a last pathetic letter, which was lithographed and sent out to many correspondents. The "little spark of soul" which, according to his own quaint version of a favourite saying of Epictetus, had during all these months been "dragging a great lummux of corpse-body clumsily to and fro around," was still glimmering. His friends were ever faithful, he says, and for his bodily state, "it is not so bad as you might suppose, only my sufferings much of the time are fearful". And he added, as a last dictum, the substance of his latest public thoughts--for he read the newspapers constantly to the last--"more and more it comes to the fore, that the only theory worthy our modern times, for great literature, politics and sociology, must combine all the best people of all lands, the women not forgetting".[769] His friend over-sea, Addington Symonds, was ill and depressed,[770] and George Stafford passed away at Glendale. He became yet more silent; looked over his letters and the journals; took and relished his brandy-punch and slept. Almost daily his pain increased, and the choking mucus. He was often in terrible exhaustion, and the long nights were almost unbearable. "Dear Walt," said his faithful friend, as he bent down and kissed him, "you do not realise what you have been to us"; and Walt rejoined feebly, "nor you, what you have been to me".[771] All through March the restlessness and agony increased. There seemed to be no parcel of his emaciated body which was not the lurking place of pain. The stubborn determination of his nature suffered the last throes of human agony before it would surrender. Thus he learnt the lesson of death as few have ever learnt it. Those who watched could do little but love him, and for that his dim eyes repaid them a thousandfold to the end. Without, the days were dismally bleak; snow lay heavily upon the earth, but in the big three-windowed room winter seemed still more fierce and dread. On the night of the 24th he was moved on to a water bed, which eased him. He tried to laugh when, as he turned him upon it and the water splashed around, Warry, the sailor-nurse, said it sounded like the waves upon a ship's flanks. The thought was full of suggestions and chimed with his own; but the mucus choked him into silence.