Dr. Weir Mitchell inscribed to him his volume “A Psalm of Death and other Poems,” and Lowell acknowledged the honor: “I am very proud of my book. You know how in the tray for visiting cards those of the more socially distinguished drift to the top (by a kind of natural selection) where they may be better seen of such, and so your volume lies conspicuously on my table by some happy chance, that everybody who comes to see me is sure also to pick it up and look at it. I read it through as soon as I got it and with entire satisfaction. Without partiality I like it better than any of its predecessors, and I have told you how much I like _them_. Your touch, I think, is more assured, and the slag more thoroughly worked out of the ore. I shan’t tell you which I like best any more than I should think of showing any preference among my grandchildren, though I am conscious that I obscurely feel something of the kind. Without indelicacy, however, I may mention a favorite passage. It occurs on the leaf following the title-page, and seemed to me every way admirable. It will be a treasure to me so long as I live. I have had no sharp attack since the middle of November, but for the last three weeks have been in so wretched a valetudinarian way that Mabel has called in Wyman again. I am beginning to think ’tis Old Age after all. I fancy I know how a bear feels during hibernation when he is getting near the end of his fast.” A fortnight after this Lowell wrote again of himself, to his friends the Misses Lawrence: “I ought to have written long ago to thank you for your dear remembrance of me at Christmas. It was not ingratitude but sheer unconsciousness of the goings on of Time. I have been a wretched valetudinarian, and the days dribble away from me ere I am aware. I don’t mean that I have been seriously ill again; but I don’t get strong and seem in a lethargy half the time. However, I still reckon on the approaching visit of Doctor Spring, whose prescriptions have always done me good. They are simple enough,--birds and bees and things,--but they do wonders for me. My great bother now is that the least exertion tires me. Yet I believe I am as happy as most men. At any rate, I have had my share. You have been a part of it, and I have you still, thanks to your persistent kindness. “We have had a better winter than you (thanks to our admirable form of government), but more snow than for several years. This has made the roads merry with sleighs. I myself have been out in a sleigh two or three times and enjoyed it in a quiet way. To-day it is raining and eating away the snow very fast.... Spite of your crusty winter I should have been glad to share it with you. I am so true a lover that I love my London even in the sulks. ’Tis the best place for dwelling in the world except this house where I was born.”