York, and pay her a handsome salary. She has the afternoons and Saturday & Sunday to herself.--Concord boasts of having been first to recognize your genius. Mr. Alcott & Mr. Sanborn say so. Good-bye, dear Friend. A. G. LETTER XLII ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN _39 Somerset St. Boston Nov. 13, '78._ MY DEAREST FRIEND: I feel as if I didn't a bit deserve the glorious budget you sent me yesterday, for I have been a laggard, dull correspondent of late, because, leading such an unsettled kind of life, I don't seem to have got well hold of myself. Beautiful is the title prose poem--the glimpse of the autumn cornfield: one smells the sweet fragrance, basks in the sunshine with you--tastes all the varied, subtle outdoor pleasures, just as you want us to. A lady who has just been calling on me--Miss Hillard--no relation of the odious Dr. H.--said, "Have you seen a lovely little bit about a cornfield by Walt Whitman in a New York paper?" She did not know your poems, but was so taken with this. By the bye, I am not quite American enough yet to enjoy the sound of the locusts & big grasshoppers--ours are modest little things that only make a gentle sort of whirr--not that loud brassy sound--couldn't help wishing for more birds & less insects when I was at Chesterfield--but I like our English name "ladybird" better than "ladybug". Do your children always say when they see one, as ours do, "Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home: your house is on fire, your children are flown"? But for the rest--I believe I am growing a very good American; indeed, certain am I there is no more lovable people to live amongst anywhere in the world--and in this respect it has been good to give up having a home of my own here for awhile--for I have been thrown amongst many more intimately than I could have been otherwise. What you say of Herby's picture delights me, dear Friend. I have been grieving he was not with us, sharing the pleasant times we have had and enlarging his circle of friends--but after all he could not have been doing better--he must come on here by & bye. I wonder if you are as satisfied with his portrait of you as with the landscape. I suppose he is gone on to New York to-day. I have sighed for dear little Concord many times since I came away--beautiful city as Boston is & many the interesting & kindly people I am seeing here: but the outdoor life & the entirely simple, unpretending, cordial, friendly ways of Concord & its inhabitants won my heart altogether--one of them came to see me to-day & to ask us to go and spend a couple of days with them there again before we leave & I could not say nay, though our time is short. There are some portraits in the Art Museum here, which interested me a good deal--of Adams, Hancock, Quincy, &c.,--& of some of the women of that time--they would form an excellent nucleus of a national portrait gallery, which (together with good biographies while yet materials & recollections are fresh & abundant) would be a very