We have all the responsibility that it is good for young doctors to have, i. e., in all difficult or obscure & dangerous cases we are obliged to call in older heads & are obliged to report verbally to the visiting physician of the month all our cases & our treatment. Only two students live at the Dispensary--Dr. Wiley (the coloured Philadelphia student you saw) & myself. In tastes we have much in common & on the whole I prefer to live with her rather than with any of the other students. We share rooms. We have a bedroom, a drug-room, a treatment room, waiting room for patients, & take our meals in the kitchen. A widow woman with two children housekeeps. I think Boston a very beautiful city. The public Gardens & Commons in the busiest part, sloping down from the gilt domed state house on Beacon hill, threaded by paths in all directions, traversed by the business men, the fine ladies, the beggars, etc., etc. One broad, sloping path is given up to the boys who want to coast, temporary wooden bridges being thrown over the cross paths. Then, crossing South Bay to South Boston is a beautiful walk I take from one to four times a day. South Boston looks rather dingy; it is inhabited mostly by artisans & mill hands & fishermen, but walking up 3rd St., as you cross the lettered streets A, B, C, D, etc., you look down upon the harbour--on bright days bright blue, & a few sails to be seen--at sunset the colours of course are reflected gorgeously. Somehow or other the sea looks doubly beautiful set in dingy S. Boston. Far over in the West End too we have patients. Last Tuesday I had twins all by myself; only one, however, was born alive; the other had been dead a week. How delightful that you are feeling so much better. Shall you not be coming to Boston sometime before I leave, 1st June? The Boston I know is not the Boston I knew in books; I am as far off from that as if I lived in England--is not the "hub"--I was reminded of that last Sunday when I had time for once to go to church & went to hear Mr. E. E. Hale preach and went home to dinner with him.... I like his daughter whom we knew in Philadelphia. She is a clever young artist. Dr. Wiley is very popular with her patients, far more so than I. Please remember me to all the Staffords & give my especial love to Mrs. Stafford. Also to Mrs. Whitman. Yours affectionately, BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST. LETTER XLVIII ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN _112 Madison Ave. March 18, 1879._ MY DEAREST FRIEND: