I expect he is having a delightful walk this brilliant morning with the "Hampstead Tramps"--of whom I think I have told you. They often walk fifteen miles or so on Sunday morning. Such a glorious afternoon it has been by the sea--sapphire colour--the air brisk & elastic, yet soft. To-morrow Gran goes home & I shall be all alone here.--I hear of "Specimen Days" in a letter from Australia--there will be a large audience for you there some day, dear Friend. I like what John Burroughs has been writing about Carlyle much. We have had nothing but stupidities of late about him here--but there will come a great reaction from all this abuse, I have no doubt--he did put so much gall in his ink sometimes, human nature can't be expected to take it altogether meekly. I hope you received my little book safely. I should be a hypocrite if I pretended not to care whether you found patience to read it--for I grew to love Mary & Charles Lamb so much during my task that I want you to love them too--& to see what a beautiful friendship was theirs with Coleridge. How are Mr. & Mrs. Whitman and Hattie & Jessie? Send me a few words soon. Good-bye, dearest Friend. ANN GILCHRIST. LETTER LXVIII ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN _Keats Corner Hampstead April 5, '84._ MY DEAREST FRIEND: Those few words of yours to Herby "tasted good" to us--few, but enough, seeing that we can fill out between the lines with what you have given us of yourself forever & always in your books--& that is how I comfort myself for having so few letters. But I turn many wistful thoughts toward America, and were not I & mine bound here by unseverable ties, did we not seem to grow & belong here as by a kind of natural destiny that has to be fulfilled very cheerfully, could I make America my home for the sake of being near you in body as I am in heart & soul--but Time has good things in store for us sooner or later, I doubt not. I could hardly express to you how welcome is the thought of death to me--not in the sense of any discontent with life--but as life with fresh energies & wider horizon & hand in hand again with those that are gone on first.