eclipsed by cold. I hope you have escaped this evil and are able to jaunt to & fro on the ferries as freely as ever. And I hope the pleasant Quaker friends are well--and Mr. & Mrs. Whitman and Hattie & Jessie--there is a fellow student of Giddy's at the Guild Hall music school who so reminds her of Hattie. Love from us all, dear friend. Most from me. ANNE GILCHRIST. LETTER LXXIII ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN _Keats Corner Hampstead, England Feb. 27, '85._ DEAREST FRIEND: How has the winter passed with you I wonder? Me it has imprisoned very much with bronchial & asthmatic troubles--and the four walls of the house & the ceiling seem to close in upon one's spirit as well as one's body, all too much. I hope you have been able to wend to and fro daily on the great ferry boats & enjoy the beautiful broad river & the sky & the throngs of people as of old--you are in my thoughts as constantly as ever, though I have been so silent. Percy & his wife & the little son spent some weeks with us at Christmas & now they have taken a house quite near, into which they will be moving in a week or two. I can't tell you what a dear, affectionate, reasonable, companionable little fellow Archie is--now six years old. Perhaps you will have seen in the American papers that Sidney Thomas, the cousin with whom Percy was associated in the discovery of the Basic process, is dead--he spent his strength too freely--wore himself out at 35--he was much loved by all with whom he had to do. His mother & sister have been watching & hoping against hope & taking him to warm climates, he himself full of hope--the mind bright and active to the last--& now he is gone--& his eldest brother died only two months before him.--I cannot help grieving over public affairs too--never in my lifetime has old England been in such a bad way--no honest & capable man seemingly to take the helm--& what Carlyle was fond of describing as the attempt to guide the ship by the shouts of the bystanders on shore--the newspapers &c. prospering very ill. A government that tries perpetually how to do it and how not to do it at the same moment! The best comfort is that I do not think there is any, the smallest sign, of deterioration in the English race; so we shall pull through somehow, after tremendous disasters. How many things should I like to sit and chat with you about, dear Walt--above all to see you again! I could not get my article into any of the magazines I most wished. I believe it is coming out in _To-Day_. Giddy was so pleased at your sending her a paper--a very capital article too it is of Miss Kellogg. I was interested also in a little paragraph I found about Pullman town, near Chicago, which confirmed my suspicion that it was not a thing with healthy roots--but only a benevolent despotism. I am seeing a good deal of your socialists just now--& I confess that though they mean well, I think they have less sense in their heads than any people I ever saw.