that I might repay with all my life & soul & body this debt--that I might give joy to him who filled me with such joy, that I might make his outward life sweeter & more beautiful who made my inner life so divinely sweet & beautiful. But, dear friend, I have certainly to see that this is not to be so, now: that for me too love & death are folded inseparably together: Death that will renew my youth. I have had the paper from Burlington[19]--with the details a woman likes so to have. I wish I had known for certain whether you went on to Boston & were enjoying the music there. My youngest boy has gone to spend his holiday with his brother in South Wales & he writes me such good news of Per., that he is "looking as brown as a nut & very jolly"; his home in a "clean airy old farm house half way up a mountain in the midst of wild rough grand scenery, sea in sight near enough to hear the sound of it about as loud as the rustling of leaves"--so the boys will have a good time together, and the girls are going with me for the holiday to their grandmother at Colne. W. Rossetti does not take his till October this year. I suppose it will be long & long before this letter reaches you as you will be gone to California--may it be a time full of enjoyment--full to the brim. Good-bye, dearest Friend, ANNIE GILCHRIST. What a noble achievement is Mr. Stanley's:[20] it fills me with pleasure that Americans should thus have been the rescuer of our large-hearted, heroic traveller. We have just got his letters with account of the five races in Central Africa copied from N. Y. _Herald_, July 29. LETTER XI ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN _50 Marquis Road Camden Sqre. Novr. 12, 1872._ MY DEAREST FRIEND: I must write not because I have anything to tell you--but because I want so, by help of a few loving words, to come into your presence as it were--into your remembrance. Not more do the things that grow want the sun. I have received all the papers--& each has made a day very bright for me. I hope the trip to California has not again had to be postponed--I realize well the enjoyment of it, & what it would be to California & the fresh impulses of thought & emotion that would shape themselves, melodiously, out of that for the new volume. My children are all well. Beatrice is working hard to get through the requisite amount of Latin, &c. that is required in the preliminary examination--before entering on medical studies. Percy, my eldest, whom I have not seen for a year, is coming to spend Xmas with us. Good-bye, dearest Friend. ANNIE GILCHRIST. LETTER XII ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN _50 Marquis Road Camden Sq. London Jan. 31, '73._ DEAREST FRIEND: