O fill yourself with happy thoughts for you have filled others with joy & strength & will do so for countless generations, & from these hearts flows back, and will ever flow, a steady current of love & the beautiful fruits of love. When you next send me a paper, if you feel that you are getting on ever so little, dearest friend, just a dash under the word _London_. I have looked back at all your old addresses & I see you never do put any lines, so I shall know it was not done absently but really means you are better. And how that line will gladden my eyes, Darling! Love from us all. Good-bye. ANNE GILCHRIST. LETTER XVIII ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN _50 Marquis Rd. Camden Sq., N. W. Dec. 8, 1873._ MY DEAREST FRIEND: The papers with Prof. Young's speech came safely & I read it, my hand in yours, happy and full of interest. Are you getting on, my Darling? When I know that you no longer suffer from distressing sensations in the head & can move without such effort and difficulty, a hymn of thankfulness will go up from my heart. Perhaps this week I shall get the paper with the line on it that is to tell me so much--or at least that you are well on your way towards it. And what shall I tell you about? The quiet tenor of our daily lives here? but that is very restricted, though, I trust, as far as it goes, good & healthful. O the thoughts and hopes that leap from across the ocean & the years! But they hide themselves away when I want to put them into words. Do not think I live in dreams. I know very well it is strictly in proportion as the present & the past have been busy shaping & preparing the materials of a beautiful future, that it really will be beautiful when it comes to exist as a present, seeing how it needs must be entirely a growth from all that has preceded it & that there are no sudden creations of flowers of happiness in men & women any more than in the fields. But if the buds lie ready folded, ah, what the sunshine will do! What fills me with such deep joy in your poems is the sense of the large complete acceptiveness--the full & perfect faith in humanity--in _every individual unit of humanity_--thus for the first time uttered. That alone satisfies the sense of justice in the soul, responds to what its own nature compels it to believe of the Infinite Source of all. That too includes within its scope the lot as well as the man. His infinite, undying self must achieve and fulfil itself out of any & all experiences. Why, if it takes such ages & such vicissitudes to compact a bit of rock--fierce heat, & icy cold, storms, deluges, crushing pressure & slow subsidences, as if it were like a handful of grass & all sunshine--what would it do for a man! _Dec. 18._