easily secured for reading & music. Besides, I often think that just as the Poem Nature is made up half of rude, rough realities and homely materials & processes, so it is necessary for women to construct their Poem, Home, on a groundwork of homeliest details & occupations, providing for the bodily wants & comforts of their household, and that without putting their own hands to this, their Poem will lack the vital, fresh, growing, nature-like quality that alone endures, and that of this soil will grow, with fitting preparation & culture, noble & more vigorous intellectual life in women, fit to embody itself in wider spheres afterwards--if the call comes. This month of May that comes to you so laden with great and sorrowful & beautiful & tender memories, and that is your birth-month too, I cannot say that I think of you more than at any other time, for there is no month nor day that my thoughts do not habitually & spontaneously turn to you, refer all to you--yet I seem to come closer because of the Poems that tell me of what relates to that time; but most of all when I think of your beloved Mother, because then I often yearn, more than I know how to bear, to comfort you with love and tender care and silent companionship. May is in a sense (& a very real one) my birth-month too, for in it were your Poems first put into my hand. I wish I were _quite sure_ that you no longer suffer in your head, and that you can move about without effort or difficulty--perhaps before long there will be a paper with some paragraph about your health, for though we say to ourselves no news is good news, it is a very different thing to have the absolute affirmation of good news. My children are all well and hearty, I am thankful to say, & working industriously. Grace means to study the best system of kindergarten teaching--I fancy she is well suited for kindergarten teaching & that it is very excellent work. Herby is still drawing from the antique in the British Museum. I hope he will get into the Academy this summer. He is going to spend his holidays with his brother in South Wales--and we as usual at Colne, but that will not be till August. Did I tell you William Rossetti and his bride were spending their honeymoon at Naples? & have found it bitterly cold there, I learn. Mr. & Mrs. Conway & their children are well. Eustace is coming to spend the afternoon with Herby to-morrow. Good-bye, my dearest Friend. ANNIE GILCHRIST. LETTER XXII ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN _50 Marquis Rd. Camden Sq. July 4, 1874._ MY DEAREST FRIEND: