It did me much good to get your Poem--beautiful, earnest, eloquent words from the soul whose dear companionship mine seeks with persistent longing--wrestling with distance & time. It seems to me, too, from your having spoken the Poem yourself I may conclude you have made fair progress. What I would fain know is whether you have recovered the use of the left side so far as to get about pretty freely and to have as much open-air life as you need & like; and also whether you have quite ceased to suffer distressing sensations in the head. If you can say yes to the first question, will you in sign of it put a dash under the word _London_, and if yes to the second under _England_, when you next send me a paper? Unless indeed the paper itself contain a notice of your health. But if it does not, that would be an easy way of gladdening me with good news, if good news there is. I wish I could send you good letters, dearest Friend, making myself the vehicle of what is stirring around me in life & thought that would interest you; for there is plenty. But that is very hard to do--though I watch, hear, read eagerly, full of interest. Everything stirs in me a cloud of questions, makes me want to see its relationship to what I hold already. I am forever brooding, pondering, sifting, testing--but that is not the bent of mind that enables one to reproduce one's impressions in compact & lively form. So please, dear Friend, be indulgent, as indeed I know you will be, of these poor letters of mine with their details of my children & their iterated and reiterated expressions of the love and hope and aspiration you have called into life within me--take them not for what they are, but for all they have to stand for. Beatrice is at Colne (having got well through the exam. we were anxious about in the autumn) and is a very great comfort to my Mother--as I well knew she would be; for a more affectionate, devoted, care-taking nature does not breathe--with a strong active mental life of her own too. So, though missing her sorely, I am well satisfied she should be there; and the country life and rest are doing her a world of good. My artist boy is working away cheerily at the R. Academy, his heart in his work. Percy is coming to spend Xmas with us--he, too, continues well content with his work and in good health. Gracie is blooming. The Rossettis have had a heavy affliction this first year of their married life in the premature death of her only brother--a young man of considerable promise--barely 20. The Conways are well. I feel more completely myself than I have done since my illness--so you see, dear friend, if it has taken me quite four years to recover the lost ground, one must not be discouraged if two do not accomplish it in your case. I hope your little nieces[24] at St. Louis are well--and the brothers you are with, and that you have many dear friends round you at Camden.