_Jan. 1._ The New Year has come in bleakly & keenly to the inner as well as to the outer sense, with the papers full of the details of the dark fate of the emigrant ship & of the terrible railway accidents. Percy was not able to join us at Xmas (through business) but I am expecting him to-night. My mother bears up against the cold wonderfully--& even continues to go out in her chair. Bee's letters are very bright & cheerful--she & indeed all my children enjoy the cold much, provided they have plenty of out-door exercise--above all skating, which they are now enjoying. I too like it, but am so haunted by the thought of the increased misery it brings to our hundreds of thousands of ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed. I trust the family circle round you & your nieces at St. Louis & all near & dear to you are well, and that you have felt the warm grasp of many loving friends this wintry, cloudy time, my dearest--and that there may breathe out of these poor words a warm, bright glow of love and hope & unrestricted trust in the future. A. GILCHRIST. LETTER XXVI ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN _Earls Colne, Halstead Feb. 21, 1875._ MY DEAREST FRIEND: I have run down to Colne for a glimpse of my dear Bee, whom I had not seen for five months, and of my Mother; & now I am alone with the latter, Beatrice taking my place at home with her brother & sister for a week or two. A wonderful evergreen my Mother continues; still able to face the keen winds & the frost daily in her Bath chair--well swathed, of course in eiderdown & flannels. Beatrice takes beautiful care of her & is happy & content with her life here, loving the country as dearly as I do & having time enough for study & reading, as well as for domestic activities, to keep her mind as busy as her body. How I do long for you to see my children, dearest Friend. I wonder if you are surrounded with any in your brother's home--young, growing, blossoming plants that gladden you. And I wonder if the winter, which I hear is so severe in America this year, tries you--whether you can yet move briskly enough to keep up the circulation--and whether you have as many dear friends round you as you had at Washington. In my walks I keep thinking of these things. Write me a little letter once more, it would do me such good. No one of all your friends so easy as I to write to because none to whom any & every little detail is so welcome, so precious--lifting a tiny corner of the great vast of space between us, giving me for a moment to feel the friendly grasp of your hand--I that long for it so. Two years are over since your illness began, or seemed to begin, dearest friend--so slow & stealthy in its approaches, so slow & stealthy in its retreat--may the spring that is coming (the birds have already caught sight of it, cold & brown & bare as the landscape still is)--may it but come laden with healing, strengthening, refreshing influences--so that you begin to feel again the