Your card (your very voice & touch, drawing me across the Atlantic close beside you) was put into my hand just as I was busy copying out "With husky, haughty lips O sea" to pin into my "Leaves of Grass." I hardly think there is anything grander there. I think surely they must see that that is the very Soul of Nature uttering itself sublimely.
Who do you think came to see us on Sunday? Professor Dowden.[40] And I know not when I have set eyes on a more beautiful personality. I think you would be as much attracted towards him as I was. It was he who told me (full of enthusiasm) of the Poems in _Harper's_ which I had not seen or heard of. We had a very happy two or three hours together, talking of you & looking through Blake's drawings. He is a tall man, complexion tanned & healthy, nose finely modelled, dark eyes with plenty of life & meaning in them, hair grayish--I should think he was between forty & fifty--but says his father is still a fine hale old man.
Herby disappointed again this year of getting anything into the R. Academy.
I think I like the idea of the shanty, if you have any one to take good care of you, to cook nicely, keep all neat & clean &c. I wonder if I have ever been in Mickle St. I, still busy, still hammering away to see if I can help those that "balk" at "Leaves of Grass". Perhaps you will smile at me--at any rate it bears good fruit to me--I seem to be in a manner living with you the while.
Everything full of beauty just now here, as no doubt it is with you.
Good-bye, dearest friend--don't forget the letter that is to come soon. Love from us all, love & again love from
The notion [that] one is going to write a nice long letter is fatal to writing at all. And so I mean to scribble something, somehow, a little oftener & make up in quantity for quality! For after all the great thing, the thing one wants, is to _meet_--if not in the flesh--then in the spirit. A word will do it. I am getting on--my heart is in my work--& though I have been long about it, it won't be long--but I think & hope it will be strong. Quite a sprinkling of American friends--some new ones this spring--among them Mr. & Mrs. Pennell[41] from Philadelphia--whom you know--we like them well--hope to see them again & again. Also Miss Keyse (her sister married Emerson's son) from Concord, and the Lesleys--Mary Lesley has married & gone to the West--St. Paul--has just got a little son.