I'm sorry I can't send a very satisfactory answer to your health inquiries, as far as regards myself. The mean, pusillanimous fever which took under-hold of me two months ago is still THERE, as impregnably fixed as a cockle-burr in a sheep's tail. I have tried idleness, but (naturally) it won't WORK. I do no labor except works of necessity — such as kissing Mary, who is a more ravishing angel than ever — and works of mercy — such as letting off the world from any more of my poetry for a while. But it's all one to my master the fever. I get up every day and drag around in a pitiful kind of shambling existence. I fancy it has come to be purely a go-as-you-please match between me and the disease, to see which will wear out first, and I think I will manage to take the belt, yet.
Give my love to the chestnut trees* and all the rest of your family.
— * It is said that he wrote the `Marshes of Glynn' under one of these. —
Your letter gave us great delight. God bless you for it, my best and only Richard, as well as for all your other benefactions to
Your faithful friend,
S. L.
A few days before, he had written a more serious letter to his friend, Mrs. Isabelle Dobbin, of Baltimore. The concluding words show his realization of the deeper meaning of childhood.
West Chester, August 18, 1880.
Here is come a young man so lovely in his person, and so gentle and high-born in his manners, that in the course of some three days he has managed to make himself as necessary to OUR world as the sun, moon, and stars; at any rate, these would seem quite obscured without him. It just so happens that he is very vividly associated with YOU; for among the few treasures we allowed ourselves to bring away from home is the photograph you gave us, and this stands in the most honorable coign of vantage in Mary's room.
. . . . .
You'll be glad to know that my dear Comrade is doing well. . . . We have reason to expect a speedy sight of our dear invalid moving about her accustomed ways again. If you could see the Boy asleep by her side! The tranquillity of his slumber, and the shine of his mother's eyes thereover, seem to melt up and mysteriously absorb the great debates of the agnostics, and of science and politics, and to dissolve them into the pellucid Faith long ago reaffirmed by the Son of Man. Looking upon the child, this term seems to acquire a new meaning, as if Christ were in some sort reproduced in every infant.