There comes to my mind as I write man after man in my acquaintance who have successfully gone through this experience and without serious permanent hurt. Some of them live here. More of them live in North Carolina or Colorado as a precaution. I saw a few years ago a town most of whose population of several thousand persons are recovered and active, after such an experience. The disease has surely been robbed of much of its former terror.
Your own courage and cheerfulness, with his own, are the best physic in the world. Add to these the continuous and sincere interest that his thousands of friends feel—these to keep your courage up, if it should ever flag a moment—and we shall all soon have the delight to see and to hear him again—his old self, endeared, if that be possible, by this experience.
And I pray you, help me (for I am singularly helpless without suggestions from you) to be of some little service—of any service that I can. Would he like letters from me? I have plenty of time and an eagerness to write them, if they would really divert or please him. Books? What does he care most to read? I can, of course, find anything in New York. A visit some time? It would be a very real pleasure to me. You will add to my happiness greatly if you will frankly enable me to add even the least to his.
And now and always give him my love. That is precisely the word I mean; for, you know, I have known Mr. Alderman since he was graduated, and I have known few men better or cared for them more.
And I cannot thank you earnestly enough for your letter; and I shall hope to have word from you often—if (when you feel indisposed to write more) only a few lines.
How can I serve? Command me without a moment's hesitation.
Most sincerely yours,
Walter H. Page.
To Mrs. Edwin A. Alderman.
Joaquin Miller wrote the following letter to Walt Whitman on receiving news that the latter was ill: