"Your fellow citizen,
"(Signed) Samuel J. Tilden."
TILDEN TO BIGELOW
(HIS HEALTH FIVE YEARS BEFORE HIS DEATH)
"15 Gramercy Park, New York,
"Monday evening, January 31, 1881.
"Dear Mr. Bigelow,—I have just received and read your letter of the 18th, and resolve to answer it on the spot. I seem to be free from all engagements and obstructions, and am desirous to atone as far as possible for delinquencies in respect to your two former letters. At the end of two lines, however, I was compelled to refuse to admit a caller. With John's help, to whom I am dictating, both of us sitting before the wood-fire in the dining-room, I will ramble through a few of the many things I would like to say.
"I was not without hope that you had heard of me through Poultney. Mrs. Bigelow gave me a charge to take some care of the desolate members of the family remaining in America, and I have been doing a little to entertain Poultney.
"In respect to my personal health, I cannot make a very decided report, although, on the whole, I think I am improving. I am taking no tea and rarely any coffee. I substantially take no medicine internally. For a month past I have been trying electricity—the continuous current from a galvanic battery—with some apparent advantage. When you consider that the latter period of my work was passed under the aid of the borrowing power of the will, and with some help from medicine to hold my own—when these are withdrawn, is in itself a gain. The later impression is that I have taken rather too much exercise; that the malady is an exhaustion of the central nervous force by overwork and overwear, and that rest rather than physical activity is indicated. It is a problem to avoid fatigue, and yet take exercise enough to keep in order the general functions and particularly the digestion. You will see the situation does not favor very active travel or overmuch sight-seeing or sociable festivities—but I am going too much into detail and yet imperfectly. It is better to reserve opinions for a month or two longer.
"Whether I can go over early enough to do much in Italy is not easy now to say. My disposition is to cross the ocean at some time in the spring. I am snugging up my affairs, and getting out of the way all business matters. Indeed, that is substantially done.
"I should like to know what your own plans are for the spring and summer, or, if they have not taken definite shape, what your contemplations are.
"I am not troubling myself much about business, but perceive a tendency in little things of my own and everybody else to come in and occupy the vacancy. I do not propose to indulge this tendency.