Do your remember how I visited you in Camden one day last June? Perhaps you will remember me by the bouquet of ferns and larkspurs. Now I am out here, and circumstances contrary to my wishes, will keep me here indefinitely.
This is one of my homesick days, and I have been thinking over what there is in the north that I would so much like to see, and hear, loc.03212.002_large.jpg and among other things I think how much I would like to see you again, and hear you say, as you did before, "I'm glad you came!" I often think about you, and you have written so many lines for me that I wish to say a word back.
When I read I say "Yes, I am she, O you wise poet," and sometimes I think I must put out my hand for you; and I am sure that we have gone together down that brown road a great many times; and perhaps it was my pulse that you heard, like "little tinkling bells."1
loc.03212.003_large.jpgI am very glad my eyes found the message you hid away for me—hid so deeply, though, that I barely found it, and at first doubted if there was a message there, or if it was for me.
I love you very much, and feel toward you, as toward all strong and true people, a sense of obligation.
In glad acknowledgement of your companionship, and hoping for you all good things,
Your friend, Eleanor M. Lawney. loc.03212.004_large.jpgCorrespondent:
Eleanor M. Lawney
(1851–1922) was a women's rights activist and later became the first woman
to graduate from medical school in Colorado (in 1887).