Only a line to say I am here yet & in buoyant spirits enough. Every thing much the same, allowing for wear & inevitable decay—
America is probably "taking stock" as the storekeepers call it—resting—having a lull (perhaps dull) time—but every thing here inwardly active—laying a good foundation for better (moral & mental—physicall too I hope) races and times—
Love to you, to parents,2 husband3 & children4— Walt WhitmanLove to dear boy Logan5—
Correspondent:
Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe
(1864–1945) was a political activist, art historian, and critic, whom
Whitman once called his "staunchest living woman friend." A scholar of Italian
Renaissance art and a daughter of Robert Pearsall Smith, she would in 1885 marry
B. F. C. "Frank" Costelloe. She had been in contact with many of Whitman's
English friends and would travel to Britain in 1885 to visit many of them,
including Anne Gilchrist shortly before her death. For more, see Christina
Davey, "Costelloe, Mary Whitall Smith (1864–1945)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D.
Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).