Before the old year is closing I will send you a few lines only to express the hope, that you may
enter into the new year in an ameliorated state of health mind and body! Your answer to my letter
from Garsdal I duely received. A
forthnight after the receipt of it I sent you a
number of "Danish Folkets Avis"1
(Danish people's paper) with a criticism of your book by Mr Termansen2—a
very bad one.
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The author is a peasant, member of our Danish house of the Commons, originally a gifted man, but
at present one of the spoiled darlings of the haut ton Copenhagen society. Even into the greatest
assemblies he appears in the coarse stuffs of the Danish peasants' home dress;—vanity! He is
one of what Björnson3 with a very happy expression calls the
"pale-born peasants."
If you have had the criticisms especially Elster's4, completely translated to
you I should like to know what impression all these foreign judgments may have made
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on you. The least benevolent of them are, you will allow, far more benevolent than your homely
American criticisms. But you have many friends, male and female, here, who don't write criticisms.
I have been accostumed to receive papers and small parcels from you and have always been glad for it, even when I forgot to thank you. In the last five months I have received nothing. Earnestly hoping that the reason may not be, that your illness has increased
I am yours Rudolf SchmidtCorrespondent:
The Danish writer Peter Carl
Rudolf Schmidt (1836–1899) was the editor of the idealist journal For Idé og Virkelighed ("For Idea and Reality") and
had translated Whitman's Democratic Vistas into Danish in
1874.