Many tokens have you sent me. I love the "riddle song" & ponder it over & over, Am at once tantalized & pleased. If it were not for the "two little breaths of words" I should be content with a vague yet none the less real answering thought—but those words set me seeking something more definite. William Rossetti and I were talking of it. He & his wife & all his children including the last comer—as pretty & sweet tempered a baby as ever I saw—all came up & dined with us a Sunday or two ago—& then we sauntered away the afternoon on our pleasant heath—Rossetti stretching himself onto grass with his pipe (he says he has a good spice of Italian laziness in him, though practically the most industrious of men. The children scampering about, the baby placidly enjoying. Often dear Friend do I picture you sitting on one of the benches (may my dream come true!) enjoying the fresh breeze that almost always blows there, watching the throngs of Londoners of all degrees but chiefly the poor & the hardworking, who come up to breathe it on Saturday & Sunday afternoons—or musing there quiet & alone as one may do other days, with green & fertile Middlesex & Hertfordshire spread out at ones one's feet & a few blue hills beyond. Your post card received yesterday contained welcome news indeed. Putting together that & the paper that came a day or two before, I infer that you are not only going to Dr. Bucke's but are travelling with him. (And by the bye I feel very grateful to him for that letter to the paper, for putting an extinguisher on those smouldering lies.) So I know you have a good friends friend's arm to lean on when you want it, and are going to have a very jolly time indeed—a great time, wandering over the great and splendid land. Next year it must be little England—the mighty mother. Herby is working very hard at the Academy just now—the advantage being unlimited models—incessant nature (a too costly business in one's own studio) and also sometimes valuable hints from our best painters. He leaves here before 9 a.m & does not get back till until near 9 p.m. Bee is at Edinburgh helping one of our best woman doctors who is bent on persuading her to reconsider her decision & not be so diffident of her own powers. How it will end I cannot say. Giddy sings a good deal, I think her voice is developing with a really sweet full toned contralto. I still busy with the proof &c. of the new edition of my Husbands Husband's book. There cannot be finer work of its kind than the Scribner woodcuts from Blakes Blake's designs of which they have lent us the blocks It is delightful to have this help & enrichment of the book from America.—We are having a dripping June but it is what the crops want. We shall get into our new house which stands in a pleasant nook looking out on gardens back & front & close to the heath the end of August or beginning of September. We often talk of the Staffords who have sent Herby many affectionate words & tokens. Your friends here are increasing in number & the old ones are very staunch: indeed dearest friend your Poems have found in places here & specially in the north, the soil that suits them.

You will like to see this letter of Carpenter's.

Love from us all.

Please give a friendly greeting to Dr & Mrs Bucke. Who should come to see us a week or two ago but Mr. Bary.