We have heard from Henry, at Alexandria still, but a few days before sailing, and he and Stormie are bringing home, as a companion to Flushie, a beautiful little gazelle. What do you think of it? I would rather have it than the 'babby,' though the flourish of trumpets on the part of the possessors seems quite in favor of the latter.
And I had a letter from Browning the poet last night, which threw me into ecstasies--Browning, the author of 'Paracelsus,' and king of the mystics.
[Footnote 126: The mention of her brothers being at Alexandria is sufficient to show that 1845 must be the true date.]
My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I believe our last letters crossed, and we might draw lots for the turn of receiving one, so that you are to take it for supererogatory virtue in me altogether if I begin to write to you as 'at these presents.' But I want to know how you both are, and if your last account may continue to be considered the true one. You have been poising yourself on the equal balance of letters, as weak consciences are apt to do, but I write that you may write, and also, a little, that I may thank you for the kindness of your last letter, which was so very kind.
No, indeed, dearest Mrs. Martin. If I do not say oftener that I have a strong and grateful trust in your affection for me, and therefore in your interest in all that concerns me, it is not that it is less strong and grateful. What I said or sang of Miss Martineau's letter was no consequence of a distrust of _you_, but of a feeling within myself that for me to show about such a letter was scarcely becoming, and, in the matter of modesty, nowise discreet. I suppose I was writing excuses to myself for showing it to you. I cannot otherwise account for the saying and singing. And, for the rest, nobody can say or sing that I am not frank enough to you--to the extent of telling all manner of nonsense about myself which can only be supposed to be interesting on the ground of your being presupposed to care a little for the person concerned. Now am I not frank enough? And by the way, I send you 'The Seraphim'[127] at last, by this day's railroad.
To prove to you that I had not forgotten you before your letter came, here is the fragment of an unfinished one which I send you, to begin with--an imperfect fossil letter, which no comparative anatomy will bring much sense out of--except the plain fact _that you were not forgotten_....