Such, dearest Edith, is my meagre budget--forgive me if it isn't brighter and richer. I am but _just_ pulling through--and I am doing _that_, but no more, and so, you see, have no wild graces or wavy tendrils left over for the image I project. I shall try to _grow_ some again, little by little; but for the present am as ungarnished in every way as an aged plucked fowl before the cook has dealt with him. May the great Chef see his way to serve me up to you some day in some better sauce! As I am, at any rate, share me generously with your I am sure not infrequent commensaux ... and ask them to make the best of me (an' they love me--as I love _them_) even if you give them only the drumsticks and keep the comparatively tender, though much shrivelled, if once mighty, "pinion" for yourself ... I saw no one of the least "real fascination" (_excusez du peu_ of the conception!) in N.Y.--but the place relieved and beguiled me--so long as I was _debout_--and Mary Cadwal and Beatrix were as tenderest nursing mother and bonniest soeur de lait to me the whole day long. I really think I shall take--shall risk--another go of it before long again, and even snatch a "bite" of Washington (Washington pie, as we used to say,) to which latter the dear H. Whites have most kindly challenged me. Well, such, dearest Edith, are the short and simple annals of the poor! I hang about you, however inarticulately, de toutes les forces de mon être and am always your fondly faithful old
/* 95 Irving Street, Cambridge, Mass. February 25th, 1911. */
I hate, and have hated all along, the accumulation of silence and darkness in the once so bright and animated air of our ancient commerce--that is our old and so truly valid friendship; and I am irresistibly moved to strike a fresh light, as it were, and sound a hearty call--so that the uncanny spell may break (working, as it has done, so much by my own fault, or my great infirmity.) I have just had a letter from dear Mary Clarke, not overflowing with any particularly blest tidings, and containing, as an especial note of the minor key, an allusion to your apparently aggravated state of health and rather captive condition. This has caused a very sharp pang in my battered breast--for steadily battered I have myself been, battered all round and altogether, these long months and months past: even if not to the complete extinction of a tender sense for the woes of others.