Autograph letter signed : Kingstown, to Dr. Baldwin, [1891 July 25].

Acknowledging receipt of his letter which "...gives me an irresistible desire to greet you with 2 words tomorrow at Oxford. I am most interested, as you may suppose, in what you say of my sister, & full of comfort & hope (hope of course only of some alleviation) in the thought that something may occur to you to ease, a little, the rest of her painful course toward the extinction of her long misery. At any rate it makes a great difference to me that you have seen her - though redoubling my regret at not being there with you. How intensely ill or fatally weak she is can only perhaps be fully realized if one has seen her all along. Of course, I haven't the shadow of an illusion about any cure & you may judge how few such she has about herself. She only wants to have it over. - But don't be followed or haunted with these questions & enjoy Oxford firmly & sweetly & as the most hospitable woman in the world will help you to do. Isn't it a grey-green English paradise & unlike (say) Chiusi or Torrita [di Siena] - or even Kansas? Will you kindly mention to Miss Woolson that I hope to stop & have a look at her on my way back to London? Therefore leave half a bottle of wine & the middle-age of a sofa-cushion to your most faithfully & gratefully / Henry James."