Autograph letter signed : Ramsgate, to Dr. Baldwin, 1893 June 25.

Expressing his concern over Baldwin's health; " I am almost as much gratified to hear from you as if you didn't tell me that you are sad & unwell. This makes me, verily bleed; for who shall heal the great healer when the great healer is depressed about himself? I can't, I fear, cure you, as you would me, my dear Baldwin; but at least I can, a little, 'treat' you. That is I can respond to your affectionate utterance & assure you of my friendliest sympathy. You are overworked & wearied & worried, & your complications are many. So, it is very clear to me that I should be - if I had your responsibilities and exposures. On the other hand you have genius and fame & prosperity & the power to face the elements. Add - only do add - to these good things a good holiday, & all will be well with you yet. Cursed indeed must be the particular ailment you speak of. It was a mortal regret to me not to be able to get to Italy - it was a real heart-break to turn back from Lucerne (where, after a couple of months in Paris, I spent 3 weeks near my brother,) without passing the portals of paradise. But the older I grow the less I insist on very particular bliss. If it seems shy of coming I am shy of snatching it - and great happinesses are only rare windfalls and precarious gleams. I am more & more of a fatalist. That is mainly the result of gout perhaps. I have been 2 months without a turn of that particular screw, so as I had it punctually each month, for five, before. I daresay it will leave me quiet a while. It is beautiful of you, in the midst of your own botherations to think of it and speak of it to me so luminously. Light will shine indeed when you do bend your benevolence to it. Meanwhile piperazine (do you know it?) stops it with almost alarming efficacity. Is there any danger that such a stopper may also stop me? I believe the remedy is intensely modern - a discovery of the other month. I have fled from the fatal London...to get on with much-baffled work, leaving my brother & his wife, who have left their children in Switzerland & who speak of you with gratitude & rapture, to make merry in my convenient apartment. They stay till mid-July; then return to their infants; then sail (from Liverpool) the last of August. This Ramsgate is vulgar but airy, and I don't dislike the people in a place when I don't know them! That doesn't mean, dear Baldwin, that I dislike all of them when I do! I rejoice that you have also your harbour of refuge - marked out for later. You don't say where it is; but what place indeed is safe to mention when that sacred Vallombrosa is defiled? Italy, I declare, is getting more vulgar then Ramsgate. I hope you haven't to wait through too many stale days till you are liberated from Florentine flatness - Go and see Miss Woolson - she has a regard for you which will shower down in frequent rose-petals. I delight in her being at last rocked to peace by a gondolier. Is there no chance of your coming to England later in the summer? I shld be delighted to see you. Chicago? - it's the month of Hell!"