It seems so vain when we sympathise with a suffering friend.
And yet it is _something_--oh yes, I have felt that! But you _knew_ I must feel for you, if I teased you with words or not; and I, for my part, hearing of you from others, felt shy, as I say, till I heard you were better, of writing to you myself.

And you _are_ feeling better, Mrs.Jameson tells me, and are somewhat more cheerful about your state.
I thank God for this good news....
One of the few reasons for which I regret our absence from England this summer is that I miss seeing you with my own eyes, and I should like much to see you and talk to you of things of interest to both of us.

If illness suppresses in us a few sources of pleasure, it leaves the real _ich_ open to influences and keen-sighted to _facts_ which are as surely _natural_ as the fly's wing, though we are apt to consider them vaguely as 'supernatural.' 'More and more life is what we want' Tennyson wrote long ago, and that is the right want.

Indifference to life is disease, and therefore not strength.

But the life here is only half the apple--a cut out of the apple, I should say, merely meant to suggest the perfect round of fruit--and there is in the world now, I can testify to you, _scientific proof_ that what we call death is a mere change of circumstances, a change of dress, a mere breaking of the outside shell and husk.