King 



ticularly welcome. The letter runs 

 thus : 



" Bloomingdai.e Asylum 

 " December 31 



" My dear Henry 



" I refrained from boring you with 

 the miseries of my months of torture 

 here, and I don't think I should ever 

 have broken the silence were I not 

 at last convinced that the progress of 

 recovery, though of geological slow- 

 ness, is really going to arrive at a 

 cure. 



" Early next week the Doctors are 

 to have another consultation over my 

 damned spine (how I reverence a 

 polyp) and I am assured in advance 

 that they will sanction and even com- 

 mand my going somewhere in the 

 south. . . . Everything favoring I 

 shall go. South I must go, and next 

 week is to be my last in this house 

 of madness. I shant like it so well 

 a few months hence when Columbia 

 162 



