Owen's books, if
he is good enough to send them to me. I desire on all subjects to keep
an open mind, but hitherto the various phenomena, reported or attested
in connection with ideas of spirit intercourse and so on, have come
before me here in the painful form of the lowest charlatanerie. . . .
But apart from personal contact with people who get money by public
exhibitions as mediums, or with semi-idiots such as those who make a
court for a Mrs. ----, or other feminine personages of that kind, I
would not willingly place any barriers between my mind and any
possible channel of truth affecting the human lot. The spirit in which
you have written in the paper you kindly sent me is likely to touch
others, and arouse them at least to attention in a case where you have
been deeply impressed. . . .
Yours with sincere affection,
M. L. LEWES.
(Begun April 4th.)
MANDARIN, FLORIDA, _May_ 11,1872.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I was very glad to get your dear little note,--sorry
to see by it that you are not in your full physical force. Owing to
the awkwardness and misunderstanding of publishers, I am not reading
"Middlemarch," as I expected to be, here in these orange shades: they
don't send it, and I am too far out of the world to get it. I felt,
when I read your letters, how glad I should be to have you here in our
Florida cottage, in the wholly new, wild, woodland life.
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