I have just finished reading (for the third time) your paper in The Atlantic Monthly on "The Devil Baby." I can't begin to tell you how every word of it has gone deep down into my heart. I can't recall anything of yours that has affected me as this has -- except perhaps the "Egyptian [Impressions]" published some time ago in the same magazine. Somehow I felt very much "at home" when I read [illegible] <[illegible].> Maybe it is [page 2] because I'm old myself, that your understanding and sympathy with those poor old neighbors, seemed to me so truly heavenly -- yes, that's the word I want, and I'm going to use it!
The experience you all want [through], even in its most external phase, was in itself most interesting. But to interpret it as you have done, is to me, almost <like> a sacramental understanding of the case.
Sometimes I'm quite glad of my 75 years! One gets so many shocks in these days -- universal, national individual shocks, that one can hardly help longing for the "other [page 3] gate" to open, that we may pass [through] and see life from the other side.
Since my legs were smashed from under me 6 years ago, and my sight has failed so much, problems concerning life, seem as complex as ever -- and as I can't take a hand in trying to work out some of them, I am very thankful that I can fall back on that wonderful trio from "Elijah," "Lift thine eyes" -- and hear it with my [illegible] ears; and I find strength too in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Children of Yesterday -- heirs of tomorrow" [ere?] and I do feel sure that "the [child] at the loom" and that we must make room for [Him] individually and collectively -- and not until we do that, can world affairs be untangled.
I do hope that the bracing sea air has brought you strength and comfort. I love that Maine coast.
I know you must be overwhelmed with letters, but I did want to thank you personally for your interpretation of that singular experience, and <that you> [gave] it to the public.
Yours very sincerely,
Alice H. Putnam.
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