William D. O'Connor to Walt Whitman, 8 April 1883

 loc.03283.001_large.jpg Washington, D.C. April 8, 1883 Dear Walt:

It has just occurred to me that a proper epigraph for the appendix might be found in Milton's Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. There is no copy of Milton's prose works  loc.03283.002_large.jpg in the Treasury library, and it is almost impossible for me to get down to the Congressional Library during office hours, I am so tied up; but you can easily slip into one of the Philadelphia libraries, and look over the treatise. It is many years since I have seen this—the most eloquent of Milton's prose writings, but from what I remember  loc.03283.003_large.jpg of it, I should think a fitting epigraph could be culled from it.

If I can contrive to get tomorrow to the Congressional, I will look myself, but this is doubtful, for affairs are on me. It is quite infernal that there is no library open to us here after office hours.

I am laboring under a heavy cold—influenza—and feel miserable.

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If you see Howard Furness, he could help you to an epigraph. So could I, in short metre, if I could only get at a decent library.

Goodbye. More anon. Faithfully W.D.O'C. W.W.