London Ontario Canada
June 17 '80
My dear Reid
Herewith find a letter for the paper. The price is $12—If used it must be printed in the paper of Tuesday, June 221 (or afterward)—The letter is sent in the same manner as this to several other papers in Canada & The States—(no two papers in same city)—one each in Boston, Phila: , Cincinnati, Denver, &c—on the same condition—this condition being a point of honor—It is sent to no other but you in New York—
Walt Whitman
I am well for me—& having a good time—fine country, many fine people here—I go all about leisurely but this will be my headquarters & p.o. address all summer—
Notes
- 1. "Summer Days in Canada"
appeared in the London (Ontario) Advertiser on the date
stipulated. The article did not appear in the New York Tribune. It later was included in Specimen
Days, ed. Floyd Stovall (New York: New York University Press, 1963),
236–241, 345–346. According to Whitman's Commonplace Book, the
article was sent to the following papers, in addition to the two mentioned:
Boston Herald, Philadelphia Press,
Cincinnati Commercial, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Louisville Courier-Journal, Washington Post,
and to Canadian newspapers in New Brunswick, Halifax, Toronto, and Montreal
(Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919,
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). The price, except for the Tribune, was $10. Whitman offered the piece to the
Woodstown (N.J.) Register for $7, however, and to the
Camden Daily Post without charge. Only the Camden Daily Post and the Philadelphia Press printed the piece (Edwin Haviland Miller, Walt
Whitman: The Correspondence [New York: New York University Press,
1961–77], 181). [back]