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Walt Whitman to William Torrey Harris, 27 October 1879

My dear Mr Harris1

Thank you for the Magazine & for the newspaper extracts, & especially for the Memoranda of the Concord school. I have looked over all, & thoroughly read a great part—(the "School of Athens" in the magazine,2 & the thoughts, & statistics about the Mississippi River, & about Chicago.)

I am better this fine morning—Should like to spend an hour in one of your public schools.

Walt Whitman

Notes

  • 1. William Torrey Harris (1835–1909), the editor of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy from 1867 to 1893, was the leading interpreter of Hegel and German philosophy in America and superintendent of schools in St. Louis. See also the letter from Whitman to John Burroughs of November 23, 1879, and Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Tuesday, May 22, 1888. [back]
  • 2. Gertrude Garrigues's "Raphael's School of Athens," The Journal of Speculative Philosophy (October 1879), 8:406–420. [back]
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