Skip to main content

Walt Whitman to Harry Stafford, 24 February [1881]

Dear Hank—

I feel to write you a card, but I guess it will be a dry one, for I have nothing to write about, & I havn't​ got very smart yet—I go out though—(Seems to me if I couldn't go out in the sun & open air I should give up entirely)—How did you make out with the piece for the Lyceum? I suppose you rec'd what I sent you—the extracts on poetry—did you make a piece and read it as I told you?2 (I'll bet five dollars you didn't do any thing of the kind)—

I rec'd a pamphlet from Edward Carpenter to-day—his forthcoming lectures for 1881—perhaps he sent you one—I have been in all day, occupying myself reading & writing a little—Shall go out now for a couple of hours—There I told you this would be a dry letter—

Walt

Notes

  • 1. This letter is endorsed (by Richard Maurice Bucke): "1881." The year is established by the reference in the second paragraph and by a notation in Whitman's Commonplace Book (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]
  • 2. See the letter from Whitman to Harry Stafford of February 17, 1881. [back]
Back to top