the book is out & 1st edition quite exhausted2—
I send you same mail with this a paper-bound copy of "Specimen Days" for your printing office use—will send you a regularly bound copy in a day or two—the volume is issued in precisely the same style as "Leaves of Grass"—same cloth binding, same butterfly on the back, same size, &c.—It is a great jumble (as a man himself is)—Is an autobiography after its sort—(sort o' synonyms & yet altogether different—"Montaigne," Rousseau's "Confessions" &c)—is the gathering up, & formulation, & putting in identity of the wayward itemizings, memoranda, and personal notes of fifty years, under modern & American conditions, a good deal helter-skelter but I am sure a certain sort of orbic compaction and oneness the final result—dwells long in its own peculiar way on the Secession War—gives glimpses of that event's strange interiors, especially the Army Hospitals—in fact makes the resuscitating and putting on record the emotional aspect of the war of 1861–'65 one of its principal features.
The years from 1876 to the present date Whitman has been a partial paralytic. Very much of his days—(and nights also as it appears)—he has spent in the open air down in the country in the woods and fields, and by a secluded little New Jersey river—His memoranda on the spot of these days and nights fill a goodly portion of the Volume—Then comes the "Collect," embodying "Democratic Vistas," the Preface to L of G. of 1855, and much other prose.
It is understood that Whitman himself considers "Specimen Days" the exponent and finish of his poetic work "Leaves of Grass," that each of the two volumes is indispensable in his view to the other, and that both together finally begin and illustrate his literary schemes in the New World. Talking lately in a half jocular vein to a friend he termed them his Adam and Eve, sent out in "this garden the world."
(don't fail to copy this—can't it conclude your notice?)3
Four Phila: editions of "Leaves of Grass" have been issued & sold within the last three months—they are now on the fifth—The first edition of "Specimen Days" has been exhausted in less than a week. They are now on the second—
Dear B, if you notice—send me a paper—don't fail—Send also one each to Wm D O'Connor, Life Saving Services Washington D C Dr. R M Bucke, London, Ontario, Canada
Dear B I have dash'd off all this to help you—to use (incorporate) or not as you think fit—you will understand—
Of course use whatever of this you want—incorporate it I mean in your article.