I send today by mail—same address as this—my Volume 'Leaves of Grass'—When rec'd safely will you kindly mail me a card notifying me?2
Walt WhitmanCorrespondent:
Robert Collyer
(1823–1912) was born in Yorkshire, England, and emigrated to the United
States in 1837. He became a lay minister in the Methodist church but later
converted to Unitarianism and preached at various churches in Chicago. Collyer
took over the ministry of the Unitarian Church of the Messiah in New York in
1879. In 1888, Walt Whitman described to Horace Traubel an argument in which
Collyer got the better of him, conceding "Collyer's not deep but he's damned
cute" and summarized him as "a kind of reduced Beecher—a Beecher with much
of the grace lopped off" (Horace Traubel, ed., With Walt
Whitman in Camden [1906-1964], Tuesday, May 8, 1888.).