Content:
Various scraps of paper, including two clippings of Whitman's own published prose, pasted together to create two separate leaves. Portions of this manuscript first appeared in "Winter Sunshine: A Trip from Canada to the Coast,"
Philadelphia Times
, 26 January 1879. This manuscript contains a nearly complete draft of "A Winter Day on the Beach," a section of prose that appeared in the 29 January 1881 issue of
The Critic
as "How I Get Around at 60, and Take Notes. (No. 1)," under the heading "A Fine Winter Day on the Beach." Whitman dated this draft December 1878, and the manuscript shows evidence of title revisions. A revised version of this prose piece was eventually published as part of
Specimen Days & Collect
(1882–1883), and finally collected in
Complete Prose Works
(1892). On the verso of the second leaf is a portion of a letter from A. B. Ashley to Whitman, requesting an autograph.
