Content:
Lightly revised manuscript fragment of approximately 42 words, written
with hanging indentation and expressing a confidence in future popular
acceptance. Connection with Whitman's published work is uncertain.
Christopher Morley, in his foreword to the auction catalog
Manuscripts, Autograph Letters, First Editions and
Portraits of Walt Whitman
(1936), writes that
he believes that the manuscript "was written . . . on a piece scissored
from left-over stock of the green wrappers and end-papers of the 1855
Leaves." The paper is actually more blue than green, however, and the
handwriting is more consistent with a date in the 1870s, a period during
which Whitman repeatedly complained about how he was treated by American
magazines. This manuscript has been pasted to a backing sheet, and the
verso is inaccessible.
