Content:
A single line concerning a "mean" person, "even in the Presidency!" The line has no known connection to any of Whitman's published works. On the back of this leaf (nyp.00079), Whitman drafted trial lines of the poem that was eventually titled "Song of Myself." Based on this, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to before or early in 1855 (
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
[New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:180). The manuscript is glued to another manuscript (nyp.00524) that also features lines of prose.
