Content:
This scrap refers to the 1836 wreck of the
Mexico
. Whitman writes about this in the passage "Paumanok, and My Life on It as a Child and a
Young Man," published in
Specimen Days
& Collect
(1882-1883). According to Grier,
the wrecks of the
Mexico
and the
Bristol
are also alluded to in "The Sleepers," section 4. The scrap
dates from December
1882, Grier says, because the address on the verso is that of
Robert Pearsall Smith, whom Whitman met then (
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
, ed. Edward F. Grier [New York: New York University Press, 1984] 3: 1186).
