The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to John Burroughs, 22 October 1868
Date: October 22, 1868
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00654
Source: The Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 2:66. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Kenneth M. Price, Elizabeth Lorang, Zachary King, and Eric Conrad
Providence, R. I.
October 22, 1868
Dear friend,
I have been thinking about you this morning, and will write a few lines, though without any thing special to communicate. My vacation is nearly done, & in four or five days more I shall be back in Washington. I have been here in Providence the past week, as guest of Thomas Davis, a manufacturer here, & formerly M. C.—have had a good time generally, in a quiet way—am going on to New York this afternoon, & shall be back in Washington on the 27th—
William O'Connor1 is here in Providence—I have been with him a good deal—he is not very well, but goes around—Will finish my letter in New York, & mail it thence to-morrow.2
Walt.
Notes:
1. Before he returned to Washington, O'Connor called on Walt Whitman's mother in Brooklyn, as mentioned in Louisa Van Velsor Whitman's November 4, 1868 letter to Walt Whitman. [back]
2. The sale at the American Art Association on March 11, 1924, listed a one-page letter to Burroughs on October 23, 1868, which stated that Walt Whitman intended to spend a few days in New York before he returned to Washington. [back]