I was made happy a few days since by the receipt of your picture
I liked the familiar hat, but should have preferred the handsome brow.
I should have replied immediately but for expecting my own picture from Boston a copy of which I have the pleasure to enclose.
Mr Blood wrote me that he invited you here this month—for which I am glad—and only hope you will come.
loc.01107.002_large.jpg loc.01107.003_large.jpgIt is not impossible that the future Mrs Whitman lives in this latitude—why dont you come so as to join us in our trip to Saratoga about the first proximo?
My love to Mrs Benedict!2
Yours Sincerely Marie Blood.3 Walt Whitman loc.01107.004_large.jpgCorrespondent:
Marie Blood was the wife of
Henry A. Blood, a clerk in the Internal Revenue Service (see Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, ed. Edward F. Grier [New
York: New York University Press, 1984], 2:846).