I have set my house & heart in order for a visit from you before these May days are ended. I trust you are well & really mean to come. Dr Bucke1 wrote me he should be here early in June to take you with him to Ontario. I want you for 10 days or two weeks before he comes. Can you loc.01151.002_large.jpg not come the latter part of this week or early next? If you do not like to make the whole distance alone, I will meet you in Jersey City. Your best train to come by is the one that leaves J.C. a little before 4 p.m. & gets here at West Park at 6.45 The train leaves from the same depot (The Pennsylvania) you come in at.
You would enjoy the country here now, & it would add to the length of my days to see you here again.
loc.01151.003_large.jpgDrop me a line how you feel, & when you will come. Ursula2 & Julian3 both want to see you.4
With much love, John Burroughs loc.01151.004_large.jpgCorrespondent:
The naturalist John Burroughs
(1837–1921) met Whitman on the streets of Washington, D.C., in 1864. After
returning to Brooklyn in 1864, Whitman commenced what was to become a decades-long
correspondence with Burroughs. Burroughs was magnetically drawn to Whitman.
However, the correspondence between the two men is, as Burroughs acknowledged,
curiously "matter-of-fact." Burroughs would write several books involving or
devoted to Whitman's work: Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and
Person (1867), Birds and Poets (1877), Whitman, A Study (1896), and Accepting
the Universe (1924). For more on Whitman's relationship with Burroughs,
see Carmine Sarracino, "Burroughs, John [1837–1921] and Ursula [1836–1917]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).