Marie Wallace to Walt Whitman, [1865–1885]

 loc_vm.02547_large.jpg Dear Sir:

I met of late, by chance, with an extract from your writings,—with which as a whole I have to confess I am but little acquainted. This is the passage. "I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self-contained"—and so on, ending with—"Not one is respectable or industrious on the whole earth."1

That is all there was, and it is great! I love  loc_vm.02548_large.jpg animals, and understand them well, feeling a warmerkinship to them, as a rule, than to their human brethren feeling too, I acknowledge, more keenly akin to their sufferings and ways, than to those of mankind, as being so much less desired. Then the cool assumption of immortality for creatures who have mainly proven false to the great trusts reposed in them, while these  loc_vm.02549_large.jpg humbler ones, as the dog, and horse, faithful unto death, unselfish, and devoted must be cut short in a career honest and true, innocent, and uncomplaining.

But this little note was not intended to afflict you with a [illegible] discussion of the mighty matters of the Land which holds us all, big and little in its mighty leash, but to ask you, respected sir, to point me to the volume  loc_vm.02550_large.jpg wherein I can find the above excerpt, and its context. "More" is what I desire and if you will kindly help me thereto, I shall remain as now

Yours gratefully Marie Wallace Gramercy Park House New York

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Notes

• 1. Wallace is quoting from Whitman's "Song of Myself." [back]