Yes,1 I have seen Havelock's2 bk & chap. on W.W. Yes it is very gloomy weather. I am "swain by winter pinched & worn"3 somewhat myself, toothache &c. Had a stunning dinner, though today (at great upstairs Quincy market restaurant) (chicken soup & rump steak & corn bread.) Yr frequent mention of oysters has led me to think of them, & we have 'em often. I stick a can full in ulster pocket, & merrily home I glide. Good letter fr. mother today (in Oberlin). Well the richest blessings of time & eternity to you in a glass of orange wine (good, too). Love unlimited fr. yr constant lover & friend.
W.S.K.I4 see they are celebrating Lincoln's birthday now more and more.
loc.03125.001.jpgCorrespondent:
William Sloane Kennedy
(1850–1929) was on the staff of the Philadelphia American and the Boston Transcript; he also
published biographies of Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier (Dictionary of American Biography [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933], 336–337). Apparently Kennedy called on
the poet for the first time on November 21, 1880 (William Sloane Kennedy, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman [London: Alexander
Gardener, 1896], 1). Though Kennedy was to become a fierce defender of Whitman,
in his first published article he admitted reservations about the "coarse
indecencies of language" and protested that Whitman's ideal of democracy was
"too coarse and crude"; see The Californian, 3 (February
1881), 149–158. For more about Kennedy, see Katherine Reagan, "Kennedy, William Sloane (1850–1929)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).