I sent word to Horace1 one day that I had an intuition that you were about to enter upon a new lease of life. The next day the telegraph announced you were slightly improved loc.03184.002.jpg from a severe attack of "heart failure." Now Horace writes you are quite yourself again. I take it my spirit-sense of your condition is not likely to fail after all. But the hot weather is loc.03184.003.jpg coming, & we shall get it by July good & hot. I hope I can get into comfortable shape by the time it reaches Camden.
Am glad Horace is at hand to afford any help loc.03184.004.jpg you might need.
I have about concluded not to go to the Cin. Exposition.2 There is so much red tape it will cost me all of $20 to exhibit a few busts. I am calculating on starting for Chicago middle of next week. I'd like to look in loc.03184.005.jpg on the Chicago Convention3—just to see the shape of the heads that are prominent.
I notice a marked difference in the political atmosphere here & in Mass. People here are more rambunkious; they get mad. The republicans are high toned & look down on democrats. If you loc.03184.006.jpg show any proclivities of democratic color they wonder how you can. How can white think well of black? And then, the anti-copperhead talk is still rampant here. The dems are sore some over loc.03184.007.jpg the slaughter of Gray, & Harrison4 would catch many sore head votes. If the Republicans have got to have a rushing campaign, they'll get it sooner with the freedom of old Tipicanu (?)5 than with the cold blooded Sherman.6 But loc.03184.008.jpg I believe Blain7 would sweep the States. Every body fairly dances when his name is mentioned. Strange. I can't understand it. Somehow I am drawn personally more to Cleveland8 than any one of the others. And yet, he's a kind of a pork.
Well, this is a hot day here. I hope you keep mending, & that you only went back a little for a new start.
Kindly, Morse.Correspondent:
Sidney H. Morse (1832–1903)
was a self-taught sculptor as well as a Unitarian minister and, from 1866 to
1872, editor of The Radical. He visited Whitman in Camden
many times and made various busts of him. Whitman had commented on an earlier
bust by Morse that it was "wretchedly bad." For more on this, see Ruth L. Bohan,
Looking into Walt Whitman: American Art,
1850–1920 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
2006), 105–109.