The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: William D. O'Connor to Walt Whitman, 8 April 1883
Date: April 8, 1883
Whitman Archive ID: loc.03283
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Alex Kinnaman and Nicole Gray
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Washington, D.C.
April 8, 1883
Dear Walt:
It has just occurred to me that a proper epigraph for the appendix might be found in Milton's Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. There is no copy of Milton's prose works in the Treasury library, and it is almost impossible for me to get down to the Congressional Library during office hours, I am so tied up; but you can easily slip into one of the Philadelphia libraries, and look over the treatise. It is many years since I have seen this—the most eloquent of Milton's prose writings, but from what I remember of it, I should think a fitting epigraph could be culled from it.
If I can contrive to get tomorrow to the Congressional, I will look myself, but this is doubtful, for affairs are on me. It is quite infernal that there is no library open to us here after office hours.
I am laboring under a heavy cold—influenza—and feel miserable.
If you see Howard Furness, he could help you to an epigraph. So could I, in short metre, if I could only get at a decent library.
Goodbye. More anon.
Faithfully
W.D.O'C.
W.W.