I enclose the two books by express, and will write you later. You need not return them until called for, if at all.1 Charley Eldridge sent them to me,2 I don't know yet whether as a gift or a loan. So take your time at them.
I find on carefully reading the "Quarterly," that I should greatly qualify my first impression of its merits. Still, it is good, and its source loc.03321.002.jpg gives it weight, and great significance.
I am badly off today, so excuse crudity and brevity. I hope you'll have a comfortable Christmas.
Affectionately, W D O'ConnorWalt Whitman.
Correspondent:
William Douglas O'Connor
(1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet
The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication, published in 1866.
For more on Whitman's relationship with O'Connor, see Deshae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas (1832–1889)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).