Thanks for your postal card,1 we are always so glad when
we come down to breakfast and find something there with your good black hand
writing—so unlike anybody else's. As I wrote you2 the books came safely to hand
and
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are greatly appreciated by our friends who ordered them.3
And that splendid complete volume4 you sent father5—that is a book! You know how to get out such nice
editions—there is no one who has nicer ones.
We have just been having a party of about a dozen young people staying with us to
help in an "opera" which we wrote and performed last Saturday. It was about
Oxford,
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showing how some women-students got possession of a man's college and turned the men
out. But alas, when the women were once in they began quarreling—some wishing
to be serious and study, & some to have a good time— & in the end they all
eloped with a handsome undergraduate and the men got back their college. It was very
amusing—my part was to dance a ballet, which I
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did, in full ballet costume.
We have had a lovely summer here all-together, with visits from lots of friends—each of whom has brought some interesting word with him.
In a week now I go back to Oxford—to Balliol College, for my last year. It is a dear place. I shall hate to leave it.
all send love yours affectionately Logan Pearsall SmithCorrespondent:
Logan Pearsall Smith
(1865–1946) was an essayist and literary critic. He was the son of Robert
Pearsall Smith, a minister and writer who befriended Whitman, and he was the
brother of Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe, one of Whitman's most avid followers.
For more information on Logan, see Christina Davey, "Smith, Logan Pearsall (1865–1946)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).