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Ada H. Spaulding to Walt Whitman, 26 December 1891

 loc_jc.00363_large.jpg Dear Walt Whitman:

Christmas Day was saddened by the news of your illness. On today we rejoice that you are better. There are many, now, who give thanks for your glorious work for life, for purity—for both in one; and the number will increase. You have  loc_jc.00365_large.jpg  loc_jc.00364_large.jpg helped make homes happy; you have taught lovers to love wisely; you have helped men to pray, who, but for you would have known only irreverence.

God bless you!

And if you can come back—tell us again—that all is good.

With tender gratitude, A. H. Spaulding Boston.  loc_jc.00366_large.jpg

Correspondent:
Ada H. Spaulding (b. 1841), née Pearsons, was a socialite and active member of various reform movements and women's clubs. She served as the President of the Home Club of East Boston and was a member of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. She married Ebenezer Spaulding, an Assistant Surgeon during the Civil War, and, later, a homeopathic physician and surgeon who practiced in Boston. Ada Spaulding read and admired Whitman's poetry, visited the poet, and wrote a number of letters to him in his final years. For more on Spaulding, see Sherry Ceniza, "Women's Letters to Walt Whitman: Some Corrections," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 9 (Winter 1992), 142–147.

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