Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Robert Pearsall Smith to Walt Whitman, 23 February 1883

Date: February 23, 1883

Whitman Archive ID: loc.04533

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: Eder Jaramillo, Nicole Gray, and Elizabeth Lorang



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Whitall, Tatum & Co.
Glass Manufacturers.
Nos. 410 & 412 Race St.
P.O. Box P.
Philadelphia,
2 Mo. 23 1883

Walt Whitman
Camden NJ
My dear friend

I claim the privileges of the name I claim of you—a friend—in sharing with you the means which have come to me in silver mining. I send certificate of stock of 200 shares of the Sierra Grande Mining Company made out in your name.1 So far very regular dividends of twenty five cents per share per month have been made to the shareholders, but whether they will continue for twelve months only or for a course of a years, no one can say. The experts predict a long course of years. In any case you will receive from the Treasurer by mail, sent about the first of each month, a cheque for fifty dollars till the mine shall work out.

As it is a personal matter between our two selves, you will kindly, as you proposed, devise it back to me in the final disposition of your means—may the which be in a far distant future!

And may its use prove of as much pleasure to you as it gives me to ask to place the income at your disposal.

Yours faithfully
R. Pearsall Smith

Know all Men by these Presents, that I Walt Whitman for value received, have bargained, sold, assigned and transferred, and by these presents do bargain, sell, assign and transfer unto Robert Pearsall Smith Two hundred Shares of the Capital Stock of the Sierra Bella Mining Co standing in my name on the books of the said Company, and do hereby constitute and appoint Robert Pearsall Smith my true and lawful attorney, irrevocably for me and in my name and stead, but to use, to sell, assign, transfer and set over, all or any part of the said Stock, and for that purpose to make and execute all necessary acts of assignment and transfer and one or more persons to substitute with like full power, hereby ratifying and confirming all that the said Attorney, or his substitute or substitutes shall lawfully do by virtue hereof

In Witness Whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal the 23d day of April 1883


Walt Whitman

Sealed and delivered in the presence of
Louisa Whitman

This certificate of Sierra Grande Mining Stock is to be returned to Robert Pearsall Smith at my death

Walt Whitman


Notes:

1. See the notification from the Sierra Grande Mining Company to Walt Whitman of March 20, 1883[back]


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