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My Dear Bolger
Here is an article I have reeled off for you if you want it
your telegram recd
yesterday too late.
[cut away] for the paper [cut away]1
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Correspondent:
Peter Bolger (1852–1929) was
a reporter for the Philadelphia Times and, later, for the
Philadelphia Register. According to a notation in
Whitman's Commonplace Book, the poet met Bolger in December 1878.
Notes
- 1. This draft letter has
been crossed out, and the paper is torn, leaving much of the letter missing. On
the back, Whitman wrote a series of notes about adding portraits to Leaves of Grass and Specimen Days.
Edwin Haviland Miller bases the date of the letter on a transcript in Stan V.
Henkel's Catalog (February 26, 1912). He summarizes the content of the letter as
follows: "WW sent a publicity release entitled 'Walt Whitman's Birthday,'
referring to his sixty-fifth anniversary, for insertion in the Philadelphia Times on Saturday, May 31." [back]