I was greatly relieved and pleased to get from you this morning "The Post"2 of 29 reporting that you had been downstairs on 28 to a dinner of "Roast Turkey & Plum Pudding"
I gave my 6th Lecture to the students yesterday—Two more will (I think) finish the course.
Nothing new from Willy Gurd.3 He ought to be in Waterbury Conn. this week making official tests in the gas works there. I expect him here within two weeks.
All well and quiet here. Sleighing gone Mild, sloppy weather. I am longing for frost and snow
Love to you R M Bucke 20051227_0077.jpgCorrespondent:
Richard Maurice Bucke (1837–1902) was a
Canadian physician and psychiatrist who grew close to Whitman after reading Leaves of Grass in 1867 (and later memorizing it) and
meeting the poet in Camden a decade later. Even before meeting Whitman, Bucke
claimed in 1872 that a reading of Leaves of Grass led him
to experience "cosmic consciousness" and an overwhelming sense of epiphany.
Bucke became the poet's first biographer with Walt
Whitman (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1883), and he later served as one
of his medical advisors and literary executors. For more on the relationship of
Bucke and Whitman, see Howard Nelson, "Bucke, Richard Maurice," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).