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Unidentified Correspondent to Walt Whitman, 8 December 1885

 loc_nhg.00208.jpg Dear Sir or Madam:

You are invited to attend a meeting on Tuesday Evening, December 15th, 1885, to be held at the residence of MR. COURTLANDT PALMER, 117 East 21st Street. Gramercy Park, in behalf of Manual Training, especially as it is illustrated in the methods pursued in the Gramercy Park School and Tool-house No. 104 East 20th Street.

This enterprise in education, of which Mr. Andrew D. White, Ex-President of Cornell University wrote: "I have long believed that such schools are among the greatest necessities of our country," has now become a systematically arranged institution, but (as is generally the case with all new departures), it has as yet been insufficiently appreciated, and it is with the hope of enlarging its sphere of influence and usefulness that you are asked to assist, on the occasion referred to, with your presence and advice.

Short addresses may be expected from GEN. ALEXANDER S. WEBB, President of the Free College of the City of New York, and from MR. ANDREW CARNEGIE, REV. WM. LLOYD, RABBI G. GOTTHEIL and MR. F. B. THURBER. A letter from REV. R. HEBER NEWTON, favoring the project, will be read.

NEW YORK, December 8th, 1885.1  loc_nhg.00209.jpg  loc_nhg.00208b.jpg  loc_nhg.00209b.jpg

Notes

  • 1. On a page of blank paper attached to this letter, Whitman copied lines from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "Ulysses." [back]
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