A small party of us, Dr. Sippi (the Bursar of the asylum) Wm Gurd1 (the inventor) John Nesbit (partner with Gurd & self in the meter & motor) Fred. Kittermaster (a lawyer, nephew of Mrs Bucke's2 & good friend of mine) and one of my little boys drove yesterday to Delaware (15 ms.) had dinner and spent some hours with a Mr Gibson, stockbreeder there, and got back home at 9:45 P.M. It was a charming day—ripe grain in the fields—apples hanging thick in the loc_es.00307.jpg orchards—clouds diving overhead—long swells of hill & valley often a prospect of several miles ahead or at one side or other of the road—a good team, free travelers—altogether a grand day—today up to my eyes in work again, but feel like it and enjoy it—next month the annual report once more (it seems one annual report fairly treads on the heels of the one in advance of it) such is life, but what matter—if time flies—(as it does) is there not plenty of it? "We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, there are trillions ahead and trillions ahead of them"3 so what matter?
Love to you always RM BuckeCorrespondent:
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).