Your letter of 13th is just to hand.2 I have looked over "N.B."3 a good deal since I wrote you last and like the little volume better all the time. The "Backward Glance" I consider very valuable, the "Sands" still more so—I should be sorry to lose any of it. That is the main point about the "Complete Works"4 to have an authoratative text which can be relied on every time as what the Author intended to say. I finished my Annual Report Sunday and mailed it yesterday—am at work now on "Lectures on Psycology & mental diseases" for the loc_es.00423.jpg medical students here. Wm Gurd5 left for N.Y. yesterday—if all is well I expect him to want me down in two to three weeks—so far all looks well for the meter I am only anxious about getting it patented all over i.e. in Europe as well as America. We are having such stormy weather—it was a little better this morning until the last few minutes now it has set in to blow and rain at a great rate—I am uneasy about O'Connor6 too, I fear he is quite sick, should you get word from him or of him be sure to let me know—I trust it will not be more than 2 to 3 weeks before I shall see you again.
Love to you RM Bucke loc_es.00420.jpg See notes Oct 18 1888 loc_es.00421.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).