Your p.c. of 11 just to hand.2 It is too bad that you should be so plagued with that confounded cold. As for the constipation you must not allow that to continue, it must be overcome at any price. If you are not better when you get this have in some doctor and take some measures. I would gladly advise you but think it would be much better to be guided by some one who cd see you. Am well pleased to see that the "70th year Ed." of L. of G. is being kept in hand.3 This complete pocket Ed. I think will be one of the best stakes yet. It ought to be actually pubd on your birth day—that would be in time for all the summer outings of the year.4 I have had a long cheery letter from Willy Gurd.5 He is hard at work at Danbury on the gas meter. He expects that we shall soon be "reaping a harvest from an unlimited field." I hope the grain will turn out good quality! All well here, weather very pleasant—we have had a good rain, it is now bright again & warm enough, guess we shall have an early spring
R M Bucke loc_es.00574.jpg loc_es.00571.jpg loc_es.00572.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).