I have a line from Osler2 this moment. In answer to mine asking if they would look after you in Johns Hopkins. I enclose the note. I do not understand all of it fully but this much is clear that for about $25. a week (which it seems to me we could easily afford) you could be accommodated and provided with every thing—of course before taking any step we would find out every thing and I would visit Johns Hopkins myself—I will write again tomorrow when I get Osler's further letter promised in this one3
R M Bucke loc_es.00712.jpg loc_es.00709.jpg loc_es.00710.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).