Your letter of 21st2 came to hand last evening. I was much rejoiced to see by it that you were suffering less—thank goodness for that, anyhow! Thank you also for the printed piece enclosed "old actors &c,"3 I read it with great interest and pleasure.
I have not written for some days—day before yesterday I was very sick (feverish loc_zs.00374.jpg
bilious attack—headache, nausea, great depression—I took some medicine
(something I very seldom do)—yesterday
I was better but weak, today I am comparatively well. The foot4 is steadily healing and I guess
will be well in a few more days. My heart has not been up to par this winter (since the upset
last fall, the dislocation in Dec.5 & the grip in Jan.) Still I can not see that anything serious is the matter and
I look to be all right again after I get a change and some sea air (nothing ever seems to do me as much good as the sea)—this
last year or more (since the grip first visited me) has been a bad time
loc_zs.00375.jpg for sickness and
I guess the death rate in America has never been higher than within the last few months6—but as you say: "I guess it is all right
anyhow." I hope to be around as usual next week—Shall kind of half lay up still, I guess, tomorrow and Sunday
Correspondent:
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).