All quiet here.
The lilacs are not out in the grounds here yet but they will be in a few more days.
"Good-Bye"2 which was mailed a week ago reached me noon today—have spent an hour looking through it since—it is a most charming little vol.—has not (of course) the power of the early books (either verse or prose) but has a charm of its own which will make it equal, in attractiveness, to any of your books. But I have not half examined it yet and must put off for another letter my dicta upon it.
I am well but not strong and keep very lame3 so much so that I have grave doubts about geting east 31st4 much as I want to go—(but I may improve between now and then)
We shall see, meanwhile best love R M Bucke loc_zs.00468.jpg see notes May 22 1891 loc_zs.00469.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).