I sent the revised and added copy of the Hospitals article1—also the signed receipt. Send me a line acknowledging them, as I have a little uncertainty ab't my P.O. messenger.
Walt WhitmanCorrespondent:
The editor of The Century at this time was Richard Watson Gilder
(1844–1909). Whitman had met Gilder for the first time in 1877 at John H.
Johnston's (Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer [New
York: New York University Press, 1955], 482), and considered Gilder one of the
"always sane men in the general madness" of "that New York art delirium" (Horace
Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Sunday, August 5, 1888). For more about Gilder, see Susan L.
Roberson, "Gilder, Richard Watson (1844–1909)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). As this letter indicates, in the 1880s The Century published a series of articles about the
American Civil War.