follow copy, punctuation &c—After reading first proof by copy, & correcting, please send me a good second proof.1 I send copy with it—Address Walt Whitman 328 Mickle street, Camden, New Jersey.
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).