You ask how long it takes a letter to come from you here—well your last letter2 (now before me) is postmarked 5 P.M. 15th (Sunday) and reaches me at 10 this A.M. [—] If your letter had been posted at 8.15 (the time you mention) I am not sure whether I should get it by the same mail here or whether prehaps it would come by afternoon mail and rea[c]h me 4. P.M. In a general way you may reckon from a day and a half to two days for a letter to pass from Camden or Philadelphia here. [—] Judging by your letter and by all accounts I think you are certainly on the mend Walt, and I hope we shall have you middling bright and lively again after a little.3 That would be a grand thing if we could only see it.
About half of my folk [damage] are gone and going to Sarnia on a visit—Clare4 & Ina5 went yesterday, Mrs B.6 Willie,7 & Pardee8 go tomorrow morning. I shall have a quiet house for awhile. The weather here keeps perfect, quiet, [illegible] hazy, sleepy days—You might fancy it the land of the Lotus Eaters but the devil of it is it is not—wish it was—too much work here altogether—however perhaps too much is better than not enough and as long as one is able to do it it is not [damage] right to complain
Your friend R M BuckeCorrespondent:
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).