Yours of 21st rec'd this forenoon, with slip from Nation (herewith enclosed, returned)—I am glad you sent it me, as I do not see the N.—The eye-works have resumed operations pretty nearly same as before—I see out of both now & a great blessing in my imprisoned condition—A friend has sent me Stedman's book, & I have looked it over2—it seems to me a dissertation & biographies on very grand themes & persons by an amiable "clerk with a pen behind his ear"—as Warren Hastings or Macaulay, or Canning or Sheridan or somebody said—("By God, sir, if I am to have a master, don't let it be a mere clerk with a pen behind his ear")—I heard from John Burroughs ten days since—he was well & every thing right—I hear from Dr Bucke pretty often—he is not well himself—(though not down)—& there has been bad sickness in his family & the hospital staff—his last letter rec'd yesterday is dated at Sarnia, Canada3—
I am getting along comfortably—the weather has been bad as can be & the traveling ditto, for three weeks past, my old nag has nearly given out too, & I have not been out of the house—which tells on me—great torpor of the secretions—I am very clumsy & can hardly get up or down stairs—
The English "offering" (through Rossetti and Herbert Gilchrist) will am't to over $500—the principal part of which has been already sent me4—& on which I am really living this winter—write oftener—My last half-annual return of royalties for both my books just rec'd —$20.71cts5—the death of Mrs. Gilchrist has been a gloom to me, & has affected me ever since—I am not sure but she had the finest & perfectest nature I ever met—Glad to hear ab't the Channing's6—Give them my love—I am scribbling in my little front room down stairs—the parrot has been squalling & the canary singing—I write hardly at all—
W. W.Correspondent:
William Douglas O'Connor
(1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet
The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication, published in 1866.
For more on Whitman's relationship with O'Connor, see Deshae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas (1832–1889)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).