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Dec. 16, '72.
My dear Mr. Otis,
I mail you, same mail with this, two copies of the little Volume, "As a Strong Bird" &c.—the only form in which I
have the Dartmouth College poem.1
The price of the two is $1.50cts.
"Democratic Vistas"2 is printed in a
little book by itself. price 75cts.
There is not, (& uva_jc.00415_large.jpg probably will not be) any later or different edition of "Leaves of Grass" than the one I forwarded you last spring.
Walt Whitman
Solicitors Office Treasury
Washington
D. C.
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Correspondent:
Albert Boyd Otis (1839–1897) was a Boston
lawyer who practiced with John Albion Andrew (1818–1867) and later
Andrew's son John Forester Andrew. On April 20,
1878, G. P. Lathrop wrote to Walt Whitman: "I think you have
corresponded with Albert Otis, a lawyer of Boston, whom I know." Otis was also
one of the subscribers to the 1887 fund (See Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Monday, September 10, 1888). A biographical sketch of Otis appeared
in Memorial Biographies of the New England Historic
Genealogical Society (Boston: The New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1908), 9:387–389.
Notes
- 1. Whitman recited "As a Strong
Bird on Pinions Free" (later, "Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood") at the
Dartmouth commencement on June 26, 1872. Evidently a student organization hoped
to annoy the faculty by inviting Whitman to Dartmouth, a seat of New
England sobriety and conservatism; see Bliss Perry, Walt
Whitman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1906), 203–205. A dispatch to the New York Times on June 29, 1872, reported that Whitman "was cordially met
by the venerable gentlemen sitting upon the platform. He then took his position
at the desk and read, with clearness of enunciation, his poem, written for the
occasion, 'As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free.' As Whitman himself said to the
writer, 'There is no one expression that could stand as the subject of the
poem.'" "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free" was later printed as part of the volume
As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free and Other Poems in 1872. [back]
- 2. Whitman's Democratic Vistas was first published in 1871 in New York by J.S. Redfield.
The volume was an eighty-four-page pamphlet based on three essays, "Democracy," "Personalism," and "Orbic Literature," all of which
Whitman intended to publish in the Galaxy magazine. Only "Democracy" and "Personalism" appeared in the magazine. For
more information on Democratic Vistas, see Arthur Wrobel, "Democratic Vistas [1871]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]