I wrote a letter to the Tribune the other day touching you & your matters &
if they publish it I wish you would send me the paper as I do not see the daily
except I am away from home. I saw their editorial of Tuesday & was much
incensed by it. I presume it is Bayard Taylor's kal_ch.00006_large.jpghand.1
I am on the sick list now from quinsy soar throat & am very distressed. I wish you would drop me a line. I wrote to you a week or two ago.
Affectionately John BurroughsCorrespondent:
The naturalist John Burroughs
(1837–1921) met Whitman on the streets of Washington, D.C., in 1864. After
returning to Brooklyn in 1864, Whitman commenced what was to become a decades-long
correspondence with Burroughs. Burroughs was magnetically drawn to Whitman.
However, the correspondence between the two men is, as Burroughs acknowledged,
curiously "matter-of-fact." Burroughs would write several books involving or
devoted to Whitman's work: Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and
Person (1867), Birds and Poets (1877), Whitman, A Study (1896), and Accepting
the Universe (1924). For more on Whitman's relationship with Burroughs,
see Carmine Sarracino, "Burroughs, John [1837–1921] and Ursula [1836–1917]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).