I enclose the letter1 I recd from Dowden,2 which you may return to me when you write. I recd received both your postal cards.3 I cant help but think if you had got away from Camden this summer you would have been much better, no matter how much of an effort it cost you to make the start. I happened to get Saturdays Tribune & saw the letter about you from the Springfield Repn Republican . It is an admirable piece of writing (of course I see your hand) loc.01125.002_large.jpg loc.01125.003_large.jpg & contains some of the best things about you that have yet been in print. I am rejoiced that you are as well as this indicates. I do not like the title of the new book as well as the one you proposed last spring—namely "Songs & pieces Leftover" This sounds like you, the other does not. We have had a very dry season here till just now. My berry crop & other crops were much injured.
I recdreceived Dowdens Shakspeare book4 & have read several of the Chapters. For some reason it does not strike me. It does not very differ much from the rest of the critical literature of that subject. I do not yet see that it throws any new light. loc.01125.004_large.jpg loc.01125.005_large.jpg His Victor Hugo5 article, strikes me as much more masterly.
Have you ever heard of this new medical idea called the "Compound oxygen Treatment"? by Dr. Starkey6 of Phila. ? I would strongly urge you to try it. Our attention has been called to it by Mrs Johns7 of WashnWashington She was threatened with some serious lung difficulty & was treated by Starkey who was then in W. He helped or Cured her lung trouble & his oxygen so vivified & re-kindled her vital energies that she got with child forth with—after being married 9 years. I think I shall send my wife down there this winter; in the mean time I wish you would look into it. It looks as if oxygen loc.01125.006_large.jpg ought to work wonders, if it can be rightly taken.
I have a boat now rigged with a sail, & would take you out every day if you was here. Rab8 & I are getting to be pretty good old Salts. 'Sula'9 sends love. I hope you will be in the mood to write me soon.
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).