You can hardly imagine what pleasure it gave me to see your bold strong hand again on a letter, you look as well as ever in that address, & it is such a satisfaction to know you are really better. I believe now you will come out of this crisis as you have loc.01163.002_large.jpg out of so many others & be yourself again. It is too bad that you have to be cooped up in that way. If you could only get up strength of body & will to get out! What do you eat? I have made the discovery that raw clams are very strengthening & that the juice is a tonic, but I need not tell an old Long Islander like you the virtue there is in clams. I eat them from the shell without any seasoning. Try some. This cool weather I know you enjoy. loc.01163.003_large.jpg It sounded so good to hear you speak of its raining. It is dry as a bone here, no rain for many weeks, my potato crop is cut short 50 per cent, & all my young vines & plants are suffering much. Indeed we have had no rain to speak of since the great snow storm in March. I hope O'C.1 is really mending. If he comes to Camden let me know & I will come down too & see him. I try to keep absorbed in my farm operations. It is much better for me than to mope about nibbling at literature. I want to get loc.01163.004_large.jpg a sniff of salt water again this summer or early fall, & I do so hope you will be well enough to join me. I know the sight of the sea would give you a lift. We are all well. My regards to Horace Traubel.2 Tell me something about him when you write again. I am very anxious to see November Boughs3 I do no writing at all. Send me a card when you are in the mood.
With much love 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).