I write you briefly this morning before starting on my 2 weeks vacation to Delaware
Co. I recd the pocket book
copy2 of L.G. & prize it very highly. It is
unique. I was very sorry I could not see you on the day you was 70 years old. At
that time I was having one of my streaks of insomnia, & loc.01170.002_large.jpg was very wretched for two or three
weeks. It has worn off & I am feeling much better.
The summer has been a very busy one with me. The young grape vines grow so fast that it keeps me going to tie them up to the stalks. I go about all day with two balls of twine at my side, training the young vines in the way they should go, & tying them in that way.
I do hope you keep about. I wish some good masculine angel would come & lift you
out of Camden, bag & baggage & set you down here, or loc.01170.003_large.jpg or by the sea, or in the mountains
A change of air now would greatly add to the length of your days. You ought to know
this, & I will not bore you with it. I hear from Horace3 now
& then, always gladly. I have not seen O'Connor's4 review
of Donnelly's5 Reviewers.6 If you
have a copy send it to me at Hobart N.Y. & I will return it.
Correspondent:
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).