I thank you heartily for my share in your Custer poem,1 which I have just read. It is splendidly strong and sustained and full of a noble motive. I am especially glad to learn, in such an authoritative way, of your health and vigor.
I wish you would loc.01728.002_large_mflm.jpg take the trouble to let me know when your volume of collected
works is to be published and where I can subscribe for it. I have heard that it was
to be published by subscription, but have not heard any further details.
My address is now 506 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, and I would be loc.01728.003_large_mflm.jpg very much
obliged if you would spend a moment in letting me know how to get an early copy of
the book for which many are looking.
Correspondent:
John Hay (1838–1905) was
Abraham Lincoln's private secretary and a historian as well as Secretary of
State under Theodore Roosevelt. Hay praised Whitman's "A Death-Sonnet for
Custer" (later entitled "From Far Dakota's Cañons") when it appeared in the
New York Daily Tribune on July 10, 1876. Whitman sent the
1876 Centennial Edition of Leaves of Grass to Hay on
August 1, 1876 (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of
the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington,
D.C.).