Your letter, with cheering wishes & prophecies came last Tuesday—God bless you, boy—for all such things help much—I had a bad spell this morning—have something of the kind pretty often—Still it seems certain I am improving, generally,—& that my general strength is better loc.01749.002.jpgI am not near as bad as I was five weeks ago—have some hours in which I feel quite like myself again—Keep up good heart nearly all the time—& you must too, dear son.
—So I see Beau Hickman1 has died of a stroke of paralysis—in the paper this morning I see a piece about his body being resurrected from potter's field—
—Pete I see a collision of some trains on the B. & P. road reported in the tunnel at Baltimore yesterday morning early in which a brakeman named Hawkinson2 was instantly killed—
loc.01749.003.jpgI was over to Philadelphia yesterday—there is a large reading room, the Mercantile Library, 10th st. where I go occasionally—it is quite handy—they have all the papers from every where—have the Wash. Chronicle Capital, &c.—Then I took a ride in the Market st. cars, & was caught in a violent rain at ½ past 7 coming home—the moment I got home, it stopt, & cleared off a beautiful moonlit night.—It is clear and pretty hot here to-day—I am sitting here in the front room in the same big old mahogany chair I gave mother 20 years ago, by the open window writing this—I am feeling better since breakfast.
loc.01749.004.jpgPete the papers you sent came last Monday all right—I have rec'd a letter from Chas Eldridge—& another from Walter Godey, the young man who is working for me as my substitute in the office—all was going on well in the office—I send a couple of papers to-day—nothing particular—send the Herald
Did I tell you that a doctor3 I have talked with here says my real disease is the brain not being properly furnished and nourished with blood—(it is a disease the doctors call cerebral anâemia)—the doctor says it has been long a-coming, & will be long a-going—says I will get over it though—says the paralysis comes from that, & that it (the paralysis) is not very 'formidable'—I am following Dr. Drinkard's advice, taking no medicine, living very carefully—
Walt.Correspondent:
Peter Doyle (1843–1907) was
one of Walt Whitman's closest comrades and lovers, and their friendship spanned
nearly thirty years. The two met in 1865 when the twenty-one-year-old Doyle was
a conductor in the horsecar where the forty-five-year-old Whitman was a
passenger. Despite his status as a veteran of the Confederate Army, Doyle's
uneducated, youthful nature appealed to Whitman. Although Whitman's stroke in
1873 and subsequent move from Washington to Camden limited the time the two
could spend together, their relationship rekindled in the mid-1880s after Doyle
moved to Philadelphia and visited nearby Camden frequently. After Whitman's
death, Doyle permitted Richard Maurice Bucke to publish the letters Whitman had
sent him. For more on Doyle and his relationship with Whitman, see Martin G.
Murray, "Doyle, Peter," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia,
ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing,
1998).