Your letter came to hand the first of this week and I was glad to hear from you but very sorry to hear of your loss of health & bereavement1 this liaves me and family all well my little Boy2 is growing very fast and is getting as fat as he can be Worke is very dul here I have only about two days work in a week and loc.01872.006_large.jpg the wages are small I do not everage two dollars a day when I work I am working on locks I do not like the place here and shall get away from here as soon as I can How Is work there I can work at most any thing that comes along I should like very much to see you and if every thing goes well I may come on to see you this summer I got a little behind through the winter and have not quite caught up yet I have got a little Buisness out side of my work which I do Evenings loc.01872.007_large.jpg I am connected with Sovererns of Industry I Sell Butter & Sigars and that helps me a great deal so that I manadge to get along And I think by the first of June I shall be all square here We deal with a firm in Philadefia Clother Bennett & Co Tower Hall I think it is in Market St there is a Mr Walters3 with them and he is coming on here soon to take Orders and Measament for the Soverns Do you remember meeting a yong Lady with me at the corner of Fulton and Court Sts once that is my wife she remembers you well so good by loc.01872.008_large.jpg for this time I will try to write oftener in future we all send love
from your affecinat son &c J. M. Rogers. John M. Rogers New Britain Conn April 26. '75Correspondent:
John (Jack) M. Rogers was a
Brooklyn driver with whom Whitman had a loving relationship. Whitman
first met him in Brooklyn on September 21, 1870. For more on Rogers and his
relationship with the poet, see Charley Shively, ed., Calamus
Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working-Class Camerados (San Francisco: Gay
Sunshine Press, 1987), 122–135.