I hear from you every day, and every day I am glad that you are alive, and every day I am sad that you are sick.2
Do the best you can to stay in this country—and stay as long as you can.
There are plenty of thoughts in that brain that have not yet been given to the world.
I hope to see you again
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in a few days.
Mrs. Ingersoll3 was greatly gratified with your message, and she writes with me in sending words of love and hope.
Yours always, R G. IngersollCorrespondent:
Robert "Bob" Green Ingersoll
(1833–1899) was a Civil War veteran and an orator of the post-Civil War
era, known for his support of agnosticism. Ingersoll was a friend of Whitman,
who considered Ingersoll the greatest orator of his time. Whitman said to Horace
Traubel, "It should not be surprising that I am drawn to Ingersoll, for he is
Leaves of Grass. He lives, embodies, the
individuality I preach. I see in Bob the noblest
specimen—American-flavored—pure out of the soil, spreading, giving,
demanding light" (Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden,
Wednesday, March 25, 1891). The feeling was mutual. Upon Whitman's
death in 1892, Ingersoll delivered the eulogy at the poet's funeral. The eulogy
was published to great acclaim and is considered a classic panegyric (see
Phyllis Theroux, The Book of Eulogies [New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1997], 30).