Ellen Galusha Smith to Walt Whitman, 11 March 1887
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Peoria, Ill. Mar. 11, '87
Dear Mr. Whitman:
The evening's readings, skeletonized in the enclosed slip, were given by an ardent lover of both of us—my husband. He was called away from home immediately after the occasion described, and asked me to forward a review of the evening to you—the occasion of it, and I take pleasure in complying with his request both for his sake and yours.
Sincerely your friend—in the spirit, Mrs. Wm Hawley Smith
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Correspondent:
Ellen Galusha Smith
(1849–1922) was an American painter and poet. She was the wife of William
Hawley Smith (1845–1943), a writer of early science-fiction stories.
Apparently, the couple met Whitman late in his life—an event that William
Hawley Smith recorded in his 1909 "A Visit To Walt Whitman" (reprinted in Whitman in His Own Time, ed. Joel Myerson [Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press, 2000], 227).