The boy forgot to tell you I am sick in bed with a very much swelli[cut-away] throat & will not be able to get down today—Have sent for Doctor.1
—Please put Judge Wescotts2 name in the book—with your own. He said he w'd regard it as a great favor [illegible] over
JamesWe had a Halcyon & voceberun time. A trifle too Halcyon for me—
Correspondent:
James Matlack Scovel
(1833–1904) began to practice law in Camden in 1856. During the Civil War,
he was in the New Jersey legislature and became a colonel in 1863. He campaigned
actively for Horace Greeley in 1872, and was a special agent for the U.S.
Treasury during Chester Arthur's administration. In the 1870s, Whitman
frequently went to Scovel's home for Sunday breakfast (Whitman's Commonplace
Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman,
1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). For a description of
these breakfasts, see Walt Whitman's Diary in Canada, ed.
William Sloane Kennedy (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1904), 59–60. For Scovel,
see George R. Prowell's The History of Camden County, New
Jersey (Philadelphia: L. J. Richards, 1886).