It is difficult to express the gratification I have felt in looking over the pages of the volume you so kindly sent me.1 These pages mirror a life, and the meaning of a life—rather should I say, not a life, but life, for the lines which fill them express, not particulars, but universals. On this account, future generations will not let die the contents of this book; and that I have it from him who wrote it is a peculiar pleasure to me.
Believe me, Most gratefully yours D. G. Brinton To Walt Whitman.Correspondent:
Daniel Garrison Brinton
(1837–1899) was a surgeon in the Union Army during the American Civil War
and then practiced medicine in Pennsylvania. He went on to become a professor at
the Academy of Natural Sciences, where he taught archaelogy and ethnology, and,
later, he worked as a professor of linguistics and archaeology at the University
of Pennsylvania. Whitman admired Brinton, who would speak at the poet's
funeral.