Your welcome postcard of 19th came to hand yesterday.2 You seem to be still "among the
midling ." I wish I could hear of you rallying a little more. The book3
(I have proofs
to p. 92) seems to rather hang fire. I wish you wd hand over the balance of the M.S. to Traubel4 to do
the best he could with it. It is not good for you to be trying at it and
failing—you ought to let it go and forget
it as soon as possible. In your present state you would not do any good
with the Hicks5 if you did go through it. Let Traubel have it
and tell him to alter nothing except where necessary to make loc_es.00265.jpg sense and connection, and let it be
printed and the book brought to an end. We are having warm rainy weather here, all
crops look well. We are having a splendid year. Just now raspberries and currants
are plentiful with us. We had our first new potatoes out
of our garden today (Your potatoes are old
before this). In a few minutes I am going out
to Catholic Chapel—(we had protestant service this morning). There is nothing
narrow about us here, we have all kinds of clergymen and services turn about. We are
all well, I am keeping first-rate. You seem to have had a cool summer so far—I
hope it may keep on so
Correspondent:
Richard Maurice Bucke (1837–1902) was a
Canadian physician and psychiatrist who grew close to Whitman after reading Leaves of Grass in 1867 (and later memorizing it) and
meeting the poet in Camden a decade later. Even before meeting Whitman, Bucke
claimed in 1872 that a reading of Leaves of Grass led him
to experience "cosmic consciousness" and an overwhelming sense of epiphany.
Bucke became the poet's first biographer with Walt
Whitman (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1883), and he later served as one
of his medical advisors and literary executors. For more on the relationship of
Bucke and Whitman, see Howard Nelson, "Bucke, Richard Maurice," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).