I have the "November Boughs"2 today with my name and yours on fly leaf. I lay this book by as one of my most precious possessions. I like the way it is got up and every thing about it and consider it altogether one of the most charming books I know. I shall keep it by me & look it through often (though I know about every line of it already). I note the two corrections (p. 37—An Evening Lull) and think the poem should have been left as it was. Last evening I went to Sarnia to see Pardee3 (back by noon today) he is much worse. Can speak only a few words and has difficulty in swallowing—I fear he cannot live many weeks.
Your note (6 Oct)4 reached me last evening just before starting to Sarnia. When does
McKay5 begin loc_es.00415.jpg selling "N.B." I should be anxious to here how the book goes. If this book does not go I shall think (as my father
used to say) that "the devil is in it" for sure. Still occupied with
Inspector—Annual Report shoved aside—but he goes tomorrow, thank the
Lord. Then I get at A.R. and soon wind it up. Wm Gurd6 has seen
that man in Detroit—he is greatly taken with the meter. Wants to take it up
& manufacture but says it is no use thinking of manufacturing for the U.S. in
one factory however large
I have been half the afternoon trying to add moments to scribble this letter—people running in & out—&c &c
Goodly—more anon RM BuckeCorrespondent:
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).