I have yours 28 Feb. and 1 March enclosing John Burroughs1
of 27 Feb.2 and the funny little wood cut. So you have
become immortal in a cigar advertisement!!3 Well done! I always thought you would
come to something if you stuck to your business long enough! Burroughs' letter is
deeply interesting—but what ails the fellow that he is so damned pathetic? He
is (I judge) fairly well fixed (as things go)—good reputation, lovely home,
enough to eat &c. &c. then why is he so infernally down in the mouth all the
time? I don't see anything to whine about in getting old—think (on the whole)
it is rather a good joke—my strongest feeling
loc_es.00728.jpg
about it is: what is to come next? That we are going to (or towards) the bad all the
time does not occur to me as likely at all and if not what is there to be blue
about? I have just received and answered the enclosed long letter from Mrs O'Connor4
which I am sure you would like to read—you need not return it. I have some
notion that I may take a week's run about middle of April to Philadelphia, Baltimore
and Washington. I shall look out for the May Century with considerable interest.5 We
are pegging away at the meter6 trying to get it on its feet and I look to succeed all
in good time but it will take weeks perhaps months yet
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).