The sun is shining so finely out, & the spring weather (half warm, half cool) comes on to day, I tho't I w'd send you a line tho' I really have nothing to write ab't—The best probably is I am no worse—if no better effectually—dont seem to get any strength or grip yet—but "Keep my end up" much the same, (a phrase am'g the seine fishermen)—& that's something—not to fall behind hand.
Still on my proofs at 2d annex,2 well toward the end—all goes fairly—One of the boys3 has just bro't up to me a nice little cup of hot cocoa for lunch—nice—g't demand hereabout for doctors—three here yesterday same time in an area of 100 feet—
Remembrances to J W W[allace]4 & all the friends— Walt WhitmanCorrespondent:
Dr. John Johnston (1852–1927)
of Annan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, was a physician, photographer, and avid
cyclist. Johnston was trained in Edinburgh and served as a hospital surgeon in
West Bromwich for two years before moving to Bolton, England, in 1876. Johnston
worked as a general practitioner in Bolton and as an instructor of ambulance
classes for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railways. He served at Whalley Military
Hospital during World War I and became Medical Superintendent of Townley's
Hospital in 1917 (John Anson, "Bolton's Illustrious Doctor Johnston—a man
of many talents," Bolton News [March 28, 2021]; Paul
Salveson, Moorlands, Memories, and Reflections: A Centenary
Celebration of Allen Clarke's Moorlands and Memories [Lancashire
Loominary, 2020]). Johnston, along with the architect James W. Wallace, founded
the "Bolton College" of English admirers of the poet. Johnston and Wallace
corresponded with Whitman and with Horace Traubel and other members of the
Whitman circle in the United States, and they separately visited the poet and
published memoirs of their trips in John Johnston and James William Wallace, Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890–1891 by Two Lancashire
Friends (London: Allen and Unwin, 1917). For more information on
Johnston, see Larry D. Griffin, "Johnston, Dr. John (1852–1927)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).