Among other precious things from Camden which greeted me this morning is the package of pictures of your dear self. Nellie1 & I have already feasted our eyes & hearts on them, & they will cheer us with their bright ministry through the many days of the homeward voyage. We thank you with all our hearts for the pictures; but we want to see the living original whom we respect & love so much.
And now our summer
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"loaf" is over, & glad I am of it, for loafing does not agree either with my health or morals.
Day after tomorrow we sail in the "Rhynland"2 & hope to reach New York on the first days of October. Accept my dear Mr Whitman the assurances of our sincerest affection.
Cordially Yours JL CorningCorrespondent:
James Leonard Corning
(1828–1903) was educated in New York and ordained as a Congregational
minister. He served as a pastor in Connecticut and Wisconsin, and, in 1888, he
became the pastor of Unity Church in Camden, New Jersey. He was also a frequent
visitor at Whitman's Camden home in the poet's final years (Whitman's
Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman,
1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). For more on Corning,
see his entry in The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictorary
of Notable Americans, ed. Rossiter Johnson (Boston, Massachusetts: The
Biographical Society, 1904), Volume 2.