Your welcome card of 3d2 came to hand yesterday afternoon. You seem to be holding your own but no more. As spring opens, soon now, I look for you to pick up a little. I ought to have sent you word each day while I was sick but having told you that I should be all right in a couple of days I took it for granted you would accept that as positive and be quite easy. I am well again, go my round, &c & as usual—feel first rate too—good appetite, sleep well, &c. Yes, I flatter myself I have an A.I. Constitution and am about as little likely to break down as any one of your numerous acquaintanaces—be this as it may I must try and live for awhile yet for I have quite3 a little, I should like to do before I go
Love to you always R M Bucke loc_zs.00262.jpg see notes 2/9/91 loc_zs.00263.jpgCorrespondent:
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).