10:05 A.M. W. eating his breakfast—looked well. Returned me Open Court, "It is not worth noticing, Horace. My advice about that fellow would be, to let him alone—let him severely alone. He amounts to nothing—is not honest, even—rejects an explanation he is bound to accept." And again, "My charge would be—drop him—he is not worth a word." I would mail paper to Bucke—New York—as he wished to see it and might thus do so before departure. Then would send west for more. W. said, "I shall write Doctor—send my letter over by Warrie (Warrie will undoubtedly go—undoubtedly). If you write Doctor, address him in care of the Purser steamship Britannic. I don't know that it's at all indispensable, but it's not inadvisable. I usually make my address as full as I know. Every now and then a green hand comes in—and then lord knows what will result." Kept on eating, "I feel for a hearty breakfast this morning—it is a good sign." Spoke of the beauty of the day. "What did you do yesterday?" And I told him of our walk yesterday along Carsham Creek to Devil's Pool—Reeder, Longaker, Gilbert, Anne, along. He asked, "Did Anne walk it? Six or seven miles? Good girl! It is a great thing to hear of the girls walking. She must be quite a walker." And further, "How well I know what such walks mean! What they lead to." I happened to say of "Leaves of Grass," "How well I know what that leads to. Its value is not in what it exhibits but in what it stirs us to exhibit—not in what it brings but what it leads us to find for ourselves." And he exclaimed, "Good! Good! I hope it is! That is what we have always had before us—that is the sort out of which all the rest comes—a few indicative splashes—a little field—trail—then silence."
W. gives me Bucke's letter of 3rd., and an old (fine) letter from Johnston, dated about April 14th, and a memorandum letter from Johnston. "You seem to have a healthy relish for them."