8:30 P.M. Late getting to W.'s and did not stay more than 15 minutes. Had seen Bonsall in morning, and he promised to print the long piece I had prepared. Now I told W. about it. He smiled, "Will Harry do it? But he knows—he knows." On the bed laid a package of letters, tied up with a string. "Take these," he said. "They may interest you some, and if they do not you know yourself what to do with them. The letters from the fellows—the Bolton chaps—the last week—are there." Complained of "a very bad day"—saying further—"Murray was over, prospecting. I don't know whether they did or did not go out. But I could not have gone with them, whether or no." Would we take our own drive tomorrow? He looked doubtful. "I have a feeling that we ought to skip tomorrow. I am disposed more and more to keep to my room—not to go out. Which I see—count—to be a bad sign." Thought "there ought to be more letters from Bucke in a day or two." O. B. Frothingham tells in his "Recollections" that his father had Walt Whitman in his library, and O.B.F. himself, trying to describe Emerson's taste for fresh and natural men, "heroic his enthusiasm for, on behalf of, individuals like Walt Whitman, John Brown, Henry Thoreau." W. insisting, "That sounds like O.B."