The doctor was here this afternoon & speaks encouragingly but I still keep in my sick room—My books are thro' the electrotyper & printer & are now in the binder2—Soon as ready I shall send you—
Walt WhitmanCorrespondent:
William Douglas O'Connor
(1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet
The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication, published in 1866.
For more on Whitman's relationship with O'Connor, see Deshae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas (1832–1889)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).