Y'r card rec'd ab't piece—don't know of Williams having any mark'd Welsh blood—never heard ab't that—one of the stock names on the womens' (Williams')3 side was Kossabone (doubtless Causabone) (Jenny Kossabone my g't grandmother mother's side)4—Yes, keep it awhile, no hurry at all—If you feel to do so, send MS to me to see if points right—but do as you have a mind to—no hurry ab't piece—
W WCorrespondent:
William Sloane Kennedy
(1850–1929) was on the staff of the Philadelphia American and the Boston Transcript; he also
published biographies of Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier (Dictionary of American Biography [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933], 336–337). Apparently Kennedy called on
the poet for the first time on November 21, 1880 (William Sloane Kennedy, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman [London: Alexander
Gardener, 1896], 1). Though Kennedy was to become a fierce defender of Whitman,
in his first published article he admitted reservations about the "coarse
indecencies of language" and protested that Whitman's ideal of democracy was
"too coarse and crude"; see The Californian, 3 (February
1881), 149–158. For more about Kennedy, see Katherine Reagan, "Kennedy, William Sloane (1850–1929)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).