Your card of 2d to hand. I am quite distressed, unhappy, about that villainous cold of yours. A real good sweat by means of an alcohol bath or otherwise, if you could manage it, would be the thing for you. Send for your Camden Dr and see if it cannot be arranged. A lovely spring day here—snow nearly all gone now. [—] Willy Gurd2 is in N.Y. at present, will go to Danbury3 about Saturday. The Inspector is to be here this evening at 8.10—every thing is lively with us—wish things were more lively with you and I am determined I will make them a little more lively for you whenever this meter business comes to a prosperous issue as I think it must before many months—I am thinking of you all the time "and don't you forget it."
Love to you R M BuckeCorrespondent:
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).