Your letter was very welcome to me.2 Your hand-write looks
as clear & strong as ever. I hope it really denotes that you are much better.
The other night I read a long time in your "Specimen Days"3 & got myself into a
very melancholy state of mind thinking of the old times, of all that Washington life
yal.00291.002_large.jpg of
O'Connor4 & of that which never can come back. My life
now seems very pale & poor compared with those days. There are but two things
now from which I derive any satisfaction, Julian5 &
that bit of land up there on the river bank where I indulge my inherited love for
the soil. I have no comrades here. I probably never shall find any more. Julian is
developing into a very happy, intelligent boy, full of enthusiasms, full of
curiosity, & is about my only companion. He goes to school
yal.00291.003_large.jpg here & carries himself
well.
I am greatly distressed at what you tell me about O'Connor, and one must stand by powerless to render any aid! I hope I can see my way to go to W6 again to see him.
I shall not stay here in P. much longer. I am getting enough of boarding house life.
I shall go back home by March, but Mrs B7 & Julian will stay
here. I had a letter from Horace8 this morning. The book may be
sent to me at West Park, & let me thank you in advance for it. Tell Horace the
essays I am thinking of putting in a vol. yal.00291.004_large.jpg are old ones that have appeared in
the magazines from time to time. What of Gilchrist9? When you
write again tell me what you know of his doings. Bright days here & sharp, with
ice boating in the river.
Correspondent:
The naturalist John Burroughs
(1837–1921) met Whitman on the streets of Washington, D.C., in 1864. After
returning to Brooklyn in 1864, Whitman commenced what was to become a decades-long
correspondence with Burroughs. Burroughs was magnetically drawn to Whitman.
However, the correspondence between the two men is, as Burroughs acknowledged,
curiously "matter-of-fact." Burroughs would write several books involving or
devoted to Whitman's work: Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and
Person (1867), Birds and Poets (1877), Whitman, A Study (1896), and Accepting
the Universe (1924). For more on Whitman's relationship with Burroughs,
see Carmine Sarracino, "Burroughs, John [1837–1921] and Ursula [1836–1917]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).