Content:
Based on the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to the 1850s (
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
[New York: New York University Press, 1984], 4:1594). Grier speculates that Richard Maurice Bucke, one of Whitman's literary executors, may have received this manuscript pinned together with several others on the same theme (4:1603). The manuscript is pasted down, so an image of the verso is unavailable.