The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: Caution
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1855 and 1860
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00154
Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: Edward Grier and Richard Maurice Bucke date this manuscript to the 1850s (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, ed. Edward F. Grier [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 4:1588; Notes and Fragments, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke [London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., printers, 1899], 67–8). Because the fragmentary draft material on the back of the leaf relates to an 1855 review, this manuscript was almost certainly written in or after 1855.
Related item: The prose fragment on the back of this leaf relates to an 1855 review essay written by Whitman. See duk.00945.
Contributors to digital file: Nicole Gray
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Caution
☞ I to-day think it would be best not at all to bother with arguments against the foreign models, or to help American models—but just go on supplying American models
Not to blaat constantly for Native American models, literature, &c, and ^cry bluster out "nothing foreign".—The best way to promulge Native American models and literature, is to supply ^such forcible and spuperb specimens of the same sathat they will, by their own volition, move to the head of all, and put foreign models in the second class.—
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