About this Item

Title: The only way in which

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: Between 1845 and 1860

Whitman Archive ID: rut.00023

Source: Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Transcribed from digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.

Editorial note: Edward Grier suggests that this manuscript was probably written prior to 1860, noting some similarities in language and sentiment between it and the initial line of No. 4 of the "Thoughts" cluster published first in the 1860–1861 edition of Leaves of Grass (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:118). The erased final line of the manuscript is also similar to language that appears in the preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass. The manuscript is held at Rutgers University Library along with several similar manuscripts that are numbered sequentially and probably date from around or before 1855: see "American literature must become distinct," "dithyrambic trochee," "The money value of real," and "ground where you may rest."