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The money value of real

About This Item

  • Title: The money value of real
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: rut.00024
  • Source: Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This prose note has no known connection to Whitman's published work. The material on the back of the leaf, which was included in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, suggests that the manuscript was likely written around 1855. 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," and "The only way in which."
  • Related Item(s):
    • On the back of this note is a manuscript fragment with several lines of prose that were included, with slightly-revised wording, as lines of poetry in the initial poem of the 1855 Leaves of Grass, ultimately titled "Song of Myself." See rut.00025.
    • See wwa.00074.
  • Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in unknown hand: "7"
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The money value of real." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: rut.00024.xml (TEI)

Key

Textual Feature Appearance
Overwritten brown with strikethrough
Added inline purple with double underline
Uncertain gray with wavy underline
Supplied from another source turquoise with brackets
Metamark green with triple underline
Long deletion gray background with top and bottom border
  [begin leaf 1 recto] 7

The money value of real and personal property estate in New York city is somewhere between five hundred millions and ana thousand millions of dollars.—Now what is all this in itself?—Though it seems to be the [no handwritten text supplied here] of all men and all women to,—though for its security the laws are made and the police drilled—though [no handwritten text supplied here] —yet in its positive intrinsic [no handwritten text supplied here] it is all nothing of account.—^The whole of It is not of so much account as a pitcher of water, or a dozen a basket of fresh eggs,—I will The only way we attach it to aour feelings is by by attaching it identifying it with ^the human spirit,—through love, through pride, through our craving for beauty and happiness.

  [begin leaf 1 verso]
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