Enter into the thoughts of a machine readable transcription Walt Whitman Kenneth M. Price Ed Folsom Transcription and encoding Brandon James O'Neil Nicole Gray Brett Barney Ashlyn Stewart Kevin McMullen University of Iowa University of Nebraska-Lincoln The National Endowment for the Humanities The United States Department of Education 2018 The Walt Whitman Archive
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities 319 Love Library University of Nebraska-Lincoln P.O. Box 884100 Lincoln, NE 68588-4100

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 nyp.00112 This manuscript was likely written between 1850 and 1855, when Whitman was preparing materials for the first edition of Leaves of Grass. The idea of "[e]nter[ing] into the thoughts of the different theological faiths" described in this manuscript probably connects to the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." Whitman also used the term "koboo" in that poem. Gary Schmidgall glosses the term "koboo" as referring to "a native of Sumatra," and Andrew Lawson has noted that Whitman apparently picked up the reference from a book by Walter M. Gibson, an American adventurer (Walt Whitman, Selected Poems, 1855–1892, ed. Gary Schmidgall [New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1999], 488; Walt Whitman and the Class Struggle [Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006], 91). The manuscript is pasted down, so an image of the reverse is not available.

This manuscript may relate to the first poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, ultimately titled "Song of Myself." The idea of "[e]nter[ing] into the thoughts of the different theological faiths" described in this manuscript may connect to the stanza of the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself" that begins "My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths..." including in particular the line "Making a fetish of the first rock or stump . . . . powowing with sticks in the circle of obis" (1855, p. 48). Whitman also used the term "koboo" in the 1855 version of that poem: "Nor the numberless slaughtered and wrecked . . . . nor the brutish koboo, called the ordure of humanity" (1855, p. 49).

 Whitman, Walt Enter into the thoughts of the different theological faiths Between 1850 and 1855 b19877231 The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library Transcribed from a digital image of the original manuscript. updated relations encoding regularized name for infrastructure edited work relations and editorial note checked; edited edited title checked; corrected transcribed; encoded Enter into the thoughts of the different theological faiths—effuse all that the believing Egyptian would—all that the Greek—all that the Hindoo, worshipping Brahman—the Koboo, adoring a his fetish stone or log—the Prespbyterian—the Catholic with his crucifix and saints—the Turk with thee Koran in