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They are all well in England I think—my mother is paying a short Temperance visit to N.Y.

Camden Feb: 22 Evening My dear friend I still keep around & have been over to Philadelphia this afternoon

. & C.W. from you before a very great while—I shall look upon them as the crown and summit of all my

We are all well, this is Clare's birthday (my oldest girl) she is 18 today.

I am pretty well through with my days work (it is 4 P.M.) and after making this short report to you shall

near noon Superb sunny day—poorly to-day & yesterday—brain & belly lesions—eat little—am sitting in my

I send my love to you RM Bucke See notes Aug. 27, 1888.

noon April 18 '88 All goes as well & monotonously as usual (No news is good news)—I got up late, ate my

Horace and Mr Blake, Unitarian minister f'm Chicago, here this mn'g—pleasant visit—a spell of my currying

I send my love to Jeff & George & Mat & all. Walt.

Dear Poet: The above lines I dedicate to you—my guide.

If you see Miss H[oward] please tell her I am sorry she did not call at my company the evening she was

that I will get there in the evening and I have no doubt when I call on Masons they will insist on my

factories of the Spragues, & so to Olneysville &c &c—as interesting a ride & exploration as I ever had in my

come home, (if nothing happens more than at present known) and stay two months, & then return here to my

I find I have it in my catalogue.

days)—deadly lassitude & weakness continued—appetite just receptive—a rare egg on Graham toast for my

L comes every three or four days—McK is off again drumming—I drink buttermilk—a letter from my Australian

I have been looking through the G[ood] G[ray] P[oet] as Dr B sent it in his copy, & it comes to my soul

Camden June 13 '83 Evn'g Evening My dear friend The corrections you specified have been or will be made

circulates quietly quite extensively, here, the Pacific region & in Australia, & this art: will do my

All most welcome—My arm gets on well, am beginning to sleep pretty well again without any sedative Am

letter to Whitman's disciple and biographer Horace Traubel: "I had a fall last evening and dislocated my

I am in the middle of my lectures to students, have just come from the lecture room where I spoke two

in the two lists of sheets on hand—yours had it that Sheet B, 2d consisted of only 225 sheets—while my

names, sometimes Southerners, sometimes Western or other writers of only one or two pieces,) deserve in my

arrive, or pass'd on farther than those of the earth, I henceforth no more ignore them, than I ignore my

sake, Of departing—of the growth of a mightier race than any yet, Of myself, soon, perhaps, closing up my

[My ambition is] to give something to our literature which will be our own; with neither foreign spirit

I believe gets to the office—I write a little—short bits, to order mostly—spend the time seated in my

Havn't Haven't heard from you in a long time—My splurge on the Death of Lincoln is all ready to be splurged—I

Should our second attempt not be satisfactory, I will cheerfully avail my self of your offer. Mr.

Expressed great pleasure over my hearing from Morse to-daytoday.

pleased with such comparisons: I have a face: it seems to make up fairly well in a picture: that is all: my

made up for Oldach, he said, looking at me: "You know I am very arbitrary: always determined to have my

But as my opinion is not worth anything, being a boy, I should not have intruded it upon you.

—They retard my book . . ."

As late as 1888 he said of phrenology to Horace Traubel: "I guess most of my friends distrust it—but

In "Song of Myself" the poet asserts: "Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me, / My

Dooryard Bloom'd," as one of his supreme achievements in this mode.Late in life Whitman commented, "My

Similarly, "the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in the sunlit water" (section

beginning of the poem Whitman calls the sights and sounds around him "glories strung like beads on my

My Soul and I: The Inner Life of Walt Whitman. Boston: Beacon, 1985. Coffman, Stanley K., Jr.

"It should be printed before my birthday, on the 31st.

why Walsh did not print it: I have always considered him friendly to me: yes, friendly: he surely is my

"From books I have read about him—from my talks with him, with his friends—I do not consider that Emerson

"My sort, sort of!" To which W. replied: "Hardly—your sort of preacher is no preacher at all.

My first meeting with Walt Whitman occurred when I was a boy and had occasion to ask for a certain residence

I did not know who or what he was, but on his answering my question I was so struck with the quality

My first visit to him occurred some years later, in the little house on Mickle Street which has been

matter of punctuation, and it was a source of annoyance to find the title of his latest book, "Good Bye My

first several lines of that poem (not including the line in question) were revised and published as My

"One doubt nauseous undulating like a snake, crawl'd on the ground before me, Continually preceding my

and near, (rousing, even in dreams, a devilish exultation, and all the old mad joy, in the depths of my

The Winding-Up" (a revision of "The End of All"), "We Shall All Rest at Last," "Fame's Vanity," and "My

A Parody," "Death of the Nature-Lover" (revision of "My Departure"), "The Play-Ground," "Ode," "The House

milieu.For thirty-four lines thereafter the persona becomes the ambulatory wound-dresser, moving among "my

bandages, water, and sponge" (section 2), he attends each soldier "with impassive hand, (yet deep in my

other irons in the fire—leaves all that part of the work to Jo—and it has always been Jennie who was my

W. remarked: "I am in no hurry to read it—in no hurry for my copy—I can very easily wait.

bless my heart! I never thought of it at all, the whole day through.

That's a good sample of my memory these days.

My dear Whitman,I have your kind favor of the 11th with the enclosed poem—or series of poems, rather.

It did my eyes good to look away from him towards Tom—Tom, who is a normal man, gruff, honest, direct

"I shall make my best show to read them." Asked me about temperature—news, etc.

greeted each other lovingly and he said at once, "I am here still, dear, you see—and trying to eat my

My purse and my heart are yours!" or to that effect.

If he gives me an apple for my mother, a cake for my sister, or anything for myself, he will perhaps

My own feeling was, that in such a place, on such a platform, where the usual man comes, grammatical,

looking, singing, reciting, reading, ruminating—and one fellow there—a splendid sapling—I would take in my

I have never told him, he knows that creatures of his kind are distasteful, ugly to me—that I have my

"It needs to have some kinks and corners in before it fits my head"—taking it off, punching it, then

I give this as my counsel, only—for you to chew on and do with what you think best.

It would be inconsistent with me, with my work, to plant guns, to threaten, to exact, to believe, even

I suppose I have all the reports here, if I could put my hands on them, but to put my hands on them: