
LAFAYETTE SQUARE. Washington March 12. Dear Walt Whitman;
I have received your books and MS. and send, with my hearty thanks, a New York check for $30. It is a little more than your modest charge. You will pardon the liberty; I am not giving you anything like what the writing is worth to me, but trying to give a just compensation for the trouble of copying, simply.
My boy, ten years old, said to me this morning, "Have you got a book with a poem in it called
'O Captain! My Captain!' I want to learn it to speak in school." I stared at him,
bearing you in mind at the moment, as if he were a mind-reader— and asked him
where he had heard of that poem. He said a boy had repeated it last year somewhere.
I made him happy by showing him the MS. and promising him it should be his if
he deserved it, after I am gone.
With love and good wishes and hopes that the spring may bring healing on its wings to you
I am faithfully yours John Hay

