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  My Dear Mr. Whitman:

The sea ought to be grateful to you; for its shifting mounds & boundless heave have been dumb from Eternity until you voiced them in deep human music. Is there such a thing as a makrophone, to render in vocal facsimile & miniature the thunders & voices of great sounds? It seems to me you do this in yr sea-chants. When something new of yrs comes I am as Herder when he rec'd a new book of Richter; I am unfitted for anything else—for some hours. I am glad you sound a sea-trumpet at the barbican of yr book, for I think you greatest in yr sea-interpretations.

   

I noticed last yr at Marshfield, as we drove along that marvellous beach with the green waves curling over on the polished mirror of the sand, how deftly the wind took each wave and tossed back from it a helmet-crest of white spray. I feel terribly presumptuous in making a suggestion to you, for there is not a word, a collection of words in yr work that is not deeply studied & profoundly implicated in the general tissue of the whole,—but what wd​ you say to omitting the fourth line—white-maned racers? The usage I know is irresistibly suggested to one looking at the waves; but then it has been ridden to death by so many poetasters that—well, it is no blemish of course in yr magnificent strain of elemental music, But you might consider my suggestion, if you think best.

 

P.S.

We have a Liberal Union Club here & we dine at Young's once a month. Prof Sumner of Yale & other "eminent" men address the club & we have long reports in the Bost.​ Sunday Herald. Geo.​ W. Curtis is one of the Vice Presidents. Maybe we can get you to come on & give us a talk on Hegel or religion: wd you? Say next May, close of May.

Howells—the women's pet—doesn't live here in Belmont any longer, & I am not sorry. Why is it that when you think of Howells you always think of women's underclothing, soft limbs & languid bosoms & millinery in general? Bah!