Of late I have two or three times occupied spells of hours or two hours by running over with best & alertest sense & mellowed & ripened by five years your 1883 book (biographical & critical) about me & L of G—& my very deliberate & serious mind to you is that you let it stand just as it is—& if you have any thing farther to write or print book shape, you do so in an additional or further annex (of say 100 pages to its present 236 ones)—leaving the present 1883 vol. intact as it is, any verbal errors excepted—& the further pages as (mainly) reference to and furthermore &c. of the original vol.—the text, O'C[onnor]'s letters, the appendix—every page of the 236 left as now—This is my spinal and deliberate request—the conviction the main thing—the details & reasons not put down.
Sept: 26 noon
Dr Osler has call'd—evidently all right—I have a good deal of pain (often sort of spasmodic, not markedly violent) in the chest & "pit of the stomach" for the last three days. O says it is nothing serious or important—& prescribes a mustard plaster—lately we have a sort of cold wave & I shouldn't wonder if that was behind it—(I have the mustard plaster on now)—It is bright & sunny—rather cool—I have rec'd a long letter from Sidney Morse from Chicago—no special news—Mr Summers, M P from England, has just call'd & we've had a talk—a nice fellow (how much more & more the resemblance between the cultivated Englisher and Americaner)—I have been reading Miss Pardoe's "Louis XIIII"—I wonder if as a sort of foil to the Carlyle reminiscences (T[homas]'s and J[ane]'s)—the same sort of business in another sphere & land—Your letters come & are always welcome—As I close I am sitting in my big chair in my room 1½ p m quiet & measurably comfortable—
Walt Whitman