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  My Dear Poet:

Your postal rec'd.​ I have completed (rough finish) my seven chapters on you. They are the most stunning eulogy & defence a poet ever rec'd​ I do believe—260 pp—Have done for you what Ruskin did for Turner. It is the most scholarly, fiery, and heavy-artillery piece of work I have yet done; took all my strength, I can tell you. It about exhausts the subject & me too, I have a bibliography also abt​ done. It is of astonishing proportions. Don't tell Bucke for fear he'll get jealous.

O'Connor, Stedman, Knortz & Whiting &c. are helping me on it.

I am going to add a partial     Concordance, or index to yr​ first lines & passages. (keep it mum) I want to add also a chapter on "The Friends of Whitman," with personal notes on you too. I am hoping to come down & see you in July shd​ like to have a peep at that wonderful fairy-land of yrs​ down on Timber Creek, & maybe get a sketch of it, for the book. Wilson & McCormick sent me Dowden's English Critics on WW. I have got in my cellar, Walt, about 50 bottles of elderberry cordial—fine, smacky, made by myself last fall out of purest spring water & lump sugar. Am going to send you ½ doz​ soon. But it ought not to be drank for 3 or 4 years. Mrs Davis will tell you how long it ought to be kept to be good. Cheer up, noble heart! You "ain't" going to get blue now? You are good for 20 years yet, sure.

My grand poet, my friend Yours as ever W.S. Kennedy

How's the pony?

      Paper rec'd​ also!! good!