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  My Dear Master

I have received and heartily thank you for the papers you have sent and the welcome copy of "Good bye! My Fancy." I have not wanted to bother you during your severe illness, hence my silence. But we have followed with interest any information about you especially the facsimile letter which Dr. Johnston of Bolton was kind enough to send me and the article in a late "Review of Reviews" with a sketch of your house and a little chit chat on your political opinions (I have much the same opinions myself of late years, but that is not surprising for they are simple deductions from the spiritual principle of the spirit of "Leaves of Grass.") I gave a lecture on "Walt Whitman, the Poet of Democracy" to an audience of 3 or 400 people at a Sunday night meeting of the Australasian Secular Association and was very well received. The subject was evidently unfamliar but its reception gave me great hopes that it will not be so long in that quarter anyway. I made the acquaintance of another Whitman enthusiast at the meeting, Mr John Sutherland M.A., and I can assure you we have had some glorious evenings together since talking of you and with you. He tells me that he has only read L. of G. once, but wants to read it no more. He doesn't remember   the words particularly, but the new mental attitude to things he believes he has thoroughly absorbed, and the world is different and life different to him since. "Tom Touchstone" sent another disciple, Mr Carr, to me and he is quite devoted. He was greatly pleased at a portrait I was able to give him. Mr Sutherland & Jim Hartigan want a copy of "Good bye my Fancy." Could you send price, please. Fred Woods would like one of those portraits where you appear with (as it were) storm tossed beard, your hat on, and a hearty, sea-captain-like look on you. And, if it would not be too much trouble, with your name on it. He's a grand fellow Fred, and tossed as he was on seas of doubt & deserts of the barrenest materialism, you have become a virtual religion to him as you have to more than him. Mr Sutherland has translated Freiligrath's article on you (from Dr. Bucke's book). It is wonderful what misunderstandings are about concerning your poems of sex.

I do not fear, as you seem to do, that we shall separate from Britain. I advocated it once, nay started a society to bring it about, which I am glad to say soon died. For this change as for many others, I must thank you. I like to hear your ideas on Australians and would say much myself but that I don't want to bother you too much. We want a Walt Whitman here: ours is a democracy too with ever more hopeful prospects than yours but with great dangers ahead (especially social) and here too the song of material interests drowns the other pieces in the chorus.

We love you all, and greet you with sympathy in your illnesses and with growing hopes for your speedy recognition by all men as being as much their Walt as you are ours.

B. O'Dowd Bernard O'Dowd