Default Metadata, or override by section

  Dear Walt Whitman,

Yesterday was indeed a day, for almost every post brought me despatches in your familiar hand which it always gives me a thrill to see. First came the two postcards, then the copy of Specimen Days & the Camden paper, last the letter which I found waiting on returning at midnight from a journalistic excursion to Fleet Street—where I completed an account of a great fire which has been raging just opposite here in a timber wharf for two days & nights,—a most lurid spectacle, with the old Thames as reflector!

I must not decide off-hand about the Specimen Days,—that is, whether to make two vols. as you suggest, or to try & get the whole into one. In the latter case, the book would be rather crowded. We put much less into most of the 'Camelots,' than there is in King Arthur, & give them much larger print, & I want to have you shewn as brightly & impressively as possible in point of typography, &c. On the other hand the publishers might not be willing to issue the 2nd vol., supposing we divide, very soon. I will consult with Gordon to-day, & you shall hear at once when the matter is settled.

I do hope that by this you have decided to send off the extra words of introduction! They would give the book an added "send" into the midst of our readers & do a deal of good so. But I know how things are with you, & do not want to give you more trouble than can be helped. For the two addtional photos, many, may thanks! I will see what Gordon says about putting the portrait in at p. 122. In such a cheap series we have to be careful about first cost & this hampers us very much.—

No! I would not think of putting the copy of Specimen Days with your corrections into the printer's hands and will get copies from Wilson of Glasow, carefully following all your deletions & so on. It is one of the greatest prizes I possess, & someday a sense of its value will inspire me, I'm afraid, to beg you to send me a copy of Leaves of Grass too with your name in it, (& mine, as proof of ownership) & some further inscription as well. You see what it is to give the inch; now I am coolly asking the ell. Most of all though, I feel very powerfully impelled to come over to the States this year, for myself. Dr. Bucke pressed me to do so again last week, & things have been working in that direction for some time now. W. S. Kennedy has asked me to stay with him too, & there are other friends. If I came, I should have to send letters to the papers here, & perhaps lecture too, to pay my way; for you know the usual straits of a young scribe! I come to my last halfpenny indeed almost every week, & am getting quite used to the condition at last. It educates one's faculties & sympathies tremendously.

I expect Gordon will send off the ten guineas at once. I ask him to do so to-day. They shall be sent by P. O. order as you direct to 328 Mickle St.