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  Dear Walt (best loved friend)

The enforced infrequency of my gossippy letters turns often to my advantage, since it brings you out in a nice page letter to know why the garrulous voice from Belmont (the cicada) has intermitted its notes. (Just laid my pen down to see to a sick cat I am doctoring: how curious the habit we have of laying a pen down, & forgetting totally where we put it!)

Your Kottabos rec'd & letter. Why, yes, I confess I felt a good deal of sympathy for our cranky friend Johnson the planter His insinuations as to assumed peccadiloes of yrs were of no importance in my eyes but such things if spoken of to third parties sometimes do mischief. Though, supposing all the things he mentioned were so, (and doubtless some of them were in a measure) they wd not affect a rational man's temper or friendship a jot. But, unfortunately, our fellow-men are far from being rational.

 

I have written to Tennyson asking him (and stating that I of course wrote without the knowledge of any one else) if he wd like to say a few words of you for the appendix to the book. Also wrote to Enrico Nencioni (c/o Nuova Anotologia, Rome) asking him to send me a statement as to "Walt Whitman in Italy."

I had a long letter fr Charley Eldridge, wh. I incorporated partly in the Bibiliog. under head of "1860 edition." He says he finds a few vols. of the fraudulent 1860 ed. in Los Angeles. I cd. find none in Boston recently, although I see my own ed. for wh. I paid 3.00 to Clark here 8 yrs ago in one of the fraudulent ones

 

I am in despair as to getting any time for intellectual life or correspondence. I work at office 9 hours. I think I must solve the problem by having both wife & I get our chief meal at 6 o'c at resteraunts—she in Boston, & I in Cambridge.

Rhys's Chickering Hall lecture being worse than a failure (financially) some of his Back Bay friends have got him up a private lecture in grand style, & passed around the hat to the tune of $200. Chamberlin who writes the Listener for the Transcript had Rhys at his home for a month. Rhys drove him frantic, as he did us, & Chamberlin one day disappeared leaving R. with the three children. C's friends find him out; doctor says he is over-worked; send him to Savannah (that is the reason Listener is so brief lately, as you see); C's wife comes home (she was in Chicago) & R.   leaves, & goes to the house of Kate Gannett Wells. It is a dreadful pity that R. is so on the wrong track as to the ethics of labor,—poor fellow. He will have to face about squarely, & get out of this soon, or he is lost.

I have not much faith in the despatch of F.W. Wilson: we must let him drag, I suppose. I have sent him 20 names. He must have a hundred, at least, by this time. Not a written word fr. him since I sent him the 150 circulars. But he is evidently crawling on, tortoise-style.

My dear father-confessor, I feel a strong desire to be clasped closer   to yr breast, to know my friend in more intimate personal ways (for I feel that I am worthy of yr richest love & confidence). I am longing to have a few good old style talks on many subjects, & for that purpose am secretly laying by (little by little) a small sum for expenses of a week's visit.

In a week I shall be put into a room to read first proof for six or seven weeks. About the first week in June then, I expect to have a change again, when I shall be able to run down to see you. They are training me up for a permanent reader (corrector of the press).

To-day, having a bad cold, I am staying at home; hence, this letter to you

Give my love to Scovel & O'Connor

I discovered still another flattering reference to you by Nencioni recently in Antologia (in a noble article by him on Hugo's "Choses Vues" ("Things Seen").—Well, there, my eye lights on my memorandum of it. Keep it & get it translated by someone, or do it yourself. I have not time to copy out my translation.

affec. as always W.S. Kennedy Over  

To think that yr 70th birthday is approaching. I had not realized it. I offer my congratulations in advance.

I have the ms. of my "W.W." here, & shall ask Wilson to sign a duplicate contract (in wh. is to be embodied that item about my reading proofs) before I give him the MS.

Am reading again Landor's "Examination of Wm Shakspere." Rich!

Cotter Morison's "The Service of Man" also lies on my table, trying to get read. It is a remarkable book—good heroic medicine for conventional religionists. Puts the problem in a masterly-clear way. Wide historic grasp, plain speech, & good reasoning powers.

    I had a letter from Herbert J. Bathgate of England.