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  Walt Whitman—

Received your card of Dec 12 at proper time I see a remarkably favorable notice of your friend Conway by a female correspondent of a Nashville paper. Why not tell me of your pleasure from his visit &c &c? I have been thinking a long time about sending you some scraps of printed matter—among them some written by a Dr (M.D.) F.O. Ticknor of (Columbus) Georgia. He was a poetical or at least fanciful writer in both verse and prose form fully as much so in prose as in verse. He was a brisk or piquant and pleasing scribbler yet an extremist and decidedly a failure as a philosopher. He died a year or so ago. I have not read much of what he wrote after the beginning of the war. (After getting from you John Burroughs' picture, I sent him in latter part of June '75 a short note and some scraps of Ticknor's fanciful writing about fruit-culture—directed to Esopus New York, his letter to you being thus Esopus West Park NY found ano West Park in P.O. Directory

I got no notice of its receipt by him, which was quite a disappointment, as I would have been glad for him to have Ticknor's pieces.

I have wanted you to see a notice in the N.Y. Weekly Sun of Dec 8 last of Joaquin Millers​ Miller's​ last volume—I dont​ don't​ doubt it was just—from reading his first volume and scraps occasionally, I call him ☛ a Poet "by the skin of his teeth"—have done so for near two years—he writes some pretty passages.

Have you ever read Weems' Life of Washington?—written for children but really best suited for "pert" men—I have bragged on it for twenty years.

  (Uncle Walt! oo​ you​ mus'​ must​ talk—oo​ you​ mus'​ must​ not be tonguetied)

You have doubtless read so much about everything that I would like an opportunity to ask you a question or more on Intellectual or Moral Philosophy. Do all writers who deny Free Will and yet wish to find room for blame, make the same ridiculous blunder that is made by Abercrombie in his Int. Phil. for Schools? he says we may blame a man to-day (tho'​ not free) because in time past (when feeling himself free ☛ tho'​ not so ☚) he did wrong repeatedly and brought himself to be of such a character that right motives can't have their proper effect. Absurd, Absurd, &c &c "All is truth without exception".

About ten months ago a Presiding Elder of the Methodist church, after "talking around the edges" (as I called it) of the great question (Religion), and being much surprised and a little frightened (doubtless) by the quiet strength and yet charitable tenderness of the philosopher, admitted the latter was perfectly sane, and "yet there must be a screw loose somewhere. Walt! do you think there is "a screw loose somewhere" in all advocates of Orthodoxy? I know there is with many, and it is thus—their conceit enables them to hope they will escape "the wrath to come" and with that weak moral sense that will "always praise the bridge that passes me over safely," they are satisfied. If you encourage me to write, and say you will sometimes write to me I will buy me some pens—one of my curious ways I dont​ don't​ write much to anybody but you ("What! bestow all thy tediousness on me?")

JNJ