
I am writing to you reverently and humbly and yet with a feeling that I may do so friendlily, for, for a long time, you have been a friend to me through your poems, and I am very very grateful to you for what you have written so nobly and fearlessly, and for the wider thoughts, and greater aims, that have come to me in reading and in learning what you write. Will you pardon me for saying this, I have only been in your country for some few days, when I left England I was glad to think that perhaps I might see you some day, perhaps speak to you—as it is I venture to write to you and to ask you one great favour, that if you will do me will make me forever grateful and honoured.
Dear Walt Whitman, will you write your name in
"The Leaves of Grass" I am sending by this post, I have had the book for
a long time, to have your name in it will make it priceless
and doubly dear to me, and it will seem to me while I treasure
it as a hand-clasp from someone that I love and reverence and honour.
Goodbye, dear Walt Whitman, I send you, if I may, all good wishes for your welfare; may all the happiness be with you that you would have.
Affectionately and faithfully I am yours Josephine Webling
