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  Dear Walt Whitman

Many thanks to you for your kind letter dated Sept 13th 1890 and for the two letters from Dr Bucke to you which I will return by next mail.

I am glad to hear such a good account of your health and I hope it may continue to improve

Thanks too for the domestic details and glimpses into your daily life which you favour me with, all of which possess a genuine and deep interest for me and which serve to vivify and deepen the ever-present and  ineradicable image & memory of yourself and your surrounding and to recall the numerous & unexampled kindnesses you have shewed me

Dr Bucke's letters are extremely interesting but two paragraphs are of especial interest to us here The first is that "Horace" (? H. L. Traubel) is preparing a new book about you—"W W to date." Will you please kindly order two copies for me & I will forward the cash when I know the price?

The second is that he (Dr B.) will probably be in England before so long & will call & see "Johnston Wallace & Co! (It shd be W. J. & Co!) This is news indeed! There is none of your friends whom I would like more to see than he &  there is no place where he would receive a warmer welcome than in Bolton among "the boys." We are none of us wealthy but such as we have would be at his disposal during his stay among us. We have had many "Whitman evenings" but a "Whitman Evening" with Dr. Bucke in the rostrum would be the climax of all & a life long remembrance. The thought of it is almost enough to take one's breath away—Let us hope it may not prove "too good to be true"!

Our birthday "Surprise party" came off very successfully on the 25th and it proved to be a veritable surprise to our victim  The Revd F. R. C. Hutton M.A. who had not the slightest suspicion of our intentions although his own wife was in the plot and had prepared a grand supper "on the sly." Our arrival in a body surprised him, the giving of a reading-machine inscribed—

"To the Revd F. R. C. Hutton M. A.—'Something for a token' from the boys of the College"

astonished him; but the presentation of the pocket book copy of L. of G. with an inscription—

"To the Revd F. R. C. Hutton MA with all good wishes from the boys of the College and from Walt Whitman"

fairly overwhelmed him.

The inscription is a most artistic piece of work and the bordering is a beautifully executed design in leaves of grass, wild flowers & "straw coloured & other psyches" the whole being the work of W. M. Law one of "the boys" & a clever draughtsman