8 P. M. W. sitting reading a letter he had just received from Bucke. Stopped reading: took it up by and by again

     Corning in to-day. Upstairs. Stayed only long enough for a greeting. W. reading the Annex copy of L. and G. to-day: found Dave used old sheets for the other folds: W. was a little disappointed. "I hoped he would at once use the plates as corrected." I asked W.: "Is he mean?" W.: "I should not say that: no: he 's canny." "You don't call being canny being mean?" He was amused. "Well, I don't know. They used to say up our way when I was a boy that a Scotchman can save two cents out of every one cent and still be generous!" Gave me a copy of the Woman's Gazette and Weekly News (Manchester): "Take it away: let Aggie read it. It came from Mrs. Costelloe yes-

     I found W. had sent the books to Kennedy: "You will be surprised: I have a surprise for you: I made up five of the books to-day: sent them off to Boston—expressed them: one for Garland, one for Baxter, one for Frank Sanborn, one for Mrs. Fairchild—and one for Kennedy himself. Kennedy sent me a little note: said—send the package 'to be called for' main office Adams Express Company Boston. He will slip in to-morrow afternoon late: if they are not there then Monday morning. I hurried them off this evening—wanted him to get them for Christmas. When they report I 'll let you know: I suppose they 'll not be anything before Wednesday." His anti-tariff feeling crops out on all occasions. He had been reading the actors'

West Park, N. Y., May 1, 1882.

Dear Walt:

     With your letter came one from O'Connor bursting with wrath; I think I will enclose it to you. No doubt he will be a host there in W. and will reach that miserable Dist. Atty yet. 'T is a pity Osgood has not got some pluck and so make a fight. No doubt we could beat them to tatters and make a big strike for the book. Write and ask him if he will fight if he is well backed up. It is the last thing I ever dreamed of. If this is the wish of Boston then I pary for her purification by a fire ten times bigger than the fire of a few years ago.

     I enclose my check for the amount you ask for, $100. [This was money in my possession belonging to Walt. J. B. 1912.]

     What a blank there in New England! To me Emerson filled nearly the whole horizon in that direction. But I suppose it is better so, though the very sunlight seemed darkened. I should have gone to his funeral had I not had so much to do before sailing for England. I wrote a page or two for The Critic yesterday, though I may be too late.

     If our passage was not paid to England, I should not go. I am ashamed to go off at such a time. I have had no heart for the trip from the first, and now the death of Emerson (how these few words penetrate me!) and your troubles make me want to stay at home more than ever.

     If you have Mrs. Gilchrist's address send it to me; also that of Mr. Carpenter.

     I have written an essay on Carlyle which I think goes to the meaning of him more than anything I have ever seen. I spoke to your North America Review man about it on Friday, but he did not bite; said it was not in his line, &c. I shall probably offer it in London.

     If you do not hear from me again anything addressed to me care Henderson Brothers, Glasgow, 49 and 51 Union

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street, will be forwarded to me. We land at Glasgow and shall stay there a few days.

Ever your friend,

John Burroughs.

Life Saving Service, Washington, D. C., April, 28, '82.

Dear John:

     I have just been thunderstruck by a letter from Bucke telling me that Osgood, under a threat from the District Attorney at Boston, Sanger, has stopped the publication of Walt's book. I don't let the grass grow under my feet when an outrage of this kind is committed—one which makes Harlan's insignificant—and I am going to make the District Attorney regret that he was ever born, if I can compass it. As soon as I read Bucke's letter I flew down stairs with Leaves of Grass to the Solicitor of the Treasury, Kenneth Raynor, and for two hours to him and Robinson (the Assistant Solicitor) and Barton (the Law Clerk) I gave the District Attorney unlimited volcano. They all agree with me, especially after hearing me read and expound the accused poem, that it is the greatest outrage of the century. I am next going straight to Brewster, the Attorney General, who of course controls the District Attorneys, and will see if I can't get him to crush Sanger and annul his action. I have only been stopped by Brewster's absence at Newport. He returns on Monday, and then I will see him, taking, if possible, Bob Ingersoll along with me—Ingersoll being a warm admirer of Walt's book. If we don't raise the biggest row Sanger ever dreamed of, I 'm mistaken. He doesn't know the kind of man on his track when I start after him.

     Now, pending the arrival of Monday and Brewster's return, I want to know all the facts. Tell me everything you know, and speedily. To be posted is to be armed.

     Of course, if we annul the District Attorney's action by a fulmin from headquarters, perhaps we can next shore up that cowardly fool, Osgood, and get him to go on with

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the publication. The infernal idiot should have defied the District Attorney, published his official warning as an advertisement, stood a suit, defended it with Evarts or Charles O'Connor, won it, and sold a million copies of Walt's book on the strength of it. The jackass!

     Let me hear from you. Excuse the scrawl. I am trembling with fury, and with the fervor of my oration down stairs in the Department of Justice.

     Good bye. I sent you my last report.

Faithfull,

W. D. O'Connor.

—Emerson gone! The world grows darker.

W. D. O'C.

     W. was enthusiastic by the time I got through. He had interrupted me throughout with exclamations and comments. He had me read some passages a second time. Broke right in and said: "Go back a bit—read that again." When I was through he said: "William says there: 'It will go hard if I cannot make such a cloud belch thunder.' He made it belch many thunders: William had unlimited capacity for raising hell: I don't mean that he was a gratuitous fighter: far from it: I mean that when aroused, where there was occasion for it, he could do the job—he was a human avalanche: nothing could defy him: stand up before him: nothing. Stedman said to me once: 'O'Connor is the finest fighter of us all with the noblest sense of right and justice.' John Hay was a great admirer of William—way back there: he said about the same thing Stedman did—said it to me: said, 'You are lucky, Whitman, in the adhesion of a man like O'Connor: he is a giant influence: he is the sort of man who lasts out the battle—who don't give in with a job half done.' I think Stedman was a bit afraid of William—was timid—just a bit, befor his vehemence: just as Gilder always has been: William gets on Watson's nerves—William is so virile, Watson so feminine (I don't mean any disrespect by that word—I don't

     W. liked what Burroughs said of Emerson: "To me Emerson filled nearly the whole horizon in that direction." W. said: "I guess I enjoy that: I guess I do." He had had me read the line over again. "John was right: Emerson was the whole horizon: Ralph Waldo: Emerson: the gentle, noble, perfect, radiant, consolatory, Emerson. I think of something Emerson said in one of our talks: he said: 'I agree with you, Mr. Whitman, that a man who does not live according to his lights—who trims his sails to the current breeze—is already dead—is as many times dead as he is untrue.' Emerson lived according to his lights—not according to libraries, books, literature, the traditions: he was unostentatiously loyal: no collegian, overdone with culture: so gifted, so peculiarly tremendous, that, if I may say so, knowing too much did not as it so often does with the scholar hurt him." "Did n't you tell me that he expressed regrets to you face to face one day—saying some sort of

     Had I read Rosseau's Confessions? "You should do so: there is a good English translation: I have had it: it is a singular mixture—plenty of the petty, the minor, the mean, the dirty—then surprising streaks of genius—often and often." I suggested: "Taking autobiography in its finer form, the best autobiography is not that which a man starts deliberately out to write"—("of malice prepense" echoed W.)—"but that which flows spontaneously from his own personality. By such a test Leaves of Grass is certainly one of the exclusive books in the group of the great autobiographies." W.: "That is well and profoundly put: even if not true as applied to Leaves of Grass is true in general: that the best autobiography is not built but grows." I suggested Heine's name. "Yes, Heine—pre-eminently, above all others—and Burns: take Burns—the heart of him: drops of his blood on every page: if I may say it (is there such a word?) the ear-marks of the one human fact in every line." I spoke of Shakespeare as objective. W. then: "Yes, that states the difference." I quoted my frequently repeated judgment of the summer—