7:00 P.M. W. was in his room, wrapped in his coat. The evening had turned rather chill out of doors and he complained of it. "It penetrates me; I cannot resist it." Had a rosy fire in the stove. Asked after "news." "I see that the world is collapsing—the financial world. What does it mean? I sit in my room here—my den, my little corner—and wonder—wonder." I asked after his health. He was frank enough to say, "It is nothing to brag of—I come along—exist. That is all. The depression hangs heavy." I had a note from Weir Mitchell's secretary this morning: "Dr. Mitchell desires me to ask you if you will kindly call upon him on Saturday between 9-1 o'clock." Doubt about tomorrow but shall try to see him Sunday.
W. alluded affectionately to "Doctor Bucke's faithfulness." "I hear almost every day, and always with such cheer!" I described Bucke's impatience over the meter project: how when I was at London we went into town almost daily to see how things got on—Bucke sometimes storming, sometimes laughing, over the tantalizing delays. I spoke in this connection of Bucke's "perfect health, which saved him from being absorbed," W. exclaiming,
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"That is so—Doctor's of that type—I value him for that almost most of all!"
I exhibited to him proof-sheet I just received from West (New Ideal) of a "Walt Whitman/Robert Ingersoll" page I had sent up Sunday night. W. asked first if I would not leave it over night, but finding I could not, read it at once—saying at end, "Good! and I can echo every word of it: I can see the justice of it all." It was not in ill taste or effusive? "Not a bit: it is thoroughly symmetrical as it stands—neither overdoing or underdoing." West had also replied thus about Doctor's article which I had forwarded him:
I read to W., who liked it and hoped Bucke's "message" would "get into the types."
On the bed printed slips: "An Old Man's Recitative." He asked, "What should I do with them? This is the Arena mat-
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ter—two pages, I should say—new poetic drift, for them to use if they will or not if they are opposed. I used to like the Nineteenth Century way of adopting poems—giving the first two pages to me as a series: they have done it for Tennyson, for Swinburne, for others to my knowledge. I was going to suggest this to the Arena. What do you think?" And again he asked me, "What am I to do with the copy? Send it direct to Boston, hand it to you to send to Baker, or send to Baker myself?" And that we discussed fully, coming to no conclusion; I finally saying to W., "Follow your own notions purely," and he responding, "I guess I'll do one of these two things: give it to you or to Baker. That would probably be the more effective scheme." Very anxious to know if I had "heard further from either Baker or Bob."
W. had much to say of a note I exhibited from Dr. Furness. "His 89 years are a marvel to me—excite my wonder. I don't know what picture in life makes a man more tend to believe."
Asked him for a piece of manuscript for Williamson and he expressed himself as "very glad to please him with it—if it please him."