The Walt Whitman Archive
Commentary
Interviews and Reminiscences
About this Item
Title: [We struck a paragraph]
Creator: Anonymous
Date: 1876
Whitman Archive ID: med.00617
Source: Danbury News [1876]. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a clipping in the Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1842–1937, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the interviews, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Brett Barney, Nic Swiercek, and Shea Montgomerey
 image 1 |
We struck a paragraph, yesterday, about Walt Whitman, and thought to wrench a joke out of it, but were obliged to back out for want of nerve before getting half through the time which is as follows:
"Walt Whitman is living quietly in Camden, working steadily and unobtrusively, and occasionally appearing in public for some charitable object. He gave a reading the other evening for the benefit of the poor of the town. The Camden Press speaks of Whitman's old age as black and desolate, since the magazines refuse his contributions, and the English abuse of him is copied far and wide. The Press adds: "But the poet himself is more resolute and persevering than ever. Old, poor, and paralyzed, he has for a twelve month past been occupying himself by preparing, largely with his own handiwork here in Camden, a small edition of his complete works in two volumes, which he himself now sells, partly 'to keep the wolf from the door' in old age, and partly to give before he dies as absolute an expression, as may be, out of his ideas."
Walt Whitman may rest assured that his name will be sacredly cherished in this paper as long as the writer has charge of it.