I do not intend to follow in close detail the events of the decades after 1874 except to correct some misconceptions, to describe one curious experience, new for him and moving, and to put in order the essential narrative. Only one major objective was left to Whitman in life after his powers began to fail, and everying he did with energy from now on had reference to what his friend Kennedy called somewhat
extravagantly, yet with a large kernel of turth, the fight of a book for the world. He was not destitute, as has been often stated, not uncared for, except for a very brief period later on, never rightly an object of pity, unless as a man only in his fifties whose magnificent mind and body were shaken by physical disaster, A letter to pete Doyle describes his outer circumstances fairly enough.