"Well, there is one thing that I feel thankful for: that she died before I did. If such had not been the case, she would have been buried in a pauper's grave, or gone to the dissecting table.
"Mother has been a friend to many; they have handled what money she had, amounting to hundreds of dollars. When she died all debts were cancelled as far as they were concerned, and not one would say: 'Here is five cents towards putting a good and faithful servant away.' But Mother was laid away as fine as anybody...."
Little more need be said. Mrs. Davis was comparatively a young woman at the time of Walt Whitman's death,—being then in her fifty-fifth year,—and in the sixteen years that followed, his friends passed away one by one, and she almost passed out of the memory of his life, as though she had never taken part in it. But the part she did take deserves remembrance.
Harry Fritzinger's letter speaks for itself, and I have tried, poorly as I may have done so, to speak for one whom I valued and value as a good woman and a loving friend.
WALT WHITMAN'S MONUMENTS
A LETTER WRITTEN IN CAMDEN ON THE TWENTY-SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH
By GUIDO BRUNO
Dear Walt Whitman: