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The last extant letter to Reid confirms what any one examining the publicity Whitman received in the Tribune, particularly in 1876, suspected: the poet frequently supplied Reid with press clippings from Philadelphia and Camden newspapers. In this letter, at the top of the page, Whitman has scrawled: "? Under Bits of Criticism in Sunday Tribune." Then he supplies the headline: "A defence of Walt Whitman From the Philadelphia Press." There follows a clipping from the Press concerning the Boston censorship of the Osgood edition of Leaves of Grass. So far as I can discover, this excerpt did not appear in the Tribune. Significantly, presumably in the hand of Whitelaw Reid, we find at the bottom of the letter the words "not answered."
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