Hal,

In answer to your question (which came up only a few months ago on
the Forum), this from my ALA paper on WW and MT:  "Parallel though
their lives were in terms of their vernacular styles and relentless
dedication to American democracy, these two literary icons probably
never met.  The lone exception may have been at Whitman's ninth
lecture on "The Death of Abraham Lincoln" at the Madison Square
Theater in New York in 1887.  Twain supposedly attended the event
along with such American notables as Andrew Carnegie, William Dean
Howells, and John Hay."  But MT's name is not mentioned in any of the
newspaper reports of the lecture, while the other writers are
mentioned. See .  Daniel Mark Esptein, Lincoln and Whitman:  Parallel
Lives in Civil War Washington (New York:  Ballatine Books, 2004),
311, 323-24; and Jerome Loving, Walt Whitman:  The Song of Himself
(Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1999), 450.

Jerry