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was as good talk around that table as took place anywhere in the world. Clapp was a very witty man. Fitz-James O'Brien was very bright. Ned Wilkins, who used to be the dramatic critic of The Herald, was another bright man. There were between twenty-five or thirty journalists, authors, artists, and actors who made up the company that took possession of the cave under the sidewalk."

During this period Whitman remained in perfect health. He seemed to be as finely related to Nature by his exquisite senses and physical constitution as he was to spiritual facts by his mentality. Constant communication with the sea, observation of the night and stars, affiliation with the woods and winds and the broad day, taught him the lore that gave lessons to daily living and to all else. When in 1873 he suffered paralysis and turned in his loneliness to record the doings of nature in and about Camden, it is impossible not to see that observation and absorption of nature were habitual with him from childhood.

In the midst of these years one incident of his real biography appears, the only fact, perhaps, worthy of report, the one that gives meaning to his life, explains his poems, and certifies to his right to immortality. About the year 1850, apparently as the result of a momentary inspiration, in reality as issue of a life perfected symmetrically in every faculty of being, physical and psychical, some inner change of consciousness, some increase in ideal experience, some accession of power, took place. The nature of the experience cannot be fully described, though the phenomenon is not new in the history of the world. One becomes aware of the attainment of a higher consciousness, of passage into a region where new motives form and new knowledge accrues. Mr. Stedman, somewhat lightly, though with his eye on the fact, gives testimony that Whitman "underwent conversion, experienced a change of thought and style, and professed a new departure in verse, dress, and way of life. Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, with a truer insight into the nature of the revelation, relying on the phenomenon of exceptional development which Whitman presents in respect to physical, intellectual, moral, and emotional stature, seeing clearly that such experience constitutes an evolutionary advance in the human world, a new variety or species of mental wisdom, advances the theory that Whitman, at this period, rose into a higher state of consciousness, which may be called "cosmic," by which is meant that to the ordinary self-consciousness there was added a higher form, which includes the

knowledge of life, death, immortality, and the cosmical order. Upon the fact of a new and superior reading of the universe, Whitman bases his enormous claims for recognition.

I too, following many and follow'd by many, inaugurate a religion, I descend into the arena,

(It may be I am destin'd to utter the loudest cries there, the winner's pealing shouts,

Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above everything.)

Each is not for its own sake,

I

say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for relig

ion's sake.

If Leaves of Grass is not something more than a new collation of phrases, if it is not something more than a new literary method, if it does not embody a new human experience, if it is not a new interpretation of the facts of existence, if it is not a new revelation of truth, then it is without meaning, and doomed soon to pass utterly away. A mere trick of speech can have no permanent influence on the world. But the book appears to be the work of one who has suddenly advanced into a new circle of knowledge. From 1850 to 1855 Whitman was absorbed in the contemplation and investigation of the newly revealed world of his being. He gave up all other occupation, under the compulsion of a new ideal, and became a solitary, seeking in secret some recess in the woods or by the sea that he might jot down with more absolute precision the passing events of his experience. “You contain enough Walt, "the new Genius kept saying, "why don't you let it out, then? It was true. The man had content for prophecy.

I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons of things,

They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.

I cannot say to any person what I hear I cannot say it to myself it is very wonderful.

The consciousness to which he had now arrived may well be called "cosmic," for it is always to cosmic unity that his most mystic and prophetic poems refer.

I sing to the last the equalities modern or old,

I sing the endless finalés of things,

I say Nature continues, glory continues,

I praise with electric voice,

For I do not see one imperfection in the universe,

And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.

Knowing the cosmical integrity, he can sing under the sun unmitigated adoration : "All is truth without exception." "And henceforth I will go celebrate anything I see or am, and sing and laugh and deny nothing." One section of the Song of Myself,

the fifth, must refer to the new revealment :

:

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,

And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of the creation is love,

And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,

And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,

And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed.

Immortality

Evil has been

Such utterance is not wholly new in literature. has been held as a dogma for many centuries. pronounced null, and love declared to be universal. But Whitman differs from all others in the certainty of his knowledge. He does not speculate about love and death. He knows he is an immortal soul. His surety is grounded in consciousness. "conversion, at about the age of thirty, is the most important fact in Whitman's biography. Leaves of Grass can be accounted for on no other ground than that it was the product of what we call genius," or "inspiration."

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IX

This

In 1862 Whitman, on hearing that his brother George had been wounded at Fredericksburg, started for the army camp, then on the Rappahannock. Finding his brother out of danger, he remained on the field of war; but, as he did not feel "called" to carry arms, his mission not being to fight, but to save, he engaged as a volunteer in the hospital service. In this occupation he re

mained till the close of the war, and as long thereafter as his office was needed. During this period he supported himself as a war correspondent to Northern papers and by copying in offices, until, in 1865, he was tendered a clerkship in a government department. As an army nurse, he is reported as having made upward of six hundred visits or tours, tended a hundred thousand soldiers, and distributed many thousands of dollars, the gifts of Northern friends. It is difficult to describe the agency of the poet in the office of nurse. The numerical account of his cases gives no idea of the personal character of his ministration. The methods he employed for restoring health and healing were characteristic of the man. He performed the ordinary function of the physician and nurse, but beyond these by a few simple expedients he accomplished more remarkable results by quietly affecting the spiritual nature of the men. "To many of the wounded and sick, especially the youngsters," he said, "there is something in personal love, caresses and the magnetic flood of sympathy and friendship, that does, in its way, more good than all the medicines in the world. The American soldier is full of affection, and the yearning for affection. And it comes wonderfully grateful to him to have this yearning gratified when he is laid up with wounds or illness, far away from home, among strangers. Many will think this merely sentimentalism, but I know it is the most solid of facts. I believe that even the moving around among the men, or through the ward, of a hearty, healthy, clean, strong, generous-souled person, man or woman, full of humanity and love, sending out invisible, constant currents thereof, does immense good to the sick and wounded." So he came into their presence always buoyant and cheerful, and sought particularly to satisfy their affectionate longings. He was physician, nurse, and mother to all. The external details of his ministry are vividly reported in one of the poems of the Drum-Taps series:

Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,

Straight and swift to my wounded I go,

Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground,

Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof'd hospitals,
To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return,

To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss.

I onward go, I stop,

With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,

I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable,

One turns to me his appealing eyes-poor boy! I never knew

you,

Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you.

But this is not the whole account. He was seen in 1863 by Mr. Burroughs, who made at the time the following note: "The actual scene of this man moving among the maimed, the pale, the low-spirited, the near-to-death, with all the incidents and the interchange between him and those suffering ones, often young almost to childhood, can hardly be pictured by any pen, however expert. His magnetism was incredible and exhaustless. It is no figure of speech, a fact deeper than speech. The lustreless eye brightened up at his approach; his commonplace words invigorated; a bracing air seemed to fill the ward and neutralize the bad smells.' To the same effect is the report of an eye-witness who wrote in The New York Herald in 1876 an account of what he saw in the hospitals: "When Whitman appeared, in passing along, there was a smile of affection and welcome on every face, however wan, and his presence seemed to light up the place as it might be lit by the presence of the Son of Love. From cot to cot they called him, often in tremulous tones or in whispers; they embraced him, they touched his hand, they gazed at him. To one he gave a few words of cheer, for another he wrote a letter home, to others he gave an orange, a few comfits, a cigar, a pipe and tobacco, a sheet of paper, or a postage stamp, all of which, and many other things, were in his capacious haversack. From another he would receive a dying message for mother, wife, or sweetheart; for another he would promise to go on an errand; to another, some special friend, very low, he would give a manly farewell kiss. He did the things for them which no nurse or doctor could do, and he seemed to leave a benediction at every cot as he passed along. The lights had gleamed for hours in the hospital that night before he left it; and, as he took his way toward the door, you could hear the voice of many a stricken hero calling, Walt, Walt, Walt, come again.' One characteristic incident, illustrative of the silent sympathy existing between nurse and patient, is told by Whitman himself of a youth who, as the poet sat looking at him while he lay asleep, suddenly, without the least start, awakened, opened his eyes, gave him a long steady look, turning his face very slightly to gaze easier, one long clear silent look,

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