Whitman wore the garb and fell naturally into the attitudes of the manual worker. When he was not at work he was relaxed, and stood at ease in a way that no one could mistake. And when he went out to enjoy himself he never donned a tail-coat and patent shoes. Something in this very capacity for relaxation and looseness at the knees made him more companionable to the average man, as it made him more exasperating to the superior person. The gentility of the clerical mannikin of the office was utterly abominable to him; so much one can read in the portrait, and in the fact that he persisted in calling himself Walt, the name which was familiar to the men on the ferry and the road.[254] * * * * * Early in 1860 Whitman made arrangements with a firm of young and enterprising Boston publishers for the issue of a third edition of his book. It had now been out of print for nearly three years, and new material had all that time been accumulating, amounting to about two-thirds of what had already been published. He went over to Boston and installed himself in a little room at the printing office, where he spent his days carefully correcting and revising the proofs. A friend who found him there speaks of his very quiet manners.[255] He rarely laughed, and never loudly. He seemed to be provokingly indifferent to the impression he was creating, and made no effort to talk brilliantly. He was indeed quite bare of the small change of conversation, and gave no impression of self-consciousness. At the time of this interview he was accompanied by a sickly listless lad whom he had found at the boarding-house where he stayed. Whitman had compassion on him and carried him along, in order that he might communicate something of his own superabundant vitality to him. During his stay in Boston, Walt frequently attended the services then conducted at the Seamen's Bethel by Father Taylor.[256] As a rule, he avoided churches of every sort, feeling acutely the ineffectiveness of what is grimly called "Divine Service," feeling also that worship was for the soul in its solitude.[257] Not that he was ignorant of that social passion which finds its altar in communion of spirit, or was blind to the deepest mysteries of fellowship. To these, as we shall see, he was particularly sensitive. But the formalities of a church must have seemed foolish and irksome to one for whom all fellowship was a kind of worship, and all desire was a prayer. In the preaching of Father Taylor there was nothing formal or ineffective. In it Walt felt anew the passionate sense of reality which had thrilled him as a child in the preaching of old Elias Hicks.