Poets, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892
[487] Calamus, 23, gives 1866; but _Comp. Prose_, 70, throws date back:
see also _supra_, 210.
[488] Although it has been previously quoted, the following passage
from Mr. Burroughs' _Birds and Poets_ gives so graphic a description of
Whitman at this time, that I cannot forbear to quote it:--
"I give here a glimpse of him in Washington, on a Pennsylvania Avenue
and Navy Yard horse-car, toward the close of the war, one summer
day at sundown. The car is crowded and suffocatingly hot, with many
passengers on the rear platform, and among them a bearded, florid-faced
man, elderly but agile, resting against the dash, by the side of the
young conductor, and evidently his intimate friend. The man wears a
broad-brim white hat. Among the jam inside near the door, a young
Englishwoman, of the working class, with two children, has had trouble
all the way with the youngest, a strong, fat, fretful, bright babe
of fourteen or fifteen months, who bids fair to worry the mother
completely out, besides becoming a howling nuisance to everybody. As
the car tugs around Capitol Hill, the young one is more demoniac than
ever, and the flushed and perspiring mother is just ready to burst into
tears with weariness and vexation. The car stops at the top of the hill
to let off most of the rear platform passengers, and the white-hatted
man reaches inside, and gently but firmly disengaging the babe from
its stifling place in the mother's arms, takes it in his own, and out
in the air. The astonished and excited child, partly in fear, partly
in satisfaction at the change, stops its screaming, and as the man
adjusts it more securely to his breast, plants its chubby hands against
him, and pushing off as far as it can, gives a good look squarely in
his face; then, as if satisfied, snuggles down with its head on his
neck, and in less than a minute, is sound and peacefully asleep without
another whimper, utterly fagged out."
[489] Calamus, 53-55.
[490] Calamus, 18.
[491] Camden, viii., 169-243.
[492] _Wound-Dresser_, 90.
[493] Calamus, 48.
[494] _Ib._, 62.
[495] Calamus.
[496] Camden, viii., 235.
[497] _In re_, 74.
[498] _Comp. Prose_, 208, 209 n.
[499] Wister's _Grant_, 130.
[500] _L. of G._, 359.
[501] Camden, viii., 226 (May, 1868).
[502] _Comp. Prose_, 197-251
[503] _Comp. Prose_, 246, 247.
[504] _Ib._, 200.
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