Over another similar meal, he declared his love for the _Heart of Midlothian_, and his distaste for the gloomy poets from Byron to Poe. They discussed music among their many topics. Mr. Hartmann declared himself a Wagnerian, but Whitman confessed his ignorance of the "music of the future"; Mendelssohn, of course, he knew; and in later life he had discovered Beethoven as a new meaning in music, and had been carried out of himself, as he says, seeing, absorbing many wonders.[696] But he was brought up on the Italians; it was from Verdi and his predecessors, interpreted by Alboni, Bettini and others, that he had learnt the primal meanings of music, and they always retained his affection. * * * * * About the middle of May,[697] 1887, a sculptor, who had already studied Whitman in the Centennial year, came on from Washington to Mickle Street. Mrs. Davis sided some of the litter in the parlour; and the old man sat for him there as amiably as ten years before in the improvised studio on Chestnut Street. They talked much of the President, on a portrait of whom Mr. Morse had been working. Whitman had a high opinion of Mr. Cleveland, and displayed a lively interest in all the personal details his friend could supply. During the sittings Herbert Gilchrist arrived from England, where his mother had died of a painful disease some eighteen months earlier; and he set up his easel also. Callers came from far and near; while dozens of children entered with a word or message from the street, and older folk looked in at the window. Whitman was not very well even for him, and he missed his solitude. But he was a delightful and courteous host. The three men often lunched together, while several English visitors--taking Whitman on their tour even though they missed Niagara[698]--sat down to a bite of beef, a piece of apple-pie, and a cup of tea poured out by the reverend host in the hot little kitchen. Good Mrs. Davis watched her old charge and friend with some anxiety, as this constant stream of visitors flowed in and out; but she herself rose more than equal to every emergency. She had for lieutenant a coloured char-woman, born the same day as Whitman, who felt herself for that reason responsible in no ordinary degree for the general appearance of the premises. The sculptor and she often found themselves in conflict. As for his clay, she disdained it along with the whole genus of "dirt". She succeeded in white-washing the delightful moss-covered fence, and would, he felt sure, have liked to treat both him and his work in the same summary fashion. They debated theological problems together, to Whitman's amusement, and he would have it that Aunt Mary came out of these encounters better than the artist. "How does your Satan get work to do," the latter would ask, "if God doeth all?"