[46] _L. of G._, 385; Kennedy, 64. [47] For New York see esp. _Mem. Hist. N.Y._, and Roosevelt. [48] _Mem. Hist. N.Y._, iv., 171, 477. [49] _Comp. Prose_, 13, 14, 426-431. [50] _Camb. Mod. Hist._; Bryce, i., 1-31. [51] Goldwin Smith, _The United States_ (1893), 132. [52] _En. Brit. Suppt._, and G. Smith. [53] 1824-25. [54] _Cf._ _Camb. Mod. Hist._, 375, 376. CHAPTER III TEACHER AND JOURNALIST The spring of 1836 found Whitman in New York.[55] He was in his seventeenth year, had now learnt his trade, and had begun to write for the weekly papers; among others, contributing occasionally to the handsome and aristocratic pages of the _Mirror_, perhaps the best of its class.[56] He lived in that journalistic atmosphere which encourages expression and turns many a clever lad into a prig. Walt was self-sufficient, but there was nothing of the prig[57] in him. Limited as his schooling had been, he was naturally receptive and thoughtful, and his education went steadily forward; he made friends with older men, and with men of education from whom he learnt much. And now he became a teacher. He was a healthy boy, but had somewhat overgrown his strength, and perhaps this was among the causes of his leaving the city in May, and going up Long Island into the country. He joined his family for awhile, who were living at Norwich;[58] and subsequently settled for the winter as a country teacher at Babylon, boarding round, as was the custom, in the homes of his various pupils. * * * * * [Illustration: WHITMAN'S BIRTHPLACE FROM THE FARM-YARD, 1904] The little town of Babylon stands on the swampy inner shores of the Great South Bay, which is a spacious lagoon separated from the Atlantic by a narrow beach or line of sand hills. This outer beach bears here and there a ridge of pine forest or a lighthouse; but for the rest, it is abandoned to sea-birds and grass, to the winds and a few sand-flowers scattered among the wind markings which are stencilled in purple upon the sand in some delicate aerial deposit. Outside, even upon quiet days, the surf beats ponderously with ominous sound, the will and weight of the ocean in its swing. Within, across the wide unruffled waters of the lagoon, populous with sails, is the far-away fringe of the Babylon woods, and over them, pale and blue, the hill-range above Huntington.