Such fancies in a child's mind are apt to grow into a purpose: to dream, is to dream of something one will presently do. If the dream is wholly beyond the range of possible accomplishment, a cloud of disillusionment descending on the face of youth will blot it out; but if it is not, it may become an ideal which will shape the whole of manhood as sternly as any fate. To be an American prophet-poet, to make the American people a book which should be like the Bible in spiritual appeal and moral fervour, but a book of the New World and of the new spirit--such seems to have been the first and the last of Whitman's day-dreams. It must have come to him as a vague longing when he was still very young, and he was never so old as to lose it. Now on his return from this long journey, his mind full of America and full of profound and mystical thoughts concerning love and the soul and the soul's relation to the world, the dream began to struggle in him for utterance. It was seven years before it found itself a body of words, but henceforward it took possession of his life. FOOTNOTES: [94] Descriptions of Virginia in _Franklin Evans_ being probably derived from hearsay. [95] Camden, xxxv. [96] _Comp. Prose_, 14, 188, 522. [97] MSS. Harned. [98] Burroughs, 82. [99] _Comp. Prose_, 374; see also Rejected Passages in Camden. [100] _Historical Sketch Book and Guide to N. O._, 1885. [101] _Comp. Prose_, 251, 439-443; Bucke, 24. [102] _Comp. Prose_, 514. [103] _Ib._, 441. [104] See Appendix B. [105] _In re_, 323. [106] Bucke, 60. [107] _L. of G._, 94. [108] _In re_, 116; _L. of G._, 434; Bucke, 135; _cf. infra_, 89, 103. [109] Camden, iii., 261, 262. [110] Letter to A. J. Symonds, see _infra_, Appendix B. [111] _Comp. Prose_, 522. [112] Camden, xxxiv. [113] _Comp. Prose_, 441-43. [114] _Cf._ Winston Churchill, _The Crisis_. [115] _Cf._ _L. of G._, 434. CHAPTER V ILLUMINATION Whitman returned to Brooklyn about the time that Free-soil Democrats and Liberty men were uniting at Buffalo on the ticket and platform which I have already described. He established a small book-store and printing office on Myrtle Avenue,[116] and commenced the publication of the _Freeman_, a weekly first, but afterwards a daily paper.