For he was now deliberately at work upon his great task, his child's fancy. He was come up into his manhood. He had, it seemed to him, thoroughly perceived and absorbed the spirit of America and of his time. His message had come to him, and he was writing his prophetic book, his _Song of Walt Whitman_. At last, the manuscript was done, and in the early summer he went to work in a little printing shop on Cranberry Street, and set up much, perhaps the whole, of the type jealously with his own hands.[157] About the beginning of July, and a few days only before his father's death, it was completed. In the _New York Tribune_ for the sixth of the month, it was advertised as being on sale at Fowler & Wells's Phrenological Depôt and Bookstore on Broadway, and at Swayne's in Fulton Street, Brooklyn. The price was at first two dollars, which seems a little exorbitant for so slender and unpretending a volume, in shape and thickness a mere single copy of one of the smaller periodicals, bound in sea-green cloth, with the odd name, _Leaves of Grass_, in fanciful gilt lettering across its face. It was presently reduced to a dollar. The other members of the household took the new venture very quietly. They had never been consulted in the matter--it had been Walt's affair, and only his; and the father's death must speedily have obliterated the little mark it made upon their minds.[158] "Hiawatha" was published about the same time, and a copy found its way into the house. The mother, turning the pages of both, considered that if Longfellow's were acknowledged as poetry, Walt's queer lines might pass muster too. Brother George fingered the book a little, and concluded it was not worth reading--that it was not in his line anyhow. Doubtless they were relieved when the writing and printing were done, thinking that now surely Walt would return to the ways of mortals. For he had certainly fallen into the most irregular habits. He lay late abed, and came down still later to breakfast; wrote for a few hours, and when the table was being laid for dinner, took down his big hat and sauntered out, to return presently after the meal was over and the dishes cold.[159] He was not intentionally inconsiderate, but he was wholly engrossed in his work, and so pre-occupied that he must often have been tiresome enough. After dinner he disappeared altogether, spending the afternoon and evening in his own leisurely way; setting type, perhaps, on his book at Andrew Rome's little office, and then going off to the opera or to some friend's; and, as he came back, staying far into the night in talk with the young fellows on the ferry, or on one of the East River steamers. Sometimes Hannah or Jeff might accompany him, but as a rule he went alone.