Referring thus to Walt Whitman, we now have upon our side the weight of critical authority; learned and entirely respectable college professors write in this fashion about his books, and do not lose their positions for so doing. But realize how different it was in Whitman’s lifetime; in the early years respectable opinion looked upon him as a kind of obscene maniac. His first edition of “Leaves of Grass,” a thousand copies printed by himself, was left on his hands, except for those which he sent out free--and even some of these were returned, one by the poet Whittier! A critic wrote that Whitman was “as unacquainted with art as a hog with mathematics.” Another wrote that he “deserved the whip of the public executioner.” He was thrown out of a government position in Washington for having a copy of his book locked up in his own desk, and again and again his publishers were forced by threat of public prosecution to withdraw the book from circulation. Alone among Whitman’s contemporaries to recognize his genius was Emerson, and when Whitman published Emerson’s letter in the second edition of “Leaves of Grass,” Emerson was embarrassed--for in the meantime his horrified friends had persuaded him to hesitate in his opinion. From all this we may learn how difficult it is to judge one’s contemporaries. Walt Whitman was born of farmer folk in an isolated part of Long Island. His father became a carpenter and moved to Brooklyn, then a small town. Walt became an office boy at the age of twelve; he got hold of some good reading, learned printing, and became a teacher, and something of an orator. He was an abolitionist, a teetotaler and other kinds of “crank”; a slow-moving, rather stubborn youth, who wandered about from place to place, meeting all kinds of people, watching life with interest, but caring nothing for success. He had a good job as a newspaper editor, but gave it up because of his views on slavery. He set a new fashion in life--a type of man now common in the radical movement, who does enough manual labor to keep alive, and spends the rest of his time studying literature and life. Walt’s people loved him, but could not make him out; they thought he was lazy when he loafed and invited his soul. He was finding his own way, guided by the unfolding genius within. He wanted to know people, every kind that lived; he wanted to talk with them, to feel himself one with them. He worked with laborers on the job, he rode in ferry-boats, he made friends with the drivers of busses. He wanted to see America, so he wandered by slow stages to New Orleans and back. He wanted to know literature, so he read, but according to his own taste, taking no one’s opinions. When he was ready to express himself, it was a self hitherto unknown in literature, and the most startling voice yet lifted in America.