If you stand at work in a shop, I stand as nigh as the nighest in the same shop; If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend, I demand as good as your brother or dearest friend; If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be personally as welcome; If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake; If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do you think I cannot remember my own foolish and outlawed deeds? If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table; If you meet some stranger in the streets, and love him or her--why I often meet strangers in the street, and love them. Why, what have you thought of yourself? Is it you then that thought yourself less? Is it you that thought the President greater than you? Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you? Because you are greasy or pimpled, or that you was once drunk, or a thief, Or diseased, or rheumatic, or a prostitute, or are so now; Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar, and never saw your name in print, Do you give in that you are any less immortal? 3. Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard, untouchable and untouching; It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether you are alive or no; I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns. Grown, half-grown, and babe, of this country and every country, indoors and outdoors, one just as much as the other, I see, And all else behind or through them. The wife--and she is not one jot less than the husband; The daughter--and she is just as good as the son; The mother--and she is every bit as much as the father. Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades, Young fellows working on farms, and old fellows working on farms, Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants, All these I see--but nigher and farther the same I see; None shall escape me, and none shall wish to escape me. I bring what you much need, yet always have, Not money, amours, dress, eating, but as good; I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but offer the value itself. There is something that comes home to one now and perpetually; It is not what is printed, preached, discussed--it eludes discussion and print; It is not to be put in a book--it is not in this book; It is for you, whoever you are--it is no farther from you than your hearing and sight are from you; It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest--it is ever provoked by them. You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it; You may read the President's Message, and read nothing about it there; Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury department, or in the daily papers or the weekly papers, Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accounts of stock. 4.