"Here my last words, and the most baffling, Here the frailest leaves of me, and yet my strongest-lasting, Here I shade down and hide my thoughts--I do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems." [97] Whitman's letters to Peter Doyle, an uncultured young tram-conductor deeply loved by the poet, have been edited by Dr. Bucke, and published at Boston: _Calamus: A Series of Letters_, 1897. [98] Whitman acknowledged, however (as in the letter to Symonds already referred to), that he had had six children; they appear to have been born in the earlier part of his life when he lived in the South. (See a chapter on Walt Whitman's children in Edward Carpenter's interesting book, _Days with Walt Whitman_, 1906.) Yet his brother George Whitman said: "I never knew Walt to fall in love with young girls, or even to show them marked attention." And Doyle, who knew him intimately during ten years of late life, said: "Women in that sense never came into his head." The early heterosexual relationship seems to have been an exception in his life. With regard to the number of children I am informed that, in the opinion of a lady who knew Whitman in the South, there can be no reasonable doubt as to the existence of one child, but that when enumerating six he possibly included grandchildren. [99] While the homosexual strain in Walt Whitman has been more or less definitely admitted by various writers, the most vigorous attempts to present the homosexual character of his personality and work are due to Eduard Bertz in Germany, and to Dr. W.C. Rivers in England. Bertz has issued three publications on Whitman: see especially his _Der Yankee-Heiland_, 1906, and _Whitman-Mysterien_, 1907. The arguments of Rivers are concisely stated in a pamphlet entitled _Walt Whitman's Anomaly_ (London: George Allen, 1913). Both Bertz and Rivers emphasize the feminine traits in Whitman. An interesting independent picture of Whitman, at about the date of the letter to Symonds, accompanied by the author's excellent original photographs, is furnished by Dr. John Johnston, _A Visit to Walt Whitman_, 1898. It may be added that, probably, both the extent and the significance of the feminine traits in Whitman have been overestimated by some writers. Most artists and men of genius have some feminine traits; they do not prove the existence of inversion, nor does their absence disprove it. Dr. Clark Bell writes to me in reference to the little book by Dr. Rivers: "I knew Walt Whitman personally. To me Mr. Whitman was one of the most robust and virile of men, extraordinarily so. He was from my standpoint not feminine at all, but physically masculine and robust. The difficulty is that a virile and strong man who is poetic in temperament, ardent and tender, may have phases and moods of passion and emotion which are apt to be misinterpreted." A somewhat similar view, in opposition to Bertz and Rivers, has been vigorously set forth by