During their first absence, Captain Fritzinger had invited another ex-captain--an old shipmate and intimate friend--to come to his house to board, and for mutual companionship. The new guest was in poor health and extremely crotchety, and immediately upon his host's demise he took possession of the bed left empty. Then ensued for Mrs. Davis two more years of fidelity and constant care, until the one old shipmate went the way of the other. But even now the long-tried woman was not left without someone to minister to, for shortly before a young orphan girl had been entrusted to her. It was certainly her destiny to find full scope for the spirit of self-sacrifice so early implanted, and so persistently called upon. But it was almost inevitable for such a nature to be unconscious of the vein of irony in human affairs, of the element of the grotesque in the sublime. She went quietly on her accustomed way. It was her vocation to be victimized, and her daily business to be a blessing to others. Such was the woman who entered so closely into Walt Whitman's life during the seven years spent in Mickle Street. She meant more to him than he was perhaps aware of; more, certainly, than he ever cared to admit. If she was incapable of realizing the fulness of his genius, he seemed unable to measure the fulness of hers. But he was glad to profit by it. II WALT WHITMAN'S HOME "_And whether I come into my own to-day or in ten thousand or in ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now or with equal cheerfulness I can wait._"--WALT WHITMAN. "_I only thought if I didn't go, who would?_"--MARY O. DAVIS. After physical disability had incapacitated him for duty, Walt Whitman went to Camden, the New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia, and there the remaining years of his life were spent, at first in his brother's house in Stevens Street and later in a little frame cottage, No. 328 Mickle Street, "where he lived alone with a single attendant," as a magazine writer phrased it. This attendant was Mary Oakes Davis. With but one exception (_Thomas Donaldson, in "Walt Whitman the Man"_), all writers who have touched upon Whitman's domestic life seem to have failed to mention the interval between his two Camden homes. Fortunately it was of short duration, but in it came the great turning point in his career. Of his early habits something may be learned from his brother George, who says: "Wait was always a trying person to live with." ("_In Re Walt Whitman._") Then he goes on to relate some of the poet's peculiarities, irregularities and eccentricities. "He had an idea that money was of no consequence.... He would lie abed late, would write a few hours if he took the notion, perhaps would go off for the rest of the day. If we had dinner at one, like as not he would come at three; always late. Just as we were fixing things on the table he would get up and go around the block. He was always so.