Most of the time while he was living in Washington he occupied a small room up three flights of stairs. He had but little furniture and no dishes; he ate out of paper bags and subsisted upon a very meagre sum of money. This sufficed for that period of his life, when he was in "his splendid prime." (_John Swinton._) He had health, strength and only himself to think of; and taking a house of his own in after years--humble as was the one in Mickle Street--did not seem to mature in him any realizing sense of the intrinsic value of money, or reveal to him his own pecuniary obligations. He never seemed to question what housekeeping involved, never seemed to pause and think that certain responsibilities rested upon him alone, or feel that he might be wronging others, especially those whose services he accepted and whose embarrassments he never inquired into, never offered to relieve. But Mrs. Davis, conservative, conscientious, and true to him, did not disclose his domestic failures or discuss them with others. His financial standing was not revealed to his English friends, and remained quite a secret until the Christmas season of this year, when he was given a site for a grave in Harleigh Cemetery. It is not unreasonable to believe that he had special designs in putting money so quietly aside, one of which--and the greatest, perhaps--was to build a family vault. It has been said that it was for this very purpose he accumulated money; hoarded, accepted and saved in the most minute of things. Thomas Bailey Aldrich often told the delightful story of a certain $9.00 which Whitman borrowed from him--magnificently, but also irrevocably--in Pfoff's restaurant on Broadway. After he had accepted and secured the site, he spoke freely of his wishes and intentions regarding the tomb. He specified that certain members of his family should be placed in it, and requested in particular that his parents should be brought from Long Island to sleep with them there. It was to be of granite, massive and commodious; and on a projection above the door was to be a granite statue of himself, standing. His ideas were excessive, and the expense far beyond his means; still, he may have thought that the proceeds accruing from his book would warrant an extravagance for death that he never vouchsafed to life. The tomb was begun according to his orders, but was finished on a much smaller scale--as it now stands--and just in time to lay him therein.