"He would come to breakfast when he got ready. If he wished to go out, he would go, go where he was a mind to, and come back in his own time." It cannot be denied that a person with these traits of character would be an uncomfortable inmate to have in any home, and with Mr. Whitman this disregard for the convenience of others grew more marked as he advanced in years and deteriorated in body. Notwithstanding this, when his good brother and his most excellent sister-in-law retired to their farm in Burlington, New Jersey, they urged him to accompany them. Their kind offer of a home Mr. Whitman thought best to decline, for although at this time he had but a restricted popularity as an author, he had some staunch friends in his own city, in New York, Philadelphia and abroad, and after twelve years' residence in one locality he thought it unwise to change. No doubt he did not take into consideration the difficulties he would have to encounter alone, nor realize how unfitted he was to cope with them; but as usual he overruled all opposition and followed his own inclination. Or he may have had a premonition of the popularity just at hand. First he rented a room, taking his meals at odd times and in odd places. This he soon found to be a miserable mode of existence, for he was crippled financially as well as physically, and even to this late day, "his medium of circulating his views to the world was through very limited editions, which he himself usually paid for, or which failed to circulate at all." (_Thomas Donaldson._) The old man with his basket of literature upon his arm, plodding his way through the streets of Camden and Philadelphia, had long been a familiar sight, and now with slow sales and lack of former comforts it was doubly hard on him. But at this time his life had settled down to one great desire, that of rewriting his book, _Leaves of Grass_, and living to see it put before the world in a full, improved and complete form. He believed it was to be, and this was his principal object in remaining in a city where he had already suffered the delays and disappointments that make the heart sick and wear out the body. Yet dark as was the outlook, this hope buoyed him up, and after the struggles of half a century his courage had not forsaken him. "In the period named, he was hungry, cold and neglected," says Donaldson; and again: "Whitman was extremely poor in Camden after his brother moved away, and up to about 1884. His change of luck began about then. He had previously, to use a sailor's phrase, 'been scudding under bare poles.' He had several runs of luck after 1884." Walt Whitman and Mrs. Davis were not personally acquainted. To be sure, he had seen her innumerable times leading Captain Fritzinger past his brother's house, but he had never spoken to her. As for her, the poor old man had long been a secret pensioner upon her tender heart, drawing a full bounty of pity therefrom.