The evening previous to his death Mr. Whitman requested to see Mr. Donaldson, the trusted friend who had done so much to make his home life a success. He came at once, and they had a long last interview. Mrs. Davis promised to notify him if the patient grew worse, and the next day at three P. M. she wrote for him to come, saying that Mr. Whitman was surely "slipping away" from them. He died before his friend reached the house. His last words were addressed to his faithful "sailor boy": "Shift, Warry." It was the time for the final turn, from life into death. Mrs. Davis closed his eyes. XVIII WINDING UP "_... the grand old man whose kindly face we never shall forget._"--DR. ALEX. MCALISTER (_In a letter to Mrs. Keller_). "_These promises are fair, the parties sure._" --SHAKESPEARE (_I King Henry IV_). On the morrow the little parlors were again cleared--this time to make room for a coffin--and Walt Whitman, at last free from pain, was brought downstairs. An artist was in waiting to take a cast of his face, and later a post-mortem was held. Mrs. Davis thought the latter something dreadful, believing as she did that it was either prompted by curiosity or was done simply for the sake of a newspaper article. When all preliminaries were over, the poet, clothed in his accustomed style, was laid in his coffin. This, of heavy oak, was placed in the centre of one room, and all through the afternoon friends and acquaintances came to see him. The following day the public was admitted, and thousands thronged in to look at the familiar form and face: that placid face, telling that the long sought-for rest was at last attained. People entered through one parlor door, then passing around the coffin left by the other. During the morning Mrs. Davis made a hurried run to Philadelphia to procure some needful things for the funeral, and on her return was surprised and horrified to find that during her absence a load of empty barrels had arrived, and that into these the literary executors--Dr. Bucke having arrived the night before--were hastily packing all the movable contents of the two upper rooms. This, to her, heartless expediency was more than she could bear, and going upstairs she asked why Mr. Whitman's things might not remain undisturbed until after he was buried. Dr. Bucke told her curtly that his own time was limited, and it was not convenient for _him_. Overcome with grief, she sought her own room. She knew that Mr. Whitman's literary effects belonged legally to his executors, but she felt that his home was sacred to him while he remained in it. The barrels containing his writings and some articles coming under the head of personal property, such as books, pictures, his knapsack, the inkstand Mrs. Davis had bought for him while on her journey, and by him returned to her, etc., were taken from the house while he, the owner, lay there sleeping in his coffin.