"I was a newspaper man and associated with the old Camden _Post_ at the time of Bonsall, when Whitman used to come to see us almost daily. Bonsall used to be a friend of his and did him a great many good turns. But Whitman was an ingrate. "Shall I tell you what we respectable citizens of Camden think of him? I don't mean the young generation, but the people who actually knew him. It doesn't sound nice to speak badly about dead people. But we knew him as an incorrigible beggar who lived very immorally ... an old loafer. "Why, only a few months ago, one of the most prominent citizens of our town, John J. Russ, the great real estate dealer, objected to Whitman's name on the Honor Tablet of our new library. Judge Howard Carrot of Merchantville could tell you how that old scoundrel got people into trouble, and if the case had come into court, the scandal would have been so great, that the Judge decided to dispose of it privately. "I remember, several years after the Civil War, Whitman's last visit to the Camden _Post_. Mr. Bonsall, the chief editor, myself and Whitman were chatting in the office. There was a very young reporter in the room. Mr. Whitman insisted on telling us one of his filthy stories. He knew many of them and would tell them without discriminating who was present. Filth seemed to be always on his mind. Mr. Bonsall was shocked. And I remember distinctly what he told him, before turning him out of the office. 'Look here, Whitman,' he said, 'why don't you become a useful citizen, like every one of us? You never did anything decent and worthy of an American citizen. While we took up our guns and went out to fight the enemy, you stalked about hospitals, posing as a philanthropist. Later on, we returned to civilian life, hunting jobs and pensions, trying to earn a livelihood, while you were preaching Humanitarian principles and talking against the cruelties of warfare on Union Square. _Now_, while we are chained to our jobs, you are writing pornographic pieces that no self-respecting publisher would print, and loaf about most of the time, corrupting our young folk. I will not tolerate loose talk in these offices, therefore, get out and never let me see you again.'" "But haven't you said," I interjected, "that Mr. Bonsall was a friend of Whitman?" "They used to be friends," cried Mr. Kettler, "until that treacherous business of the poem came up. Whitman was getting up a little book of poems. Mr. Bonsall, who, in my estimation, was not only an excellent man and writer, but also a poet of no mean ability, sent in a contribution. This particular poem was very beautiful. It was the only one that Whitman did not print. Ever since Mr. Bonsall and myself had not much use for Whitman, who stabbed his friends in the back at the first opportunity." "Hurt vanity," I thought. How small this man Kettler seemed to me with his petty grievances. Forty years have passed and he couldn't forget your refusal of a poem.