"This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person, The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his manners, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, and the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, These I used to go and visit him to see--he was wise also, He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old--his sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome, They and his daughters loved him--all who saw him loved him, They did not love him by allowance--they loved him with personal love; He drank water only--the blood showed like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face, He was a frequent gunner and fisher--he sailed his boat himself--he had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner--he had fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him; When he went with his five sons and many grandsons to hunt or fish, you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang, You would wish long and long to be with him--you would wish to sit by him in the boat, that you and he might touch each other." All the _motifs_ of his work are the near, the vital, the universal; nothing curious, or subtle, or far-fetched. His working ideas are democracy, equality, personality, nativity, health, sexuality, comradeship, self-esteem, the purity of the body, the equality of the sexes, etc. Out of them his work radiates. They are the eyes with which it sees, the ears with which it hears, the feet upon which it goes. The poems are less like a statement, an argument, an elucidation, and more like a look, a gesture, a tone of voice. "The word I myself put primarily for the description of them as they stand at last," says the author, "is the word Suggestiveness."