His daily visits to Mrs. Davis were resumed. Her back door would slowly open and he would appear saying in a pathetic voice: "Pity the sorrows of a poor old man, whose trembling limbs have brought him to your door." He was always welcomed and former relations were renewed.
This continued for awhile, but light housekeeping being so great a tax upon him, and his house being so "forlorn, dirty and untenantable," (Thomas Donaldson), Mrs. Davis went there with him in his perplexity.
How could the place be anything but cold when it was heated only by the occasional flame of an oil lamp? Worse still, the back door was held partly open by an accumulation of ice resulting from a ruptured water pipe.
Seeing how matters stood, Mrs. Davis, at that time a "strong, rosy-cheeked Jersey woman" (Thomas Donaldson), went to work with a will, and the ice was rapidly dispersed by her vigorously wielded axe. With the door closed things soon assumed a more cheerful aspect, and at her suggestion Mr. Whitman purchased a small second-hand cooking stove, which, unassisted, she set up and got into running order. She carpeted his sleeping room, gave him a mattress and bedding, and in many other ways helped to make "the coop," as Whitman himself called it, more habitable and homelike. Then, unmindful of the distance—several blocks—she came each evening to attend to the fire, cook the food, run the invalid's errands and wait upon him generally.
In speaking of this time she said: "When the poor old man was not in sight, he was so much upon my mind I could not pass one peaceful hour." Suffice it to say, Walt Whitman had become the next object of her solicitude.
He has been called a prophet. Was it prophetical when, some years before, he wrote: "Though poor now even to penury, I have not been deprived of any physical thing I need or wish for whatever, and I feel confident I shall not in the future"?
Some have considered him a cunning man; all agree that he was a remarkable judge of character. Understanding this woman as he did,—as he must have done,—had he resolved to have her devote herself to him? This question can never be truthfully answered, but whether with premeditation or not, he certainly had gained a great influence over her.
Although comparatively comfortable in his new home now, he did not discontinue his accustomed morning visits, and as he persisted in his old delinquencies he completely upset the routine of Mrs. Davis's daily life and work.
Things ran on in this way until one morning late in February, while he was sipping his coffee, he told her he had a proposition to make. He said: "I have a house while you pay rent; you have furniture while my rooms are bare; I propose that you come and live with me, bringing your furniture for the use of both." A suggestion of this kind was so unlooked for that she refused to give it a moment's consideration. He said no more at the time, but a few days later again broached the subject. And this he continued to do daily until Mrs. Davis, who remained firm for awhile, at last began to waver.
The young orphan girl strongly opposed such a step, but Mr. Whitman's persistence prevailed, for Mrs. Davis at last gave a reluctant consent. The advantage was all on the poet's side, as he must have seen, but recent events had raised his hopes and he made promises of adequate and more than adequate returns for all that had been done or might be done for him.