"The day before he died I came in the morning and asked him, 'How do you feel?'
"'Well, Doctor,' he answered, 'I am tired of this dreadful monotony of waiting. I am tired of the sword of Damocles suspended over my head.'"
Would it interest you, Walt Whitman, to know about your last minutes on earth, when you lay unconscious in a coma? Dr. McAlister described them to me. "His end was peaceful. He died at 6:43 P. M. At 4:30 he called Mrs. Davis and requested to be shifted from the position he was lying in. The nurse was sent for, and later on they sent me a message. When I reached his bedside, he was lying on his right side, his pulse was very weak and his respiration correspondingly so. I asked him if he suffered pain and if I could do anything for him. He smiled kindly and murmured low. He lay quietly for some time with closed eyes. A little after 5 his eyes opened for a moment, his lips moved slightly, and he succeeded in whispering: 'Warry, Shift.' Warry was his nurse, and these were the last words of Whitman. Then the end came. I bent over him to detect the last sign of the fleeting life. His heart continued to pulsate for fully fifty minutes after he ceased breathing."
Dr. McAlister was a great friend of yours, Walt Whitman, and I feel that you are with him every minute of his life. He showed me letters from your old nurse, Mrs. Keller, who wrote a few articles about you. He treasures the books you inscribed for him, your pictures hang on his walls and he especially loves the little plaster cast you gave him.
Of course, you know that an autopsy was performed shortly after your death. May I tell you about your brain, which is at present in the possession of the Anthropometric Society? I believe it is an honor to have one's brains placed in this society's museum, because this society has been organized for the express purpose of studying high-type brains. The cause of your death was pleurisy of your left side and consumption of the right lung. You had a fatty liver, and a large gall stone in the gall bladder. The good doctors marvelled that you could have carried on respiration for so long a time with the limited amount of useful lung tissue. They ascribed it largely to that indomitable energy "which was so characteristic of everything pertaining to the life of Walt Whitman." They said in their official report that any other man would have died much earlier with one-half of the pathological changes which existed in your body.
In the late afternoon while the sun was setting over an ideal spring day, I walked out to the Harleigh Cemetery, where you built for yourself that magnificent tomb. How wise you were, Walt Whitman, to supervise the cutting of the stones, to watch the workmen while they were preparing your grave. What a beautiful spot you chose for your last resting place. The lake lay still in the warm evening air, the willows swayed gently as if patted by unseen hands. An old working-man, about to leave the cemetery, showed me the spot where you used to sit and watch them work. He told me how you wrote "pieces" on scraps of paper that you borrowed here and there, and how you read them to the stonecutters, who were building your tomb. I asked for the key. They keep it locked lately. I opened the heavy granite door, and stood for quite a while in the semi-darkness of your little house. I thought of you lying there on your bier, peaceful, indifferent, kind. Then I thought of the other monument you had built in words, a temple not made with hands, builded for eternity.
Always self-sufficing, walking your own path towards your own goal. No legend tells of you, of your life or achievement. You live in the hearts of thousands of Americans. Soon, very soon, perhaps, your name and America will be synonymous. Walt Whitman, we here on earth are awakening to your ideals of America.
Affectionately yours,
Guido Bruno