[483] See infra, 262.
[484] O’Connor, qu. in Bucke, 62.
[485] Calamus, 21.
[486] MSS. Wallace.
[487] Calamus, 23, gives 1866; but Comp. Prose, 70, throws date back: see also supra, 210.
[488] Although it has been previously quoted, the following passage from Mr. Burroughs’ Birds and Poets gives so graphic a description of Whitman at this time, that I cannot forbear to quote it:—
“I give here a glimpse of him in Washington, on a Pennsylvania Avenue and Navy Yard horse-car, toward the close of the war, one summer day at sundown. The car is crowded and suffocatingly hot, with many passengers on the rear platform, and among them a bearded, florid-faced man, elderly but agile, resting against the dash, by the side of the young conductor, and evidently his intimate friend. The man wears a broad-brim white hat. Among the jam inside near the door, a young Englishwoman, of the working class, with two children, has had trouble all the way with the youngest, a strong, fat, fretful, bright babe of fourteen or fifteen months, who bids fair to worry the mother completely out, besides becoming a howling nuisance to everybody. As the car tugs around Capitol Hill, the young one is more demoniac than ever, and the flushed and perspiring mother is just ready to burst into tears with weariness and vexation. The car stops at the top of the hill to let off most of the rear platform passengers, and the white-hatted man reaches inside, and gently but firmly disengaging the babe from its stifling place in the mother’s arms, takes it in his own, and out in the air. The astonished and excited child, partly in fear, partly in satisfaction at the change, stops its screaming, and as the man adjusts it more securely to his breast, plants its chubby hands against him, and pushing off as far as it can, gives a good look squarely in his face; then, as if satisfied, snuggles down with its head on his neck, and in less than a minute, is sound and peacefully asleep without another whimper, utterly fagged out.”
[489] Calamus, 53-55.
[490] Calamus, 18.
[491] Camden, viii., 169-243.