But he was a poor man himself, judged by modern standards, and he had a profoundly human and practical sympathy with the lives of the poor. He knew exactly where their shoe pinched. And thus, whatever his dislike of Unionism, he was an admirable administrator of charity. His delight in giving made him the willing almoner of at least one wealthy Philadelphia magnate,[673] and during severe winters he was enabled to supply his friends, the drivers of the street cars, with warm overcoats. In his diary, alongside of the addresses of those who purchased his books, are long lists of these driver friends, dimly reminiscent of the hospital lists which he used to keep in Washington.
Walt was always an incurable giver of gifts, and these, one may be sure, never weakened the manly independence of their recipients. His admiration for generous men of wealth, like George Peabody, has found a place in Leaves of Grass.[674] For he saw that to love is both to give and to receive, and in that holy commerce both actions alike are blessed.
His interest in social work is shown in a hitherto unpublished letter written about this time to Mary Whitall Smith, who had married and gone to England, and who sent him accounts of the work being done among the poor of the East End through the agency of Toynbee Hall. Of this he writes at noon on the 20th of July, 1885: “The account of the Toynbee Hall doings and chat [is] deeply interesting to me. I think much of all genuine efforts of the human emotions, the soul and bodily and intellectual powers, to exploit themselves for humanity’s good: the efforts in themselves I mean (sometimes I am not sure but they are the main matter)—without stopping to calculate whether the investment is tip-top in a business or statistical point of view.
“These libations, ecstatic life-pourings as it were of precious wine or rose-water on vast desert-sands or great polluted river—taking chances for returns or no returns—what were they (or are they) but the theory and practice of the beautiful God Christ? or of all Divine personality?”[675]
FOOTNOTES:
[652] Comp. Prose, 183, 186.
[653] MSS. Diary; MSS. Berenson (a).
[654] MSS. Berenson (a).
[655] Cf. In re, 315.