One more incident must be related. In July of 1825 the people of Brooklyn were erecting an Apprentices' Free Library Building at the corner of Cranberry and Henry streets, later incorporated in the Brooklyn Institute, and they wished Lafayette to assist in laying the corner stone. He was brought to Brooklyn in great state, riding in a canary-colored coach drawn by four snow-white horses. The streets were crammed with people. Among them were many citizens and their wives, some old Revolutionary veterans, troops of Brooklyn children, and a number of negroes who had been freed by the recent New York Emancipation Acts.
Through the closely packed masses of people the carriage of the noble Frenchman was slowly driven, the antics of the impatient horses attracting the attention of the small boy as much as the illustrious visitor himself. As they came near the stand where the ceremony was to take place, Lafayette saw that various gentlemen were carefully lifting some little children over the rough places where soil from excavations and piles of cut stone had been heaped, and were helping them to safe places where they could see and hear. He at once alighted from the carriage and came forward to assist in this work.
Without suspecting it in the least, he was making another historic minute; for one of the boys he was thus to lift over a hard spot was a five-year-old child who afterwards became known to the world as Walt Whitman. Lafayette pressed the boy to his heart as he passed him along and affectionately kissed his cheek. Thus a champion of liberty from the Old World and one from the New were linked in this little act of helpfulness. When he was an old man, Whitman still treasured the reminiscence as one of indescribable preciousness.
"I remember Lafayette's looks quite well," he said; "tall, brown, not handsome in the face, but of fine figure, and the pattern of good-nature, health, manliness, and human attraction."
Through nearly all of this long and exciting journey, Lafayette was accompanied by Colonel Francis Kinloch Huger, by his secretary, and by his son, George Washington Lafayette, then a man full grown. The latter was almost overcome by the warmth of his father's reception. Writing to a friend at home, after having been in America but twenty days, he said:
"Ever since we have been here my father has been the hero, and we the spectators, of the most imposing, beautiful, and affecting sights; the most majestic population in the world welcoming a man with common accord and conducting him in triumph throughout a journey of two hundred leagues. Women wept with joy on seeing him, and children risked being crushed to get near to a man whom their fathers kept pointing out to them as one of those who contributed the most in procuring them their happiness and independence. This is what it has been reserved to us to see. I am knocked off my feet—excuse the expression—by the emotions of all kinds that I experience."
Lafayette has been accused of being a spoiled hero. In a moment of asperity Jefferson had alluded to Lafayette's love of approbation. If, indeed, Lafayette did yield to that always imminent human frailty, and if Olmütz had not been able to eradicate or subdue it, the itinerary of 1824 must have been to him a period of torture. He must have suffered from satiety to an unbearable degree, for praise and admiration were poured out by a grateful people to an extent not easily imagined. To keep up a fiction is the most wearying thing in the world. The only refreshing and vivifying thing is to be absolutely sincere. This it must be believed Lafayette was. His simple attitude toward the land of his adoption was shown in a letter to President Monroe in which he bade farewell to a nation where "in every man, woman, and child of a population of twelve million I have found a loving, indeed an enthusiastic, friend."
It did as much good to the American people as it did to Lafayette to take part in this great tide of gratitude and devotion. A vast, swelling emotion is unifying and it is strengthening. Our people made a great stride toward nationalization when Lafayette came to let us, as a people, throw our heart at his feet.