copy of Worcester's Dictionary shares places in an adjacent chair
with the poet's old and familiar soft gray hat, a newly darned blue
woolen sock and a shoe-blacking brush. There is a paste bottle and
brush on the table and a pair of scissors, much used by the poet,
who writes, for the most part, on small bits of paper and parts of
old envelopes and pastes them together in patchwork fashion.

In spite of a careful examination, I could find nothing in the parlor at
all reminiscent of Whitman's tenancy, except the hole for the stovepipe
under the mantel. One of Mrs. Skymer's small boys told me that "He" died
in that room. Evidently small Louis Skymer didn't in the least know who
"He" was, but realized that his home was in some vague way connected
with a mysterious person whose memory occasionally attracts inquirers to
the house.

Behind the parlor is a dark little bedroom, and then the kitchen. In a
corner of the back yard is a curious thing: a large stone or terra cotta
bust of a bearded man, very much like Whitman himself, but the face is
battered and the nose broken so it would be hard to assert this
definitely. One of the boys told me that it was in the yard when they
moved in a year or so ago. The house is a little dark, standing between
two taller brick neighbors. At the head of the stairs I noticed a window
with colored panes, which lets in spots of red, blue and yellow light. I
imagine that this patch of vivid color was a keen satisfaction to Walt's
acute senses. Such is the simple cottage that one associates with
America's literary declaration of independence.

The other Whitman shrine in Camden is the tomb in Harleigh Cemetery,
reached by the Haddonfield trolley. Doctor Oberholtzer, in his "Literary
History of Philadelphia," calls it "tawdry," to which I fear I must
demur. Built into a quiet hillside in that beautiful cemetery, of
enormous slabs of rough-hewn granite with a vast stone door standing
symbolically ajar, it seemed to me grotesque, but greatly impressive. It
is a weird pagan cromlech, with a huge triangular boulder above the door
bearing only the words WALT WHITMAN. Palms and rubber plants grow in
pots on the little curved path leading up to the tomb; above it is an
uncombed hillside and trees flickering in the air. At this tomb,
designed (it is said) by Whitman himself, was held that remarkable
funeral ceremony on March 30, 1892, when a circus tent was not large
enough to roof