discourse I have not forgotten the
immense impression made upon me by the man. As vain as a peacock,
Walt looked like a Greek rhapsodist. Tall, imposing in bulk, his
regular features, mild, light-blue or grey eyes, clear ruddy skin,
plentiful white hair and beard, evoked an image of the magnificently
fierce old men he chants in his book. But he wasn't fierce, his voice
was a tenor of agreeable timbre, and he was gentle, even to
womanliness. Indeed, he was like a receptive, lovable old woman, the
kind he celebrates so often. He never smoked, his only drink was
water. I doubt if he ever drank spirits. His old friends say "No,"
although he is a terrible rake in print. Without suggesting
effeminacy, he gave me the impression of a feminine soul in a
masculine envelope. When President Lincoln first saw him he said:
"Well, he _looks_ like a man!" Perhaps Lincoln knew, for his remark
has other connotations than the speech of Napoleon when he met Goethe:
"Voila un homme!" Hasn't Whitman asked in Calamus, the most revealing
section of Leaves: "Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground
toward a real heroic man?" He also wrote of Calamus: "Here the
frailest leaves of me.... Here I shade down and hide my thoughts. I do
not express them. And yet they expose me more than all my other
poems." Mr. Harlan, Secretary of the Interior, when he dismissed Walt
from his department because of Leaves, did not know about the Calamus
section--I believe they were not incorporated till later--but
Washington was acquainted with Walt and his idiosyncrasies, and,
despite W. D. Connor's spirited vindication, certain rumours would not
be stifled. Walt was thirty-six when Leaves appeared; forty-one when
Calamus was written.

I left the old man after a hearty hand-shake, a So long! just as in
his book, and returned to Philadelphia. Full of the day, I told my
policeman at the ferry that I had seen Walt. "That old gas-bag comes
here every afternoon. He gets free rides across the Delaware," and I
rejoiced to think that a soulless corporation had some appreciation of
a great poet, though the irreverence of this "powerful uneducated
person" shocked me. When I reached home I also told my mother of my
visit. She was plainly disturbed. She said that the writings of the
man were immoral, but she was pleased at my report of Walt's sanity,
sweetness, mellow optimism, and his magnetism, like some natural
force. I forgot, in my enthusiasm, that it was Walt who