or him than I was now by his condemnation.
By and by W. had his horse hitched up, and we started for Glendale, ten
miles distant, to see young Gilchrist, the artist. A fine drive through a
level farming and truck-gardening country; warm, but breezy. W. drives
briskly, and salutes every person we meet, little and big, black and
white, male and female. Nearly all return his salute cordially. He said he
knew but few of those he spoke to, but that, as he grew older, the old
Long Island custom of his people, to speak to every one on the road, was
strong upon him. One tipsy man in a buggy responded, 'Why, pap, how d' ye
do, pap?' etc. We talked of many things. I recall this remark of W., as
something I had not before thought of, that it was difficult to see what
the old feudal world would have come to without Christianity: it would
have been like a body acted upon by the centrifugal force without the
centripetal. Those haughty lords and chieftains needed the force of
Christianity to check and curb them, etc. W. knew the history of many
prominent houses on the road: here a crazy man lived, with two colored men
to look after him; there, in that fine house among the trees, an old
maid, who had spent a large fortune on her house and lands, and was now
destitute, yet she was a woman of remarkable good sense, etc. We returned
to Camden before dark, W. apparently not fatigued by the drive of twenty
miles."

In death what struck me most about the face was its perfect symmetry. It
was such a face, said Mr. Conway, as Rembrandt would have selected from a
million. "It is the face of an aged loving child. As I looked, it was with
the reflection that, during an acquaintance of thirty-six years, I never
heard from those lips a word of irritation, or depreciation of any being.
I do not believe that Buddha, of whom he appeared an avatar, was more
gentle to all men, women, children, and living things."

IX

For one of the best pen-sketches of Whitman in his old age we are indebted
to Dr. J. Johnston, a young Scotch physician of Bolton, England, who
visited Whitman in the summer of 1890. I quote from a little pamphlet
which the doctor printed on his return home:--

"The first thing about himself that struck me was the physical immensity
and magnificent proportions of the man, and, next, the picturesque majesty
of his presence as a whole.

"He sat quite erect in a great cane-runged chair, cross-legged, and clad
in rough gray clothes, wit