red with his colleagues. Dennis
accepts the Whole because he finds it a perfect logical system; I,
because I find it a perfect work of art. His prophet is Hegel; mine is
Walt Whitman."

"Walt Whitman! And you profess to be an artist!"

"So was he, not in words but in life. One thing to him was no better
nor worse than another; small and great, high and low, good and
bad, he accepts them all, with the instinctive delight of an actual
physical contact. Listen to him!" And he began to quote:

"I do not call one greater and one smaller,
That which fills its period and place is equal to any.
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of
the wren,
And the tree-toad is a 'chef-d'oeuvre' for the highest;
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlours of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow-crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels."

"That's all very well," objected Leslie, "though, of course, it's
rather absurd; but it does not touch the question of evil at all."

"Wait a bit," cried Ellis, "he's ready for you there."

"I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of
wickedness also.
What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?
Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent,
My gait is no fault-finder's or rejector's gait,
I moisten the roots of all that grows."

* * * * *

"This is the meal equally set, this is the meat for natural hunger,
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make appointment
with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or kept away,
The kept-woman, spunger, thief are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipped slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest."

"That's rather strong," remarked Parry.

"Don't you like it?" Ellis inquired.

"I think I might like it if I were drunk."

"Ah, but a poet, you see, is always drunk!"

'Well, I unfortunately, am often sober; and then I find the sponger
and the venerealee anything but agreeable objects."

"Besides," said Audubon, "though it's very good of Walt Whitman to
invite us all, the mere fact of dining with him, however mis