uggestion that the
lighter pieces included show Walt as "not devoid of humour." We fear
that Walt's waggishness was rather heavily shod. Here is a sample of
his light-hearted paragraphing (the italics are his):--

Carelessly knocking a man's eye out with a broken axe, may be
termed a _bad axe-i-dent_.

It was in Leon Bazalgette's "Walt Whitman" that we learned of Walt's
only really humorous achievement; and even then the humour was
unconscious. It seems that during the first days of his life as a
journalist in New York, Walt essayed to compromise with Mannahatta
by wearing a frock coat, a high hat, and a flower in his lapel. We
regret greatly that no photo of Walt in this rig has been preserved,
for we would like to have seen the gentle misery of his bearing.

[Illustration]

McSORLEY'S

This afternoon we have been thinking how pleasant it would be to sit
at one of those cool tables up at McSorley's and write our copy
there. We have always been greatly allured by Dick Steele's habit of
writing his Tatler at his favourite tavern. You remember his
announcement, dated April 12, 1709:

All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment, shall
be under the article of White's Chocolate-house; poetry, under
that of Will's Coffee-house; learning, under the title of The
Grecian; foreign and domestic news, you will have from Saint
James's Coffee-house; and what else I have to offer on any
other subject shall be dated from my own apartment.

Sir Dick--would one speak of him as the first colyumist?--continued
by making what is, we suppose, one of the earliest references in
literature to the newspaper man's "expense account." But the
expenses of the reporter two centuries ago seem rather modest.
Steele said:

I once more desire my reader to consider that as I cannot keep
an ingenious man to go daily to Will's under twopence each day,
merely for his charges; to White's under sixpence; nor to The
Grecian, without allowing him some plain Spanish, to be as able
as others at the learned table; and that a good observer cannot
speak with even Kidney[*] at Saint James's without clean linen:
I say, these considerations will, I hope, make all persons
willing to comply with my humble request of a penny-a-piece.

[* Evidently the bus boy.]

But what we started to say was that if, like Dick Stee