nrad pursue
his oblique method of taletelling; the pomp and circumstance of a
lordly narrative style roll to a triumphant conclusion. This Polish
writer easily heads the present school of English fiction.

His most buoyant and attractive girl is Freya Nelson (or Nielsen) in
the volume alluded to; she, however, is pure Caucasian, and perhaps
more American than European. Her beauty caresses the eye. The story is
a good one, though it ends unhappily--another cause for complaint on
the part of the sentimentalists who prefer molasses to meat. But this
is a tale which is also literature. Conrad will never be coerced into
offering his readers sugar-coated tittle-tattle. And at a period when
the distaff of fiction is too often in the hands of men the voice of
the romantic realist and poetic ironist, Joseph Conrad, sounds a
dynamic masculine bass amid the shriller choir. He is an aboriginal
force. Let us close with the hearty affirmation of Walt Whitman:
"Camerado! this is no book, who touches this, touches a man."

II

A VISIT TO WALT WHITMAN

My edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is dated 1867, the third,
if I am not mistaken, the first appearing in 1855. Inside is pasted a
card upon which is written in large, clumsy letters: "Walt Whitman,
Camden, New Jersey, July, 1877." I value this autograph, because Walt
gave it to me; rather I paid him for it, the proceeds, two dollars (I
think that was the amount), going to some asylum in Camden. In
addition, the "good grey poet" was kind enough to add a woodcut of
himself as he appeared in the 1855 volume, "hankering, gross,
mystical, nude," and another of his old mother, with her shrewd,
kindly face. Walt is in his shirt-sleeves, a hand on his hip, the
other in his pocket, his neck bare, the pose that of a nonchalant
workman--though in actual practice he was always opposed to work of
any sort; on his head is a slouch-hat, and you recall his line: "I
wear my hat as I please, indoors or out." The picture is
characteristic, even to the sensual mouth and Bowery-boy pose. You
almost hear him say: "I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own
bones." Altogether a different man from the later bard, the heroic
apparition of Broadway, Pennsylvania Avenue, and Chestnut Street. I
had convalesced from a severe attack of Edgar Allan Poe only to fall
desperately ill with Whitmania. Youth is ever in revolt, age alone
brings