rt. The rest was irrelevant. As to my occupation or name,
what booted it!--he had no curiosity concerning me. I grasped his
outstretched hand in both of my own.

He said not a word; neither did I.

I turned and made my way to the ferry--past the whispering lovers on the
doorsteps, and over the railway-tracks where the noisy engines puffed. As
I walked on board the boat, the wind blew up cool and fresh from the
West. The star in the East grew brighter, and other stars came out,
reflecting themselves like gems in the dark blue of the Delaware.

There was a soft sublimity in the sound of the bells that came echoing
over the waters. My heart was very full, for I had felt the thrill of
being in the presence of a great and loving soul.

It was the first time and the last that I ever saw Walt Whitman.

* * * * *

A good many writers bear no message: they carry no torch.
Sometimes they excite wonder, or they amuse and divert--divert us from
our work. To be diverted to a certain degree may be well, but there is a
point where earth ends and cloud-land begins, and even great poets
occasionally befog the things they would reveal.

Homer was seemingly blind to much simple truth; Vergil carries you away
from earth; Horace was undone without his Maecenas; Dante makes you an
exile; Shakespeare was singularly silent concerning the doubts,
difficulties and common lives of common people; Byron's corsair life does
not help you in your toil, and in his fight with English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers we crave neutrality; to be caught in the meshes of Pope's
"Dunciad" is not pleasant; and Lowell's "Fable for Critics" is only
another "Dunciad." But above all other poets who have ever lived, the
author of "Leaves of Grass" was the poet of humanity.

Milton knew all about Heaven, and Dante conducts us through Hell, but it
was left for Whitman to show us Earth. His voice never goes so high that
it breaks into an impotent falsetto, neither does it growl and snarl at
things it does not understand and not understanding does not like. He was
so great that he had no envy, and his insight was so sure that he had no
prejudice. He never boasted that he was higher, nor claimed to be less
than any of the other sons of men. He met all on terms of absolute
equality, mixing with the poor, the lowly, the fallen, the oppressed, the
cultured, the rich--simply as brother with brother. And when he said to
an outcast, "Not till