.
Besides that, during these years Emerson sent many of his closest friends,
including Alcott and Thoreau, to see Walt, giving them letters of
introduction to him. This is not the treatment usually accorded a man who
has committed an unpardonable offense.

"I know that afterwards, during Walt's stay in Boston, Emerson frequently
came down from Concord to see him, and that they had many walks and talks
together, these conferences usually ending with a dinner at the American
House, at that time Emerson's favorite Boston hotel. On several occasions
they met by appointment in our counting-room. Their relations were as
cordial and friendly as possible, and it was always Emerson who sought out
Walt, and never the other way, although, of course, Walt appreciated and
enjoyed Emerson's companionship very much. In truth, Walt never sought the
company of notables at all, and was always very shy of purely literary
society. I know that at this time Walt was invited by Emerson to Concord,
but declined to go, probably through his fear that he would see too much
of the literary coterie that then clustered there, chiefly around
Emerson."

XIV

Whitman gave himself to men as men and not as scholars or poets, and gave
himself purely as a man. While not specially averse to meeting people on
literary or intellectual grounds, yet it was more to his taste to meet on
the broadest, commonest, human grounds. What you had seen or felt or
suffered or done was of much more interest to him than what you had read
or thought; your speculation about the soul interested him less than the
last person you had met, or the last chore you had done.

Any glimpse of the farm, the shop, the household--any bit of real life,
anything that carried the flavor and quality of concrete reality--was very
welcome to him; herein, no doubt, showing the healthy, objective, artist
mind. He never tired of hearing me talk about the birds or wild animals,
or my experiences in camp in the woods, the kind of characters I had met
there, and the flavor of the life of remote settlements in Maine or
Canada. His inward, subjective life was ample of itself; he was familiar
with all your thoughts and speculations beforehand: what he craved was
wider experience,--to see what you had seen, and feel what you had felt.
He was fond of talking with returned travelers and explorers, and with
sailors, soldiers, mechanics; much of his vast stores of information upon
all manner of subjects