nd floor is occupied by a clothing store,
a fruit stand, and a barber shop. The building looks as though it is
probably the same one that Walt knew. Opposite it is a sign where
the comparatively innocent legend BEN'S PURE LAGER has been
deleted.

The pilgrim on Fulton Street will also want to have a look at the
office of the Brooklyn _Eagle_, that famous paper which has numbered
among its employees two such different journalists as Walt Whitman
and Edward Bok. There are many interesting considerations to be
drawn from the two volumes of Walt's writings for the _Eagle_, which
were collected (under the odd title "The Gathering of the Forces")
by Cleveland Rodgers and John Black. We have always been struck by
the complacent naivete of Walt's judgments on literature (written,
perhaps, when he was in a hurry to go swimming down at the foot of
Fulton Street). Such remarks as the following make us ponder a
little sadly. Walt wrote:

We are no admirer of such characters as Doctor Johnson. He was
a sour, malicious, egotistical man. He was a sycophant of power
and rank, withal; his biographer narrates that he "always spoke
with rough contempt of popular liberty." His head was educated
to the point of _plus_, but for his heart, might still more
unquestionably stand the sign _minus_. He insulted his equals
... and tyrannized over his inferiors. He fawned upon his
superiors, and, of course, loved to be fawned upon himself....
Nor were the freaks of this man the mere "eccentricities of
genius"; they were probably the faults of a vile, low nature.
His soul was a bad one.

The only possible comment on all this is that it is absurd, and that
evidently Walt knew very little about the great Doctor. One of the
curious things about Walt--and there is no man living who admires
him more than we do--is that he requires to be forgiven more
generously than any other great writer. There is no one who has ever
done more grotesquely unpardonable things than he--and yet, such is
the virtue of his great, saline simplicity, one always pardons them.
As a book reviewer, to judge from the specimens rescued from the
_Eagle_ files by his latest editors, he was uniquely childish.

Noting the date of Walt's blast on Doctor Johnson (December 7,
1846), it is doubtful whether we can attribute the irresponsibility
of his remarks to a desire to go swimming.

The editors of this collection venture the s