life women students of nature, women's clubs all over the States, and women correspondents and visitors continually appealed to him for help in their studies, and for papers and addresses that would contribute to their knowledge of nature. Their getting out of doors and their emancipation have gone hand in hand. CHAPTER XII SPECIMEN DAYS AND THOUGHTS 1893-1895 To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, WHITMAN WHEN one has at command such self-revealing passages as the Journal entries, already and hereinafter quoted, comments not really necessary seem intrusive; hence, chiefly through such the story is carried along. As already shown, these quiet days, so far removed from the men and events that were more obviously stirring and influencing the world, were in reality subtly influencing the lives of his fellows. The plain, homely, unostentatious man in that little hamlet by the Hudson first lived the days for themselves alone, and later drew from them the material for the books which have opened the eyes and delighted the minds of two generations of readers. As he went about his tasks in garden and vineyard, and sauntered in field and wood, he unconsciously exemplified his conviction that all of us have the wealth of the universe at our doorsours for the mere stretching forth of our hands. Alone with his cat at Riverby, in January, he writes to Benton: Winter bears down hard, but I manage to keep him at bay.... There is little new with me. The solitude of life increases, as I suppose it does with you; the shadows are a little deeper and longer as the sun creeps down the sky. My seventeen acres brought me $4000 expenses $1500, which leaves a good margin of profit. And then we are free from it from October till April.... The old farm out at Roxbury has prospered also. My brother and his family are doing well. Indeed, I have sold it to them, and they have made a good payment. We spent part of July and August out there, and had a good time. . . . I have read Thoreau's 'Autumn,' which is dull-only now and then a passage worth printing. That man Blake is not the man to edit those Journals. It needs some one who knows a crisp turnip from a pithy one. In his Journals Thoreau describes everything. He experimented endlessly; tried to transmute everything to gold, and only now and then succeeded. Renan's last book, 'Letters and Recollections,' is delightful. It is curious that so many men who repudiate the creed of Christianity have its spirit. When Renan was smitten upon one cheek, he actually did turn the other. . . . A paper of mine on 'The Decadence of Theology' will probably be in the next N. A. Review. [Journal] Feb. 14.... Symonds's mind has not the clear, strong stamp of Arnold's. He will not leave so definite and indelible a mark upon literature. In power of appreciation he is greater than Arnold has wider sympathies, but has not his singleness and directness. Arnold's thoughts are more typical and spinal. In a few days he goes to New York, and, after attending a dinner at the Authors' Club, makes this naïve entry: .. Spoke for the first time and did fairly well. Papers say my speech and J. Jefferson's were the speeches of the evening. With practice I think I could beat any of them too much chaff in their speeches no serious word. On March 2d, in Washington, he writes: Walk up to my old house on V Street in morning and stand as long as I dare at the gate looking in. Place much neglected and in need of repairs. The brick walk I laid is still in good condition, as is part of the fence I built. What a host of thoughts and memories crowd in upon me! March 4. Snow and cold; a villainous day for the inauguration of Cleveland. We start at II in a covered wagon. See C. and Harrison pass up the avenue in a carriage. Throngs of shivering people; slush on the streets; snow in the air. At the Capitol, after long waiting, we witness the ceremonies in front, jumping and slapping to keep warm. Then Cleveland steps forward and speaks his piece, with uncovered head. 'Grover, put on your hat!' we all feel like shouting. I only hear his strong, manly voice buffeted by the wind. I The record tells of dining with Major Saxton; ' of looking up his old friends in the Treasury; of dining with Roosevelt; of the Bakers holding two receptions for him; and of his speaking about the birds before a class of young women at the Normal School, later walking with them through the fields at Chevy Chase; and of visiting the grave of William O'Connor. Major Willard E. Saxton, a friend of Whitman, Burroughs, and that group in the sixties, is (1925) the sole surviving member of the Brook Farm Colony. He went there as a boy of fifteen, as compositor on The Harbinger. [Journal] March 25. Made my second after-dinner speech last night at a dinner given by the Aldine Club to Mr. Aldrich. Did not do so well as at the Authors' Club dinner - ate too much, and drank too much champagne - fancied I would not be called upon. Yet I was the only speaker who repeated any of Mr. A.'s poetry, and I did not learn it for the occasion. [J. B. to L. L. P.] I am going to take a bit of this birthday to write to you. I think I should have done it had I not received your delightful letter, as I was thinking of you this morning. I always think of all the pleasant things I can on my birthday, and the thought of you is always pleasant and cheering. The sad thoughts will steal in too, but I make them keep pleasant company. Yes, indeed, we have waste places here, vast stretches of them. I do the best I can to fill them or to cover them up, and yet they eat up a great deal of one's life. Most of the winter my family has been in Poughkeepsie, and I have been there part of the time. Every week or two I would have to flee back to my solitude here, and to the spirits that fill it. I would open the house, and the cat and I revel in the bliss of being let alone for a few days. If I had had wings or snow-shoes, I should have come your way. I came many times in spirit as it was, but spirits are greatly hampered, and are very helpless. I wish we might carry our bodies with us into the next world. In March I spent two weeks in Washington, but the air was full of ghosts to me-ghosts of departed friends and departed days.... I have material for a book on W. W. which I shall have put in type before long. I have too much, and am holding on to see how much it will shrink. ... I think you will be interested in Professor Trigg's book on Whitman and Browning, lately published by Macmillan & Co. It is not very wonderful, but it shows that Whitman's soul is marching on. I am so glad that you and Miss Jordan are coming to Poughkeepsie. If the weather is fair you shall come up here and we will picnic in the woods. Many self-delineating passages from the Journal must be omitted, not because they are 'pithy turnips,' but because, however crisp and good, they are so numerous. One cannot, however, omit an April entry- the embryo of his delightful verses 'The Song of the Toad.' ('Bird and Bough.') With each returning spring this insistent, persistent, pervasive call appeals to him: Warm and bright, real vernal warmth. Currants showing the fruit stems. These days the song of the toad - tr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-· - is heard in the land. At nearly all hours I hear it, and it is as welcome as any bird song. She is in the pools and puddles now depositing that long chain or ravelling of eggs. Her dapper little mate rides upon her broad back and fertilizes the eggs as they are laid. Yet the April twilights were to come and go for many a year before he was to celebrate in verse that solo of the blinking toad, that 'tender monotone of song' rising from the ponds and pools, which to him symbolized the knell of winter. A characteristic passage from the Journal, April 29, blends his present with his past: May Atlantic came this morning and recalled a May Atlantic that came thirty-two years ago, on such a morning, when I was living at Marlboro. It had an essay in it by David A. Wasson, on 'Rest and Motion,' and I remember well how eagerly I sat down outside the door to dip into it before school-time. The hills across the river were green with the young rye, or red with the new furrow, and life to me was full of joy and eagerness. Oh, if I could take up this Atlantic with the same zest and expectation! Yet the day is sweet to me. The call of the highhole as it comes up from a distant field has the old suggestiveness. Even the wheezy cackle of the crow-blackbird is pleasing. Why do all the bird voices call up my youth and the Old Home? It is something of those longgone days that makes them linger in my ear. I have just been out digging rocks with the boys, and satisfying a sort of craving for rocks and soil that comes upon me in the spring. Father was a great rock-digger and rock-breaker. Every spring, till he got too old, he used to build a piece of wall with stone from a meadow or pasture, and thus make many spears of grass grow where none grew before. It is a keen satisfaction. In a few days now we have made room for several more grape-vines by digging out the place-rock where it came to the surface. We broke the sleep of long ages of those rocks, sometimes with bars and wedges, sometimes with dynamite. Where the sun has not shone in some millions of years, we let it in. In seams all but invisible, we find fibres of roots, and now and then a lichenous growth merely discoloring the stone. How life will squeeze into the narrowest quarters! Now he and Julian take a long tramp through Bear Fly; the woods are flooded with sunlight; they start up a bittern; they scale the rocky crests and scramble through sunken valleys. Halted by the swift waters of Black Creek, they build a bridge of stones, and push on. Presently they meet a family group of hepaticas - blue, pink, white, purple 'like bevies of happyfaced girls on their way to a picnic'; now they come upon dicentra 'fairy clothes-lines strung along the faces of the |