Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-01-17

what he saw He lived in an advanced,
uneasy stage of WesIeyanisna, and had as
o Senstor represented a proper people. He
was, as rumor ran, among the statesmen
who had discovered that Grants habits un-
fitted HIM for high commands. One White
House story comes to me of his leaving
Lincoln in wrath, 'slamming the doors be-
hind him." because of some Presidential
obtuseness in regard to Grant 1 think
also that he was the hero of the famous
whisky story of Lincoln, now an undying
part of the literature of American wit
Tell me, Senator, the brand of Grants
whisky, as want to send a barrel to some
of the other Generals."
One day his eyes opened to heenormities
of Whitman's lines, and the poet-wss sent
about his business.
Whitman Turned Out of His Place.
No such unholy hands should pollute the
Sscred records of that department Whit
man went, and might have been gentle
man Of the pavement, indeed, in the saddest
form had not the poet Stedman, if am
sure in my remembrance, and John Hay
found him access into another department.
Here he toiled at small wages, living in
humble lodgings, pacing Pennsylvania ave-
nue of the afternoons on his daily errand to
the hospital and camp.
Tefer to this halo of martyrdom incident,
nor do see any trace of it in his writings.
He was not q man to nourish ennities nor
recall dark remembrances. It was his nature
rather to respect as s solemn dispensation
the bereavement of intellect which could
see sin in his poems, to regard it with the
sympathy we give to the blind the halt and
the dumb
Whitman was never in the idle throng.
Occasionally glimpses of him at theaters.
OF the noisy, frothy world he never seemed
to be part, was more at home with the
chestnut trees and the shady lanes. I do
not think that we knew then, as it has come
to Us since, that he was living a life of
pronunciation. He was very poor. His
salary was small United for the camp
he had devoted himself TO the hospital
He lived in reserved, hon orable penury;
practiced personal abstinence that every
penny might go to the hospitals
The Foet in the Hospitals.
It was not for our poet to go to the wars,
and his life was given to the camps, and es-
pecially to the hospital 1t was humble
work, but it is, believe me, no want of re-
spect and honor for the clanorous doings of
the battle-the onset, the rally, the retreat
that makes me feel there was a singular
kind of heroism in what this laboring clerk
in the departments did for the suffering.
Whitman himself, frank as he is about
everything, has little to say of it in his
poems. l recall the dead csvalryman, shot
through the neck, and who could not live:
Come, sweet DEATH be persuaded, o
beautiful death
In mercy come quickly.
There are likewise some further lines
one of the few references to these scenes
AS rule, however. silence upon what even
his admirers wall regard as the noblest
episode in his life:
thread my way through the hospitals,
The hurt and the wounded pacify with
soothing hand;
6cme suffer so mach. recall the experience
sweet and sad,
Many soldiers loving arms about this neck
have crossed and rested,
Many a soldiers kiss dwells on thesebearded
lips.
I never was submerged by the Whitman
even in earlier davs. saw, as
Emerson wrote, that in his book were in
comparable things incomparably said.
recognized the wit of what 1 once heard
from Wendell Phillips, that there were
many kinds of leaves among the 'Ieaves of
Grass, but no fig leaves. 1t was an indo-
lent book, so much that might have been
weeded out, if the author had toreseen that
his work was to be something more than a
daring experiment.
What Pruning Would Have Done.
Ben Jonson's regret that Shakespeare, in
stead of never blotting a line, had not blot
ted thousand, applied with more force to
Whitman than to any great writer of the
century except Southey and Byron And
even the improprieties which barred it from
the bazars, the leaves, which were not fig
leaves, were the mere saving of things so OBJ |
vious that it seemed such waste of time to
bay them. Why rob me of night and silence |
and meditation and the self-respect of nv
thoughts? Nor could one accept, without pro- |
test, the caprice which denuded his poetry of |
harmony Whitman himselfis my authority |
for the fact that he carefully culled out all |
touches of rhythm and metre and held to |
his rugged uneven lines This is a loss to |
literature. No one can read "My Captain
or Pioneers" without seeing that there was |
capacity for music in this man, as definite |
and sweeping as in Swinburne or Poe. 1 |
know few lines with more harmony than |
these on Lincoln:
flushed be the camps TODAY,
And, soldiers, let US drape our war-worn |
weapons,
And each with musing soul retire to cele-
Our dear Commanders death.
No more for him l1fe's stormy conflicts
Nor, victory, nor deteat-no more times |
dark events
Changing like ceaseless clouds across the
sky.
Hhltman's work was never apart from /
the charm of his personality. He was al |
ways Socrates loafng about the streets of /
Athens. and I never saw him in the war |
days without the idea that he was a revela-
tion of the old Greek. And as was ont of |
range Of the worship, with perhaps taint |
OF heresy, the exclusion of his books from |
circulation, attorney generals of Boston |
issuing warrants, Cabinet ministers chasing |
MIN out of departments as noisome things |
are chased with broom-this was such an
ignominious business
suggestion for Elimination.
Reasons of revenue and personal comfort
were to be considered, as Whitman was
poor; what he could save from his hire as
clerk going to the soldiers in the way of |
By-uPs, tobacco and stationery. This iusti-
hed such an editing of his works as would |
pass the muster of the police 1t had been
done abroad. Rossetti's edition, as decor
ous as Watts hymns, with the Rosseti
pruning, had found in England. Other
editions were among tie current literature
Of the railway stall and the shop. 1 was
among those of Whitman's friends who
hoped iE some such manner Tor his larger,
truer aaS soore remunerative recognition.
In tn r37od of thinking one day ran
against Fhitman sailing down Seventh
street in his msjestical, three-decker way,
the little brick house in which JEFF
ferson had written the Declaration, then
sacred landmark of Philadelphia, but now
crushed under the grinding heel of trade.
he was steering for Forney's Office, at
Seventh and Chestnut streets I was clad