Little Journeys to the Homes of American Authors - new book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: charity and forbearance?his entire unre- sentfulness under whatever provocation; his liberality, his universal sympathy with humanity in all ages and lands, his broad tolerance, his catholic friendliness, and his unexampled faculty of attracting affection, all prove his perfectly proportioned manliness." But Whitman differed from the disciple of Lombroso in two notable particulars: He had no quarrel with the world, and he did not wax rich. " One thing thou lackest, O Walt Whitman!" we might have said to the poet, " you are not a financier." He died poor. But this is not proof of degeneracy save on 'Change. When the children of Count Tolstoy endeavored to have him adjudged insane, the Court denied the application and voiced the wisest decision that ever came out of Russia: A man who gives away his money is not necessarily more foolish than he who saves it. And with Mr. Horace L. Traubel I say: Whitman was the sanest man I ever saw. IL SOME men make themselves homes; and others there be who rent rooms. Walt Whitman was essentially a citizen of the world: the world was his home and mankind were h's friends. There was a quality in the man peculiarly universal: a strong, virile poise that asked for nothing, but took what it needed. He loved men as brothers, yet his brothers after the flesh understood him not; he loved children?they turned to him instinctively?but he had no children of his own; he loved women and yet this strongly sexed and manly man never loved a woman. And I might here say as Philip Gilbert Hamerton said of Turner, " He was lamentably unfortunate in this: throughout his whole life he never came under the ennobling and refining influence of a good woman." It requires two to make a home. The first home was made when a woman, cradling in her loving ar...