Part 1

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Marc D'Hooghe and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

COMPLETE PROSE WORKS

Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Good Bye My Fancy

By Walt Whitman

CONTENTS

SPECIMEN DAYS

A Happy Hour's Command Answer to an Insisting Friend Genealogy--Van Velsor and Whitman The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries The Maternal Homestead Two Old Family Interiors Paumanok, and my Life on it as Child and Young Man My First Reading--Lafayette Printing Office--Old Brooklyn Growth--Health--Work My Passion for Ferries Broadway Sights Omnibus Jaunts and Drivers Plays and Operas too Through Eight Years Sources of Character--Results--1860 Opening of the Secession War National Uprising and Volunteering Contemptuous Feeling Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861 The Stupor Passes--Something Else Begins Down at the Front After First Fredericksburg Back to Washington Fifty Hours Left Wounded on the Field Hospital Scenes and Persons Patent-Office Hospital The White House by Moonlight An Army Hospital Ward A Connecticut Case Two Brooklyn Boys A Secesh Brave The Wounded from Chancellorsville A Night Battle over a Week Since Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier Some Specimen Cases My Preparations for Visits Ambulance Processions Bad Wounds--the Young The Most Inspiriting of all War's Shows Battle of Gettysburg A Cavalry Camp A New York Soldier Home-Made Music Abraham Lincoln Heated Term Soldiers and Talks Death of a Wisconsin Officer Hospitals Ensemble A Silent Night Ramble Spiritual Characters among the Soldiers Cattle Droves about Washington Hospital Perplexity Down at the Front Paying the Bounties Rumors, Changes, Etc. Virginia Summer of 1864 A New Army Organization fit for America Death of a Hero Hospital Scenes--Incidents A Yankee Soldier Union Prisoners South Deserters A Glimpse of War's Hell-Scenes Gifts--Money--Discrimination Items from My Note Books A Case from Second Bull Run Army Surgeons--Aid Deficiencies The Blue Everywhere A Model Hospital Boys in the Army Burial of a Lady Nurse Female Nurses for Soldiers Southern Escapees The Capitol by Gas-Light The Inauguration Attitude of Foreign Governments During the War The Weather--Does it Sympathize with These Times? Inauguration Ball Scene at the Capitol A Yankee Antique Wounds and Diseases Death of President Lincoln Sherman's Army Jubilation--its Sudden Stoppage No Good Portrait of Lincoln Releas'd Union Prisoners from South Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier The Armies Returning The Grand Review Western Soldiers A Soldier on Lincoln Two Brothers, one South, one North Some Sad Cases Yet Calhoun's Real Monument Hospitals Closing Typical Soldiers "Convulsiveness" Three Years Summ'd up The Million Dead, too, Summ'd up The Real War will never get in the Books An Interregnum Paragraph New Themes Enter'd Upon Entering a Long Farm-Lane To the Spring and Brook An Early Summer Reveille Birds Migrating at Midnight Bumble-Bees Cedar-Apples Summer Sights and Indolences Sundown Perfume--Quail-Notes--the Hermit Thrush A July Afternoon by the Pond Locusts and Katy-Dids The Lesson of a Tree Autumn Side-Bits The Sky--Days and Nights--Happiness Colors--A Contrast November 8, '76 Crows and Crows A Winter-Day on the Sea-Beach Sea-Shore Fancies In Memory of Thomas Paine A Two Hours' Ice-Sail Spring Overtures--Recreations One of the Human Kinks An Afternoon Scene The Gates Opening The Common Earth, the Soil Birds and Birds and Birds Full-Starr'd Nights Mulleins and Mulleins Distant Sounds A Sun-Bath--Nakedness The Oaks and I A Quintette The First Frost--Mems Three Young Men's Deaths February Days A Meadow Lark Sundown Lights Thoughts Under an Oak--A Dream Clover and Hay Perfume An Unknown Bird Whistling Horse-Mint Three of Us Death of William Cullen Bryant Jaunt up the Hudson Happiness and Raspberries A Specimen Tramp Family Manhattan from the Bay Human and Heroic New York Hours for the Soul Straw-Color'd and other Psyches A Night Remembrance Wild Flowers A Civility Too Long Neglected Delaware River--Days and Nights Scenes on Ferry and River--Last Winter's Nights The First Spring Day on Chestnut Street Up the Hudson to Ulster County Days at J.B.'s--Turf Fires--Spring Songs Meeting a Hermit An Ulster County Waterfall Walter Dumont and his Medal Hudson River Sights Two City Areas Certain Hours Central Park Walks and Talks A Fine Afternoon, 4 to 6 Departing of the Big Steamers Two Hours on the Minnesota Mature Summer Days and Night Exposition Building--New City Hall--River-Trip Swallows on the River Begin a Long Jaunt West In the Sleeper Missouri State Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas The Prairies--(and an Undeliver'd Speech) On to Denver--A Frontier Incident An Hour on Kenosha Summit An Egotistical "Find" New Scenes--New Joys Steam-Power, Telegraphs, Etc. America's Back-Bone The Parks Art Features Denver Impressions I Turn South and then East Again Unfulfill'd Wants--the Arkansas River A Silent Little Follower--the Coreopsis The Prairies and Great Plains in Poetry The Spanish Peaks--Evening on the Plains America's Characteristic Landscape Earth's Most Important Stream Prairie Analogies--the Tree Question Mississippi Valley Literature An Interviewer's Item The Women of the West The Silent General President Hayes's Speeches St. Louis Memoranda Nights on the Mississippi Upon our Own Land Edgar Poe's Significance Beethoven's Septette A Hint of Wild Nature Loafing in the Woods A Contralto Voice Seeing Niagara to Advantage Jaunting to Canada Sunday with the Insane Reminiscence of Elias Hicks Grand Native Growth A Zollverein between the U. S. and Canada The St. Lawrence Line The Savage Saguenay Capes Eternity and Trinity Chicoutimi, and Ha-ha Bay The Inhabitants--Good Living Cedar-Plums Like--Names Death of Thomas Carlyle Carlyle from American Points of View A Couple of Old Friends--A Coleridge Bit A Week's Visit to Boston The Boston of To-Day My Tribute to Four Poets Millet's Pictures--Last Items Birds--and a Caution Samples of my Common-Place Book My Native Sand and Salt Once More Hot Weather New York "Ouster's Last Rally" Some Old Acquaintances--Memories A Discovery of Old Age A Visit, at the Last, to R. W. Emerson Other Concord Notations Boston Common--More of Emerson An Ossianic Night--Dearest Friends Only a New Ferry Boat Death of Longfellow Starting Newspapers The Great Unrest of which We are Part By Emerson's Grave At Present Writing--Personal After Trying a Certain Book Final Confessions--Literary Tests Nature and Democracy--Morality

COLLECT

ONE OR TWO INDEX ITEMS

DEMOCRATIC VISTAS

ORIGINS OF ATTEMPTED SECESSION

PREFACES TO "LEAVES OF GRASS"

Preface, 1855, to first issue of "Leaves of Grass" Preface, 1872, to "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free" Preface, 1876, to L. of G. and "Two Rivulets"

POETRY TO-DAY IN AMERICA--SHAKESPEARE--THE FUTURE

A MEMORANDUM AT A VENTURE

DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

TWO LETTERS

NOTES LEFT OVER

Nationality (and Yet) Emerson's Books (the Shadows of Them) Ventures, on an Old Theme British Literature Darwinism (then Furthermore) "Society" The Tramp and Strike Questions Democracy in the New World Foundation Stages--then Others General Suffrage, Elections, Etc. Who Gets the Plunder? Friendship (the Real Article) Lacks and Wants Yet Rulers Strictly Out of the Masses Monuments--the Past and Present Little or Nothing New After All A Lincoln Reminiscence Freedom Book-Classes-America's Literature Our Real Culmination An American Problem The Last Collective Compaction

PIECES IN EARLY YOUTH

Dough Face Song Death in the School-Room One Wicked Impulse The Last Loyalist Wild Frank's Return The Boy Lover The Child and the Profligate Lingave's Temptation Little Jane Dumb Kate Talk to an Art Union Blood-Money Wounded in the House of Friends Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight

NOVEMBER BOUGHS

OUR EMINENT VISITORS, Past, Present and Future

THE BIBLE AS POETRY

FATHER TAYLOR (AND ORATORY)

THE SPANISH ELEMENT IN OUR NATIONALITY

WHAT LURKS BEHIND SHAKSPERE'S HISTORICAL PLAYS?

A THOUGHT ON SHAKSPERE

ROBERT BURNS AS POET AND PERSON

A WORD ABOUT TENNYSON

SLANG IN AMERICA

AN INDIAN BUREAU REMINISCENCE

SOME DIARY NOTES AT RANDOM

Negro Slaves in New York Canada Nights Country Days and Nights Central Park Notes Plate Glass Notes

SOME WAR MEMORANDA

Washington Street Scenes The 195th Pennsylvania Left-hand Writing by Soldiers Central Virginia in '64 Paying the First Color'd Troops

FIVE THOUSAND POEMS

THE OLD BOWERY

NOTES TO LATE ENGLISH BOOKS

Preface to Reader in British Islands Additional Note, 1887 Preface to English Edition "Democratic Vistas"

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

NEW ORLEANS IN 1848

SMALL MEMORANDA

Attorney General's Office, 1865 A Glint Inside of Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet Appointments Note to a Friend Written Impromptu in an Album The Place Gratitude fills in a Fine Character

LAST OF THE WAR CASES

ELIAS HICKS, Notes (such as they are)

George Fox and Shakspere

GOOD-BYE MY FANCY

AN OLD MAN'S REJOINDER

OLD POETS

Ship Ahoy For Queen Victoria's Birthday

AMERICAN NATIONAL LITERATURE

GATHERING THE CORN

A DEATH BOUQUET

SOME LAGGARDS YET

The Perfect Human Voice Shakspere for America "Unassailed Renown" Inscription for a Little Book on Giordano Bruno Splinters Health (Old Style) Gay-heartedness As in a Swoon L. of G. After the Argument For Us Two, Reader Dear

MEMORANDA

A World's Show New York--the Bay--the Old Name A Sick Spell To be Present Only "Intestinal Agitation" "Walt Whitman's Last 'Public'" Ingersoll's Speech Feeling Fairly Old Brooklyn Days Two Questions Preface to a Volume An Engineer's Obituary Old Actors, Singers, Shows, Etc., in New York Some Personal and Old Age Jottings Out in the Open Again America's Bulk Average Last Saved Items

WALT WHITMAN'S LAST

SPECIMEN DAYS

A HAPPY HOUR'S COMMAND

_Down in the Woods, July 2d, 1882_.-If I do it at all I must delay no longer. Incongruous and full of skips and jumps as is that huddle of diary-jottings, war-memoranda of 1862-'65, Nature-notes of 1877-'81, with Western and Canadian observations afterwards, all bundled up and tied by a big string, the resolution and indeed mandate comes to me this day, this hour,--(and what a day! What an hour just passing! the luxury of riant grass and blowing breeze, with all the shows of sun and sky and perfect temperature, never before so filling me, body and soul),--to go home, untie the bundle, reel out diary-scraps and memoranda, just as they are, large or small, one after another, into print-pages,[1] and let the melange's lackings and wants of connection take care of themselves. It will illustrate one phase of humanity anyhow; how few of life's days and hours (and they not by relative value or proportion, but by chance) are ever noted. Probably another point, too, how we give long preparations for some object, planning and delving and fashioning, and then, when the actual hour for doing arrives, find ourselves still quite unprepared, and tumble the thing together, letting hurry and crudeness tell the story better than fine work. At any rate I obey my happy hour's command, which seems curiously imperative. May be, if I don't do anything else, I shall send out the most wayward, spontaneous, fragmentary book ever printed.

Note:

[1] The pages from 1 to 15 are nearly verbatim an off-hand letter of mine in January, 1882, to an insisting friend. Following, I give some gloomy experiences. The war of attempted secession has, of course, been the distinguishing event of my time. I commenced at the close of 1862, and continued steadily through '63, '64 and '65, to visit the sick and wounded of the army, both on the field and in the hospitals in and around Washington city. From the first I kept little note-books for impromptu jottings in pencil to refresh my memory of names and circumstances, and what was specially wanted, &c. In these, I brief'd cases, persons, sights, occurrences in camp, by the bed-side, and not seldom by the corpses of the dead. Some were scratch'd down from narratives I heard and itemized while watching, or waiting, or tending somebody amid those scenes. I have dozens of such little note-books left, forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full of associations never to be possibly said or sung. I wish I could convey to the reader the associations that attach to these soil'd and creas'd livraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fasten'd with a pin. I leave them just as I threw them by after the war, blotch'd here and there with more than one blood-stain, hurriedly written, sometimes at the clinique, not seldom amid the excitement of uncertainty, or defeat, or of action, or getting ready for it, or a march. Most of the pages from 20 to 75 are verbatim copies of those lurid and blood-smuch'd little notebooks.

Very different are most of the memoranda that follow. Some time after the war ended I had a paralytic stroke, which prostrated me for several years. In 1876 I began to get over the worst of it. From this date, portions of several seasons, especially summers, I spent at a secluded haunt down in Camden county, New Jersey--Timber creek, quite a little river (it enters from the great Delaware, twelve miles away)--with primitive solitudes, winding stream, recluse and woody banks, sweet-feeding springs, and all the charms that birds, grass, wild-flowers, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, walnut trees, &c., can bring. Through these times, and on these spots, the diary from page 76 onward was mostly written.

The COLLECT afterwards gathers up the odds and ends of whatever pieces I can now lay hands on, written at various times past, and swoops all together like fish in a net.

I suppose I publish and leave the whole gathering, first, from that eternal tendency to perpetuate and preserve which is behind all Nature, authors included; second, to symbolize two or three specimen interiors, personal and other, out of the myriads of my time, the middle range of the Nineteenth century in the New World; a strange, unloosen'd, wondrous time. But the book is probably without any definite purpose that can be told in a statement.

ANSWER TO AN INSISTING FRIEND

You ask for items, details of my early life--of genealogy and parentage, particularly of the women of my ancestry, and of its far-back Netherlands stock on the maternal side--of the region where I was born and raised, and my mother and father before me, and theirs before them--with a word about Brooklyn and New York cities, the times I lived there as lad and young man. You say you want to get at these details mainly as the go-befores and embryons of "Leaves of Grass." Very good; you shall have at least some specimens of them all. I have often thought of the meaning of such things--that one can only encompass and complete matters of that kind by 'exploring behind, perhaps very far behind, themselves directly, and so into their genesis, antecedents, and cumulative stages. Then as luck would have it, I lately whiled away the tedium of a week's half-sickness and confinement, by collating these very items for another (yet unfulfilled, probably abandon'd,) purpose; and if you will be satisfied with them, authentic in date-occurrence and fact simply, and told my own way, garrulous-like, here they are. I shall not hesitate to make extracts, for I catch at anything to save labor; but those will be the best versions of what I want to convey.

GENEALOGY--VAN VELSOR AND WHITMAN

The later years of the last century found the Van Velsor family, my mother's side, living on their own farm at Cold Spring, Long Island, New York State, near the eastern edge of Queen's county, about a mile from the harbor.[2] My father's side--probably the fifth generation from the first English arrivals in New England--were at the same time farmers on their own land--(and a fine domain it was, 500 acres, all good soil, gently sloping east and south, about one-tenth woods, plenty of grand old trees,) two or three miles off, at West Hills, Suffolk county. The Whitman name in the Eastern States, and so branch and South, starts undoubtedly from one John Whitman, born 1602, in Old England, where he grew up, married, and his eldest son was born in 1629. He came over in the "True Love" in 1640 to America, and lived in Weymouth, Mass., which place became the mother-hive of the New-Englanders of the name; he died in 1692. His brother, Rev. Zechariah Whitman, also came over in the "True Love," either at that time or soon after, and lived at Milford, Conn. A son of this Zechariah, named Joseph, migrated to Huntington, Long Island, and permanently settled there. Savage's "Genealogical Dictionary" (vol. iv, p. 524) gets the Whitman family establish'd at Huntington, per this Joseph, before 1664. It is quite certain that from that beginning, and from Joseph, the West Hill Whitmans, and all others in Suffolk county, have since radiated, myself among the number. John and Zechariah both went to England and back again divers times; they had large families, and several of their children were born in the old country. We hear of the father of John and Zechariah, Abijah Whitman, who goes over into the 1500's, but we know little about him, except that he also was for some time in America.

These old pedigree-reminiscences come up to me vividly from a visit I made not long since (in my 63d year) to West Hills, and to the burial grounds of my ancestry, both sides. I extract from notes of that visit, written there and then:

Note:

[2] Long Island was settled first on the west end by the Dutch from Holland, then on the east end by the English--the dividing line of the two nationalities being a little west of Huntington where my father's folks lived, and where I was born.

THE OLD WHITMAN AND VAN VELSOR CEMETERIES

_July 29, 1881_.--After more than forty years' absence, (except a brief visit, to take my father there once more, two years before he died,) went down Long Island on a week' s jaunt to the place where I was born, thirty miles from New York city. Rode around the old familiar spots, viewing and pondering and dwelling long upon them, every-thing coming back to me. Went to the old Whitman homestead on the upland and took a view eastward, inclining south, over the broad and beautiful farm lands of my grandfather (1780,) and my father. There was the new house (1810,) the big oak a hundred and fifty or two hundred years old; there the well, the sloping kitchen-garden, and a little way off even the well-kept remains of the dwelling of my great-grandfather (1750-'60) still standing, with its mighty timbers and low ceilings. Near by, a stately grove of tall, vigorous black-walnuts, beautiful, Apollo-like, the sons or grandsons, no doubt, of black-walnuts during or before 1776. On the other side of the road spread the famous apple orchard, over twenty acres, the trees planted by hands long mouldering in the grave (my uncle Jesse's,) but quite many of them evidently capable of throwing out their annual blossoms and fruit yet.

I now write these lines seated on an old grave (doubtless of a century since at least) on the burial hill of the Whitmans of many generations. Fifty or more graves are quite plainly traceable, and as many more decay'd out of all form--depress'd mounds, crumbled and broken stones, cover'd with moss--the gray and sterile hill, the clumps of chestnuts outside, the silence, just varied by the soughing wind. There is always the deepest eloquence of sermon or poem in any of these ancient graveyards of which Long Island has so many; so what must this one have been to me? My whole family history, with its succession of links, from the first settlement down to date, told here--three centuries concentrate on this sterile acre.

The next day, July 30, I devoted to the maternal locality, and if possible was still more penetrated and impress'd. I write this paragraph on the burial hul of the Van Velsors, near Cold Spring, the most significant depository of the dead that could be imagin'd, without the slightest help from art, but far ahead of it, soil sterile, a mostly bare plateau-flat of half an acre, the top of a hill, brush and well grown trees and dense woods bordering all around, very primi-tive, secluded, no visitors, no road (you cannot drive here, you have to bring the dead on foot, and follow on foot.) Two or three-score graves quite plain; as many more almost rubb'd out. My grandfather Cornelius and my grandmother Amy (Naomi) and numerous relatives nearer or remoter, on my mother's side, lie buried here. The scene as I stood or sat, the delicate and wild odor of the woods, a slightly drizzling rain, the emotional atmosphere of the place, and the inferr'd reminiscences, were fitting accompaniments.

THE MATERNAL HOMESTEAD

I went down from this ancient grave place eighty or ninety rods to the site of the Van Velsor homestead, where my mother was born (1795,) and where every spot had been familiar to me as a child and youth (1825-'40.) Then stood there a long rambling, dark-gray, shingle-sided house, with sheds, pens, a great barn, and much open road-space. Now of all those not a vestige left; all had been pull'd down, erased, and the plough and harrow pass'd over foundations, road-spaces and everything, for many summers; fenced in at present, and grain and clover growing like any other fine fields. Only a big hole from the cellar, with some little heaps of broken stone, green with grass and weeds, identified the place. Even the copious old brook and spring seem'd to have mostly dwindled away. The whole scene, with what it arous'd, memories of my young days there half a century ago, the vast kitchen and ample fireplace and the sitting-room adjoining, the plain furniture, the meals, the house full of merry people, my grandmother Amy's sweet old face in its Quaker cap, my grandfather "the Major," jovial, red, stout, with sonorous voice and characteristic physiognomy, with the actual sights themselves, made the most pronounc'd half-day's experience of my whole jaunt.

For there with all those wooded, hilly, healthy surroundings, my dearest mother, Louisa Van Velsor, grew up--(her mother, Amy Williams, of the Friends' or Quakers' denomination--the Williams family, seven sisters and one brother--the father and brother sailors, both of whom met their deaths at sea.) The Van Velsor people were noted for fine horses, which the men bred and train'd from blooded stock. My mother, as a young woman, was a daily and daring rider. As to the head of the family himself, the old race of the Netherlands, so deeply grafted on Manhattan island and in Kings and Queens counties, never yielded a more mark'd and full Americanized specimen than Major Cornelius Van Velsor.

TWO OLD FAMILY INTERIORS

Of the domestic and inside life of the middle of Long Island, at and just before that time, here are two samples: