There was not, apparently, a
single book in the room.... The books he seemed to know and love best were
the Bible, Homer, and Shakespeare: these he owned, and probably had in his
pockets while we were talking. He had two studies where he read; one was
the top of an omnibus, and the other a small mass of sand, then entirely
uninhabited, far out in the ocean, called Coney Island.... The only
distinguished contemporary he had ever met was the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher,
of Brooklyn, who had visited him.... He confessed to having no talent for
industry, and that his forte was 'loafing and writing poems:' he was poor,
but had discovered that he could, on the whole, live magnificently on bread
and water.... On no occasion did he laugh, nor indeed did I ever see him
smile."
[Footnote 4: In the _Fortnightly Review_, 15th October 1866.]
The first trace of Whitman as a writer is in the pages of the _Democratic
Review_ in or about 1841. Here he wrote some prose tales and sketches--poor
stuff mostly, so far as I have seen of them, yet not to be wholly
confounded with the commonplace. One of them is a tragic school-incident,
which may be surmised to have fallen under his personal observation in his
early experience as a teacher.
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