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THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL

homeliness, so instinct with humanity, rather than a neatly tidied mausoleum? If Walt had believed that a man must live in a colonial cot in a fashionable suburb in order to write great poetry he would not have been Walt.


The great matter is to reveal and outpour the Godlike suggestions pressing for birth in the soul.


And then it must be remembered that Walt didn't live much on Mickle street until he became a confirmed invalid, and his pack of listeners kept him talking so hard he didn't know where he was. He lived on the ferries, up and down Chestnut street, or (for that matter) in the constellation Orion.

The second scene of the Camden drama is at Harleigh Cemetery. Here, among that sweet city of the dead, in a little dell where the rhododendrons yield their fragrance to the sun-heavy air, the massive stone door stands ajar. A great mass of flowers, laid there by the English-Speaking Union, was heaped at the sill. More instinctively than in many a church, the passer lifts his hat.


Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.


I thought of what a little girl who was standing on the pavement of Mickle street had said to me as we halted in front of the Whitman house. "My father was sick, and he died."

Yesterday—Memorial Day—was a day of poig-