“He walked among verbal varnishers and veneerers, among literary milliners and tailors, with the unconscious dignity of an antique god.  He was the poet of that divine democracy that gives equal rights to all the sons and daughters of men.  He uttered the great American voice.”

And though one finds in the words of the naive Ingersoll the squeaking timber of the soapbox, yet even a soapbox does lift a man a few inches above the level of the clay.

Well, the Whitman battle is not over yet, nor ever will be.  Though neither Philadelphia nor Camden has recognized 330 Mickle Street as one of the authentic shrines of our history (Lord, how trimly dight it would be if it were in New England!), Camden has made a certain amend in putting Walt into the gay mosaic that adorns the portico of the new public library in Cooper Park.  There, absurdly represented in an austere black cassock, he stands in the following frieze of great figures:  Dante, Whitman, Moliere, Gutenberg, Tyndale, Washington, Penn, Columbus, Moses, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Longfellow and Palestrina.  I believe that there was some rumpus as to whether Walt should be included; but, anyway, there he is.

You will make a great mistake if you don’t ramble over to Camden some day and fleet the golden hours in an observant stroll.  Himself the prince of loafers, Walt taught the town to loaf.  When they built the new postoffice over there they put round it a ledge for philosophic lounging, one of the most delightful architectural features I have ever seen.  And on Third Street, just around the corner from 330 Mickle Street, is the oddest plumber’s shop in the world.  Mr. George F. Hammond, a Civil War veteran, who knew Whitman and also Lincoln, came to Camden in ’69.  In 1888 he determined to build a shop that would be different from anything on earth, and well he succeeded.  Perhaps it is symbolic of the shy and harassed soul of the plumber, fleeing from the unreasonable demands of his customers, for it is a kind of Gothic fortress.  Leaded windows, gargoyles, masculine medusa heads, a sallyport, loopholes and a little spire.  I stopped in to talk to Mr. Hammond, and he greeted me graciously.  He says that people have come all the way from California to see his shop, and I can believe it.  It is the work of a delightful and original spirit who does not care to live in a demure hutch like all the rest of us, and has really had some fun out of his whimsical little castle.  He says he would rather live in Camden than in Philadelphia, and I daresay he’s right.

III

Something in his aspect as he leaned over the railing near me drew me on to speak to him.  I don’t know just how to describe it except by saying that he had an understanding look.  He gave me the impression of a man who had spent his life in thinking and would understand me, whatever I might say.  He looked like the kind of man to whom one would find one’s self saying wise and thoughtful things.  There are some people, you know, to whom it is impossible to speak wisdom even if you should wish to.  No spirit of kindly philosophy speaks out of their eyes.  You find yourself automatically saying peevish or futile things that you do not in the least believe.