"How can you find him? Nothing is easier," quoth the Philadelphia friend who some time before Whitman's death brought us an invitation from the bard; "you have only to cross the ferry and apply to the first man or woman you meet, for there is no one in Camden who does not know Walt Whitman or who would not go out of his way to bring you to him." The event justifies the prediction, for when we make inquiry of a tradesman standing before a shop, he speedily throws aside his apron, closes his door against evidently needed customers, and--despite our protest--sets out to conduct us to the home of the poet. This is done with such obvious ardor that we hint to our guide that he must be one of the "Whitmaniacs," whereupon he rejoins, "I never read a word Whitman wrote. I don't know why they call him Socrates, but I do know he never passes me without a friendly nod and a word of greeting that warms me all through." We subsequently find that it is this sort of "Whitmania," rather than that Swinburne deplores, which pervades the vicinage of the poet's home.
Our conductor leaves us at the door of three hundred and twenty-eight Mickle Street, a neat thoroughfare bordered by unpretentious frame dwellings, hardly a furlong from the Delaware. The dingy little two-storied domicile is so disappointingly different from what we were expecting to see that the confirmatory testimony of the name "W. Whitman" upon the door-plate is needed to convince us that this is the oft-mentioned "neat and comfortable" dwelling of one of the world's celebrities.
We are kept waiting upon the door-step long enough to observe that the unpainted boards of the house are weather-worn and that the shabby window-shutters and the cellar-door, which opens aslant upon the sidewalk, are in sad need of repair, and then we are admitted by the "good, faithful, young Jersey woman who," as he lovingly testifies, "cooks for and vigilantly sees to" the venerable bard. A moment later we are in his presence, in the spacious second-story room which is his sleeping apartment and work-room.
"You are good to come early while I am fresh and rested," exclaims Walt Whitman, rising to his six feet of burly manhood and advancing a heavy step or two to greet us; "we are going to have a talk, and we have something to talk about, you know," referring to a literary venture of ours which had procured us the invitation to visit him. When he has regained the depths of his famous and phenomenal chair, the "Jersey woman" hands him a score of letters, which he offers to lay aside, but we insist that he shall read them at once, and while he is thus occupied we have opportunity to observe more closely the bard and his surroundings.