the world than people like to play at; people pretend to misunderstand as it serves their purposes. No, not the risk o' being misunderstood "—he chuckled, rather sadly—“ so much as the certainty o' being misjudged!"

After a pause he went on:

66

"Joel's going away with me in the morning." She looked at him, for a second, with betraying eyes. Ah! And yet there's nothing between you and Joel except-that he loves you and you love him," Walt finished gently. "No words, not even exchanged looks! Oh! I know."

She spoke in a stifled voice.

"He's the only one I-"

"He's one that is worth caring about," Walt answered the unfinished confession. He made the moment easier for her with a whimsical glint of the gray-blue eyes. "Goodby!" he exclaimed, "save a place for me at supper! "

5

A different Jenny sat with them at the evening meal. And afterward Walt contrived to get away from the others on a pretext of taking a walk with Jenny and Joel. He talked easily for a little distance; then left with the excuse of going back to see the farmer about a return in the harvest season. A few sentences covered the topic, and he and Jenny's father discussed politics-Van Buren, the prospects of the Whigs at the fall elections, Andy Jackson and Henry Clay; for the day was still a day of persons, or personalities, rather than of parties. Walt scandalized the farmer by his lack of partizanship, or perhaps bigotry, though the countryman's phrase was "political principles, the positive principles of

Thomas Jefferson, sir!" Young Mr. Whitman listened to the exposition of rural ideals in government—" we till the soil, sir, whilst those rascals in office soil the till! "--but throughout the audition a separate consciousness seemed to exist within him; he had a strange sensation of being both here and elsewhere, and was possessed, pervaded by a glow of clairvoyance.

Jenny . ... what was her waywardness? The girl wantoned with the essential innocence of whatsoever was beautiful, alive! Wantoning yet innocent-it was necessary to fall back upon the French word abandon to describe her. Like a showy flower, but a flower is for any bee that passes. Not so the woman, this girl of the farm among the scrub oaks, the sandy soil and lonely blossoming. She was for Joel; he had seemed to know it from the first but how, he allowed, he could not tell. It had been almost as if he could hear the varying beating of their hearts and had recognized the profound, essential accord-systole, diastole-in rhythms inaudible and to any formal judgment, far apart.

What those two would find to say to each other, or whether, indeed, they would find words relevant at all, he speculated only briefly. But he pondered silently, in his separate consciousness, on the miracle of young lovers. It was a miracle that had never happened to himself, Walt Whitman. He had loved-yes!-impartially and enthusiastically all manner of people; a variety of places; hills, orchards of rose-pink and white, the sky and the resonant, magnificent sea; the wonderful faces of quiet mothers, the immature faces of children and growing boys. And his

mind had been given oh! so often to the contemplation of vistas beyond his power to describe or even to characterize -vistas that had something inhuman, unearthly about them, so far did they reach, so high they raised you up! But love? the single object, overwhelmingly concentrated feeling, the one woman? Not yet; it might be, never; for Walt faced the fact of his own universality.

The heat and light of the sun, focussed by a burningglass, endangered the existence of the thing they were concentrated upon; shriveled the flower, set fire to the leaf. A mere fraction of the force of the ocean, cumulated in a giant wave, multipled its dispersed destructive power. What was love, this love? Was it heat-light kindling flame-the overriding wave of unspent force? Smoke and crackle and ashes; the sun shone on. The wave broke; the ocean remained an inexhaustible reservoir.

Banks, the United States Bank, Martin Van Buren and the more than doubtful value of steam railroads while we had excellent canals and waterways. Walt, rising from his chair, looked out into the darkening spring evening and saw two figures proceeding toward the house. In a few moments Jenny and Joel entered; for good night they found each other's eyes a second. The farmer, emptying his pipe, ceased his deliberate taps to inquire of Walt:

66 You look mortal set up, friend?"

"I've just made a poem."

66 So! let's hear it."

""Tisn't recitable, or in words; for all that 't is a poem, the most jubilant poem; full of manhood and womanhood

and infancy, full of sunshine and the motion of waves-a poem of joys!"

The eyes in the weathered face followed Walt's. An expression of grave surprise was succeeded on the farmer's face by one of calculating appraisal. He paid no attention to his daughter but scrutinized Joel Skidmore with care, finally saying:

"We'll be able to double the acreage, then, next year."

Walt and Joel were bedded in the attic, a place of large lateral dimensions and uncertain headroom which they had to themselves.

The boy was shaking with excitement; his lit face and shining eyes, disclosed by the fitful gleams of a single candle, gave an extraordinary impression, as if he were a creature seen in a vision. He talked jerkily, in whispers; and it required the full leap of his companion's intuition to follow, comprehend meanings. . . .

In half-undress, stretched out on the blankets of their bed, which was the floor under a sloping gable, his clasped hands supporting his head and tilting it to one side, Walt watched Joel bending over and fumbling with his shoes. The smooth skin of the boy's arms had a warm ivory coloring; the muscles moved beneath it as a swell comes and goes under the unmarred surface of the sea. Behind him, against the diverse planes of the gabled roof, amazing shadows were projected, suggesting an incessant, frantic struggle in the art of representation, a vain but interminable

effort to depict a three-dimensional creature in a world of but two dimensions, a world that knew thickness but could not conquer it. . . . In this weird struggle of the shadows there was something delineative, something sad. It was altogether too like the grotesque endeavor of mortals to compass ideas ideas, shapes apart from them and shapes that mankind can lay no hold of. . . .

"Walt! Walt! "

...

Joel's incoherent whispering commanded every inch of his companion's attention at last. The confession was explicit and staggering.

"God! . . . Did you tell her you were going away in the morning?"

"I can't-now! "

"You must!"

"No... everything's different. Everything's changed! I want to stay-with her! "

Walt groaned.

"And double the acreage next year? Marry her-chain yourself to this cleared ground among the scrub oaks? You see how the farmer views you-as a welcome conscript to speed the plow!

That didn't matter! Walt meditated, so far as extreme mental turmoil would allow. His first dismay somewhat overcome, he tested the situation.

"You don't suppose you are the first? "

She had said so, and Joel believed her implicitly. His thought running back to Jenny's behavior during their talk of the afternoon, Walt accepted Jenny's word and Joel's belief in it. Indeed, affirmed it further with his own full be