"You're mine, you living, beautiful world! But you're any one's who goes forth. You're a child's as much as a man's; yes, more than a man's! I-it's hard to get that said right; said full, complete, up to the hilt! If a fellow could say that right what a poet he'd be! Oh... I wish I could say it! Not just to utter something pretty sounding but to let the truth, the beauty, the wonder of all living breathe out in words, be triumphantly voiced! "

He swung his arms in an awkward, enthusiastic gesture of liberation. He began to speak, measuredly, in a rhythm which varied the monotony of his easy walking gait.

66

There was a-child-went forth-each day,

And the objects he looked upon, stirring wonder, love,
Each and every object he saw, that thing he became

For a day, for an hour, for centuries lived in an instant.
The earliest lilacs, the swelling grass, the bird singing,
The young lamb just born in Third Month, all became part
of him

And he a part of them, with wonder-and pity-and love

His headshake had no trace of impatience, seemed to denote only an imperfect satisfaction; the sigh which followed was brimmed with happiness. "I am not born yet," he consoled himself.

Life begins, may be lived and end before birth. Birth? That is either an accident or a miracle, perhaps both (he thought)-almost certainly both! But this day is for living! Seven or seventy, or thrice seven (my own age on a nearing anniversary), birthed or unbirthed, young animal or creature leading a merely vegetative existence, there reposes on me, Walt Whitman, no duty, no burden of obligation of any sort. The world, or womb, of Outdoors encloses

me, invites me to feed and grow; nourishes, protects me, encourages my tiny stirrings and, no doubt, rejoices in them, rejoices that the child quickens this day (so bright! so sweet!) of Fourth Month. . . .

...

The road, winding between two hillsides, unfolded upon a valley checkered with a pattern in young wheat and plowed soil and moving undulantly to the feet of the Long Island hills. In the foreground, on a little rise, in a clearing among slender white-oaks, stood the schoolhouse, small, oblong, with little-paned windows and a hood over the bell. For all its paintless boards, the weathered little edifice had the air of a citadel, and gave forth a suggestion of consolidating, somehow, the common interest of scattered and isolated lives-humble lives that had yet a collective import and a ponderable sum. When, in the fresh, sparkling morning, the small iron bell oscillated under its hood, sending a thin clangclang! across to the forested hillsides, it seemed as if the valley were speaking, as if a voice were reciting the creed which inspired the dwellers on half a hundred random farms. Women busy in wide kitchens or scattering corn for hungry fowls sometimes paused a moment, listening to the sound of the distant bell; but the men hoeing in the fields, protected by broad-brimmed hats from the sun's blaze and mounting heat, went impassively on with their work, hearing but unheeding.

The first stroke would cause boys and girls along the upland road to stop a game of leap-frog or to clutch with sudden firmness the shoes and stockings they were carrying. Mr. Whitman, the teacher, had arrived at the schoolhouse. He would ring for perhaps five minutes and then

wait tolerantly for maybe five minutes more. When you're young it ain't so awful hard to run a mile, with panting lapses, in ten minutes; but when time must be taken to put on shoes and stockings, fifteen minutes is lots better. Attendance in school barefoot isn't sanctioned; on the other hand, a pair of shoes is a costly article, made to measure and obtainable only once a year when the traveling cobbler comes by the farm.

However, Mr. Whitman-or "Walt" as all the boys called him—was always easy with you. He never birched. Some of the older boys had made a mistake about him at the beginning of the winter term-when farmwork was done and fathers were reluctantly acceding to mothers' demands for more schoolin' for the eldest. Yes, some of the older boys had mistooken Teacher's mild, kind of easy-goin' way, and offered to wrastle him.

One after another he had downed the three sons of Freegift Terry so there had been no time for the geography lesson that morning. And afterward he had shooken hands with the Terry boys, all except the youngest his own age or older and all as tall and heavy as himself. And the oldest Terry had said: "You're Teacher, Mr. Whitman!" and Mr. Whitman had answered: "Call me Walt; and all you boys and girls just forget I'm Teacher and remember we're all of us out to learn something! School's dismissed. Everybody, shoo!" Then the youngest Terry had rung the bell so hard the rope broke.

How Walt had laughed! But he was always ready to laugh, and he joined in all their games with the boys and seemed mostly to hate going indoors. All through the cold

of winter, with heavy snows, at least one window had been kept open in the schoolroom; though owing to the attitude of parents, Walt had to ask the class not to say anything, home, about the window. The class agreed, liking the touch of mischief though indifferent to Walt's new-fangled idea about something he called "ventilation." Nobody knew what ventilation was, but Walt said it sharpened your senses just as study sharpened your mind. Anyway, the stove in the middle of the schoolroom, kept redhot with wood the boys had stacked against the back wall clear up to the ceiling, threw out a steady warmth; you could always move up closer to it.

Winter was by; this was the time of spring plowing and planting. The three Terrys and all of the older boys were dropping out to renew the work of the farm. Even the younger children would be needed "to home" in a few weeks; school was practically over. It was hard to go indoors, harder to stay there; and Walt had a way of asking, with a laugh: "Well, boys and girls, shall we have a recitation or a recess-itation? He was always joking, kind

of!

So ran the youthful summary, often recapitulated, lightly touched upon, a point here and an instance there as the pupils, coming by ones, twos and threes out of the valley, gradually coalesced, mornings, on the school road, where it turned off from the Smithtown road just above Rumsey Platt's store. Sometimes Teacher Walt, a little later than usual, would come swinging along, and finding all the nine boys and seven girls fore-gathered, would cry: "Going to let Mr. Platt teach ye to-day?" At the sound of their

mirth Rumsey Platt would appear in the door, which opened on a high stoop reached by fourteen steps-a garled old man past eighty who, as a lad of eighteen, had taken part in the disastrous battle of Long Island, falling a prisoner to the British bloodycoats. With bright, unwinking eyes the storekeeper would look over the lot of them, not a muscle of his lean face moving, though in some mysterious way he was all the time chawing his tobacco. A silence would fall; then, ejecting suddenly from the corner of his mouth some of the delectable juice, Rumsey Platt would exclaim, his voice a quavery treble:

"Go 'long and larn, yo' uns! was larned with a bagonet!"

When I was your age, I

This contrast and striking reminiscence elicited, invariably, a full moment of respectful silence and regard. The veteran slipping inside the store after a brief glance at the weather, a buzz would rise as the group moved schoolward -one of the older boys was telling, for the nth time, of seeing the livid streak made by the blade of the Britisher's bayonet, grazing ol' Rumsey Platt's arm, back in '76. An' in '12, though nigh onto sixty, he'd been a cap'n in the m❜litia.

Thus on many a morning; but not on this glorious day and morning of April, 1840. Passing Platt's' Store, striding along the up-road, Walt came upon none of the youngsters. The circumstance went unremarked, for his thoughts were elsewhere; but when he reached the schoolhouse the sligh oddity of encountering no one, of finding no pupil alrea on hand, caught his attention.