CHAPTER 1 A HAPPY HOURS COMMAND One in the Woods, July 2, 1882 If I do it at all, I must delay no longer. In Congress, and full of skips and jumps, as is that huddle of diary jottings, war memoranda of 1862-65, nature notes of 1877-81, with Western and Canadian observations afterwards, all bundled up and tied by a big string. The resolution, and indeed mandate, comes to me this day, this hour.  The luxury of riot, grass, and blowing breeze, with all the shows of sun and sky, and perfect temperature, never before so filling me, body and soul. To go home, untie the bundle, reel out diary scraps and memoranda just as they are, large or small, one after another, into print pages, and let the malages, lackings, and wants of connection take care of themselves. It will illustrate one phase of humanity anyhow, how few of life's days and hours, and they, not by relative value or proportion, but by chance, are ever noted. Probably another point, too, how we give long preparations for some object, planning and delving and fashioning, and then, when the actual hour for doing arrives, find ourselves still quite unprepared, and tumble the thing together, letting hurry and crudeness tell the story better than fine work. At any rate, I obey my happy hour's command, which seems curiously imperative. Maybe if I don't do anything else, I shall send out the most wayward, spontaneous, fragmentary book ever printed. Footnote No. 1. The pages from 1 to 15 are nearly verbatim, an offhand letter of mine in January, 1882, to an insisting friend. Following I give some gloomy experiences. The War of Attempted Secession has, of course, been the distinguishing event of my time. I commenced at the close of 1862, and continued steadily through 63, 64, and 65, to visit the sick and wounded of the army, both on the field and in the hospitals in and around Washington City. From the first I kept little notebooks for impromptu jottings in pencil to refresh my memory of names and circumstances, and what was specially wanted, etc. In these I briefed cases, persons, sights, occurrences in camp, by the bedside, and not seldom by the corpses of the dead. Some were scratched down from narratives I heard and itemized while watching, or waiting, or tending somebody amid those scenes. I have dozens of such little notebooks left, forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full of associations never to be possibly said or sung. I wish I could convey to the reader the associations that attach to these soiled and creased livraise, each composed of a sheet or two of paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fastened with a pin. I leave them just as I threw them by after the war, blotched here and there with more than one bloodstain, hurriedly written, sometimes at the clinic, not seldom amid the excitement of uncertainty, or defeat, or of action, or getting ready for it, or a march. Most of the pages from twenty to seventy-five are verbatim copies of those lurid and blood-smuched little notebooks. Very different are most of the memoranda that follow. Sometime after the war ended I had a paralytic stroke, which prostrated me for several years. In eighteen seventy-six I began to get over the worst of it. From this date portions of several seasons, especially summers, I spent at a secluded haunt down in Camden County, New Jersey, Timber Creek, quite a little river, it enters from the great Delaware twelve miles away, with primitive solitudes, winding stream, recluse and woody banks, sweet-feeding springs, and all the charms that birds, grass, wildflowers, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, walnut trees, etc., can bring. Through these times and on these spots the diary from page seventy-six onward was mostly written. The collect afterwards gathers up the odds and ends of whatever pieces I can now lay hands on, written at various times past, and swoops all together like fish in a net. I suppose I publish and leave the whole gathering first from that eternal tendency to perpetuate and preserve, which is behind all nature, authors included. Second to symbolize two or three specimen interiors, personal and other, out of the myrids of my time, the middle range of the nineteenth century in the new world, a strange, unloosened wondrous time, but the book is probably without any definite purpose that can be told in a statement. End of Footnote Answer to an insisting friend You ask for items, details of my early life, of genealogy and parentage, particularly of the women of my ancestry and of its far-back Netherlands stock on the maternal side, of the region where I was born and raised, and my mother and father before me, and theirs before them, with a word about Brooklyn and New York City's, the times I lived there as lad and young man. You say you want to get at these details mainly as the go-befores and embrans of leaves of grass. Very good. You shall have at least some specimens of them all. I have often thought of the meaning of such things, that one can only encompass and complete matters of that kind by exploring behind, perhaps very far behind, themselves directly and so into their genesis, antecedents, and cumulative stages. Then as luck would have it, I lately wild away the tedium of a week's half-sickness and confinement by collating these very items for another, yet unfulfilled, probably abandoned purpose. And if you will be satisfied with them, authentic in date occurrence and facts simply, and told my own way, guerrillas-like, here they are, I shall not hesitate to make extracts, for I catch at anything to save labour. But those will be the best versions of what I want to convey. GENIOLOGY Van Velser and Whitman The latter years of the last century found the Van Velser family, my mother's side, living on their own farm at Cold Spring, Long Island, New York State, near the eastern edge of Queens County, about a mile from the harbor. FOOTNOAT NUMBER TWO Long Island was settled first on the west end by the Dutch, from Holland, then on the east end by the English, the dividing line of the two nationalities being a little west of Huntington, where my father's folks lived, and where I was born. END OF FOOTNOAT NUMBER TWO My father's side, probably the fifth generation from the first English arrivals in New England, were at the same time farmers on their own land, and a fine domain it was, five hundred acres, all good soil, gently sloping east and south about one tenth woods, plenty of grand old trees, two or three miles off at West Hills, Suffolk County. The Whitman name in the eastern states and so branch and south starts undoubtedly from one John Whitman, born in 1602 in Old England, where he grew up, married, and his eldest son was born in 1629. He came over in the True Love in 1640 to America, and lived in Weymouth, Massachusetts, which place became the mother hive of the New Englanders of the name. He died in 1692. His brother, Reverend Zachariah Whitman, also came over in the True Love, either at that time or soon after, and lived at Milford, Connecticut. A son of this Zachariah named Joseph migrated to Huntington, Long Island, and permanently settled there. Savage's genealogical dictionary, Volume 4, page 524, gets the Whitman family established at Huntington, per this Joseph, before 1664. It is quite certain that from that beginning and from Joseph, the West Hill Whitmans and all others in Suffolk County have since radiated myself among the number. John and Zachariah both went to England and back again diverse times. They had large families, and several of their children were born in the Old Country. We hear of the father of John and Zachariah, Abagiah Whitman, who goes over into the 1500s, but we know little about him, except that he also was for some time in America. These old pedigree reminiscences come up to me vividly from a visit I made not long since in my sixty-third year to West Hills and to the burial grounds of my ancestry, both sides. I extract from notes of that visit written there and then. The Old Whitman and Van Velser Cemetery July 29, 1881, after more than forty years of absence, except a brief visit to take my father there once more two years before he died, went down Long Island on a week's jaunt to the place where I was born, thirty miles from New York City, rode around the old familiar spots, viewing and pondering and dwelling long upon them. Everything coming back to me went to the Old Whitman homestead on the upland and took a view eastward, inclining south over the broad and beautiful farmlands of my grandfather, 1780, and my father.  On the other side of the road spread the famous apple orchard over twenty acres, the trees planted by hands long-moldering in the grave, my uncle Jesse's, but quite many of them evidently capable of throwing out their annual blossoms and fruit yet. I now write these lines seated on an old grave, doubtless of a century since at least, on the burial hill of the Whitmans of many generations. Fifty or more graves are quite plainly traceable, and as many more decayed out of all form, depressed mounds, crumbled and broken stones covered with moss, the gray and sterile hill, the clumps of chestnuts outside, the silence just varied by the sowing wind. There is always the deepest eloquence of sermon or poem in any of these ancient graveyards of which Long Island has so many. So what must this one have been to me? My whole family history with its succession of links from the first settlement down to date told here three centuries concentrate on this sterile acre. The next day, July 30, I devoted to the maternal locality, and if possible was still more penetrated and impressed. I write this paragraph on the burial hill of the van Velsers near Cold Spring, the most significant depository of the dead that could be imagined, without the slightest help from art, but far ahead of it, soil sterile, a mostly bare plateau, flat, of half an acre, the top of a hill, brush and well-grown trees and dense woods bordering all around. Very primitive, secluded, no visitors, no road. You cannot drive here, you have to bring the dead on foot, and follow on foot. Two or three score graves quite plain, as many more almost rubbed out. My grandfather Cornelius and my grandmother Amy, Naomi, and numerous relatives, nearer or remote on my mother's side, lie buried here. The scene as I stood or sat, the delicate and wild odor of the woods, a slightly drizzling rain, the emotional atmosphere of the place, and the inferred reminiscences were fitting accompaniments. The maternal homestead. I went down from this ancient grave-place 80 or 90 rods to the site of the van Velser homestead where my mother was born, 1795, and where every spot had been familiar to me as a child and youth, 1825-40. Then stood there a long, rambling, dark gray, shingle-sided house, with sheds, pens, a great barn, and much open road-space. Now of all of those, not a vestige left, all had been pulled down, erased, and the plough and harrow passed over foundations, road-spaces, and everything, for many summers. Fenced in at present, and grain and clover growing like any other fine fields, only a big hole from the cellar, with some little heaps of broken stone, green with grass and weeds identified the place. Even the copious old brook and spring seemed to have mostly dwindled away. The whole scene, with what it aroused, memories of my young days there half a century ago, the vast kitchen and ample fireplace, and the sitting-room adjoining, the plain furniture, the meals, the house full of merry people, my grandmother Amy's sweet old face in its Quaker cap, my grandfather the major jovial red stout, lasonorous voice, and characteristic physiognomy, with the actual sights themselves made the most pronounced half-days experience of my whole jaunt. For there, with all those wooded, hilly, healthy surroundings, my dearest mother Louisa Van Velzer grew up, her mother Amy Williams of the Friends or Quakers denomination, the Williams family seven sisters and one brother, the father and brother sailors, both of whom met their deaths at sea. The Van Velzer people were noted for fine horses, which the men bred and trained from blooded stock. My mother as a young woman was a daily and daring rider. As to the head of the family himself, the old race of the Netherlands, so deeply grafted on Manhattan Island, and in kings and queens counties, never yielded a more marked and full Americanized specimen than Major Cornelius Van Velzer. Two Old Family Interiors Of the domestic and inside life of the middle of Long Island, at and just before that time, here are two examples. The Whitmans at the beginning of the present century lived in a long, story-and-a-half farmhouse, hugely timbered, which is still standing, a great smoke-canopied kitchen with vast hearth and chimney formed one end of the house, the existence of slavery in New York at that time, and the possession by the family of some twelve or fifteen slaves, house and field servants, gave things quite a patriarchal look. The very young darkies could be seen as swarm of them toward sundown in this kitchen, squatted in a circle on the floor, eating their supper of Indian pudding and milk. In the house and in food and furniture all was rude but substantial. No carpets or stoves were known, and no coffee and tea or sugar only for the women. Rousing wood fires gave both warmth and light on winter nights. Pork, poultry, beef, and all the ordinary vegetables and grains were plentiful. Cider was the men's common drink and used it meals. The clothes were mainly homespun. Journeys were made by both men and women on horseback. As sexes labored with their own hands, the men on the farm, the women in the house and around it, books were scarce, the annual copy of the almanac was a treat and was poured over through the long winter evenings. I must not forget to mention that both these families were near enough to the sea to behold it from the high places and to hear in still hours the roar of the surf, the latter after a storm giving a peculiar sound at night. Then all hands, male and female, went down frequently on beach and bathing parties, and the men on practical expeditions for cutting salt hay and for clamming and fishing. End of quote John Burrow's notes. Quote The ancestors of Walt Whitman on both the paternal and maternal sides kept a good table, sustained the hospitalities, decorums, and an excellent social reputation in the county, and they were often of marked individuality. If space permitted, I should consider some of the men worthy special description and still more some of the women. His great-grandmother on the paternal side, for instance, was a large, swarthy woman who lived to a very old age. She spoke tobacco, rode on horseback like a man, managed the most vicious horse, and becoming a widow in later life went forth every day over her farmlands, frequently in the saddle, directing the labor of her slaves, in language in which, on exciting occasions, oaths were not spared. The two immediate grandmothers were, in the best sense, superior women. The maternal one, Amy Williams before marriage, was a friend, or quakeress, of sweet, sensible character, house-wifely proclivities, and deeply intuitive and spiritual. The other, Hannah Brush, was an equally noble, perhaps stronger character, lived to be very old, had quite a family of sons, was a natural lady, was an early life a schoolmistress, and had great solidity of mind. W.W. himself makes much of the women of his ancestry. End of quote, the same. Out from these areas of persons and scenes I was born May 31st, 1819, and now, to dwell awhile on the locality itself, as the successive growth stages of my infancy, childhood, youth, and manhood were all passed on Long Island, which I sometimes feel as if I had incorporated. I roamed as boy and man, and have lived in nearly all parts, from Brooklyn to Montauk Point. Pomenok and my life on it as child and young man. End of quote, Pomenok, P-A-U-M-A-N-O-K, or Pomenok, P-A-U-M-A-N-A-K-E, or Pomenok, P-A-U-M-A-N-A-C-K, the Indian name of Long Island, over a hundred miles long, shaped like a fish, plenty of seashore, sandy, stormy, uninviting, the horizon boundless, the air too strong for invalids, the bays a wonderful resort for aquatic birds, the south side meadows covered with salt hay, the soil of the island generally tough but good for the locust tree, the apple orchard and the blackberry, and with numberless springs of the sweetest water in the world. Years ago, among the bay men a strong wild race now extinct, or rather entirely changed, a native of Long Island was called a Pomenokker, or Creole, Pomenokker, end quote, John Burroughs, end of footnote number three. Worth fully and particularly investigating indeed this Pomenok, to give the spot its aboriginal name, stretching east through Kings, Queens, and Suffolk counties, a hundred and twenty miles altogether on the north Long Island Sound, a beautiful varied and picturesque series of inlets, necks, and sea-like expansions for a hundred miles to Orient Point. On the ocean side the great south bay dotted with countless hummocks, mostly small, some quite large, occasionally long bars of sand out two hundred rods to a mile and a half from the shore. While now and then, as it rock away and far east along the Hamptons, the beach makes right on the island, the sea dashing up without intervention. Several lighthouses on the shores east, a long history of wrecks, tragedies, some even of late years, as a youngster I was in the atmosphere and traditions of many of these wrecks, a one or two almost an observer, off Hempstead Beach, for example, was the loss of the ship Mexico in 1840, alluded to in the sleepers in L of G, and at Hampton some years later the destruction of the brig Elizabeth, a fearful affair in one of the worst winter gales where Margaret Fuller went down with her husband and child. And the outer bars or beach, this south bay, is everywhere comparatively shallow, of cold winters all thick ice on the surface. As a boy I often went forth with a chum or two on these frozen fields with hand sled, axe, and eelspear after messes of eels, we would cut holes in the ice, sometimes striking quite an eel bonanza, and fill in our baskets with great, fat, sweet, white-meated fellows. The scenes, the ice, drawing the hand sled, cutting holes, spearing the eels, etc., were of course just such fun as is dearest to boyhood. The shores of this bay winter and summer, and my doings there in early life, are woven all through L of G. One sport I was very fond of was to go on a bay party in summer to gather seagulls' eggs. The gulls lay two or three eggs, more than half the size of hen's eggs, right on the sand, and leave the sun's heat to hatch them. The eastern end of Long Island, the Pecanic Bay region, I knew quite well too, sailed more than once around Shelter Island and down to Montauk, spent many an hour on Turtle Hill by the old lighthouse on the extreme point, looking out over the ceaseless roll of the Atlantic. I used to like to go down there and fraternize with the blue-fishers, or the annual squads of sea-bass takers. Sometimes along Montauk Peninsula, it is some fifteen miles long and good grazing, that the strange, unkept half-barberous herdsmen at that time living there entirely aloof from society or civilization, in charge on those rich pastridges of vast droves of horses, kine or sheep, owned by farmers of the eastern towns, sometimes too the few remaining Indians or half-breeds at that period left on Montauk Peninsula, but now I believe altogether extinct. More in the middle of the island were the spreading Hempstead Plains then, 1830, 1840, bright prairie-like, open, uninhabited, rather sterile, covered with kill-calf and huckleberry bushes, yet plenty of fair pasture for the cattle, mostly milch-cows, who fed there by hundreds, even thousands, and at evening the Plains too were owned by the towns, and this was the use of them in common, might be seen taking their way home, branching off regularly in the right places. I have often been out on the edges of these plains towards sundown, and can yet recall in fancy the interminable cow processions, and hear the music of the tin or copper bells clanking far or near, and breathe the cool of the sweet and slightly aromatic evening air and note the sunset. Through the same region of the island, but further east, extended wide central tracks of pine and scrub oak, charcoal was largely made here, monotonous and sterile, but many a good day or half day did I have wandering through these solitary crossroads, inhaling the peculiar and wild aroma, here and all along the islands and its shores I spent intervals many years, all seasons, sometimes riding, sometimes boating, but generally a foot. I was always then a good walker.  As I write the whole experience comes back to me after the lapse of forty and more years, the soothing rustle of the waves and the sullen smell, boyhoods' times, the clam digging barefoot, and with trousers rolled up, hauling down the creek, the perfume of the sedge meadows, the hay boat, and the chowder and fishing excursions, or of later years little voyages down and out New York Bay in the pilot boats. Those same later years also, while living in Brooklyn, 1836, 1850, I went regularly every week in the mild seasons down to Coney Island, at that time a long, bare, unfrequented shore which I had all to myself, and where I loved, after bathing, to race up and down the hard sand and to claim Homer or Shakespeare to the surf and seagulls by the hour. But I'm getting ahead too rapidly and must keep more in my traces. My First Reading, Lafayette From 1824 to 28 our family lived in Brooklyn, in front Cranberry and Johnson Streets. In the latter my father built a nice house for a home and afterwards another in Tillery Street. We occupied them one after the other, but they were mortgaged and we lost them. I yet remember Lafayette's visit. Quote, On the visit of General Lafayette to this country in 1824 he came over to Brooklyn in state and rode through the city. The children of the schools turned out to join in the welcome. An edifice for a free public library for youth was just then commencing and Lafayette consented to stop on his way and lay the cornerstone. First children arriving on the ground where a huge irregular excavation for the building was already dug, surrounded with heaps of rough stone, several gentlemen assisted in lifting the children to safe or convenient spots to see the ceremony. Among the rest, Lafayette, also helping the children, took up the five-year-old Walt Whitman and pressing the child a moment to his breast and giving him a kiss, handed him down to a safe spot in the excavation. End quote, John Burroughs. End of footnote. Most of these years I went to the public schools. It must have been about 1829 or 1830 that I went with my father and mother to hear Elias Hicks preach in a ballroom on Brooklyn Heights, at about the same time employed as a boy in an office, lawyers, father-and-two sons, clerks, Fulton Street, near Orange. I had a nice desk and window-note to myself. Edward C. kindly helped me at my handwriting and composition, and the signal event of my life up to that time subscribed for me to a big circulating library. For a time I now reveled in romance, reading of all kinds, first the Arabian Knights, all the volumes and amazing treat, then with sorties in very many other directions, took in Walter Scott's novels one after another and his poetry, and continued to enjoy novels and poetry to this day. Printing Office, Old Brooklyn. After about two years went to work in a weekly newspaper and printing office to learn the trade. The paper was the Long Island Patriot owned by S. E. Clements, who was also postmaster. An old printer in the office, William Hart-Shorne, a revolutionary character who had seen Washington, was a special friend of mine, and I had many a talk with him about long past times. The apprentices, including myself, boarded with his granddaughter. I used occasionally to go out riding with the boss, who was very kind to us boys. He took us all to a great, old, rough, fortress-looking stone church on Gerallamond Street, near where the Brooklyn City Hall now is. At that time broad fields and country roads everywhere around. Afterward I worked on the Long Island Star Alden Spooner's paper, my father all these years pursuing his trade as carpenter and builder, with very infortune. There was a growing family of children, eight of us, my brother Jesse, the oldest, myself the second, my dear sisters Mary and Hannah-Louisa, my brothers Andrew, George, Thomas, Jefferson, and then my youngest brother Edward, born 1835, and always badly crippled, as I am myself of late years. Footnote number five. For the Brooklyn of that time, 1830, 1840, hardly anything remains except the lines of the old streets. The population was then between ten and twelve thousand. For a mile Fulton Street was lined with magnificent elm trees. The character of the place was thoroughly rural. As a sample of comparative values it may be mentioned that twenty-five acres in what is now the most costly part of the city, bounded by Flatbush and Fulton avenues, were then bought by Mr. Parmentier, a French emigre, for four thousand dollars. Who remembers the old places as they were? Who remembers the old citizens of that time? Among the former were Smith and Woods, co-downings, and other public houses at the ferry. The old ferry itself loved Lane. The heights as then, the wall about with the wooden bridge, and the road out beyond Fulton Street to the old tollgate. Among the latter were the majestic and genial General Jeremiah Johnson, with others, Gabriel Furman, Reverend E. M. Johnson, Alden Spooner, Mr. Pierpont, Mr. Joralemon, Samuel Willoughby, Jonathan Trotter, George Hall, Cyrus P. Smith, N. B. Morse, John Dykeman, Adrian Hedgeman, William Udall, and old Mr. Dufflin, with his military garden, End of Footnote. Growth, Health, Work I developed eighteen-thirty-three, eighteen-thirty-four, five into a healthy, strong youth. Grew too fast, though, was nearly as big as a man at fifteen or sixteen. Our family at this period moved back to the country. My dear mother very ill for a long time, but recovered. All these years I was down Long Island more or less every summer, now east, now west, sometimes months at a stretch. At sixteen, seventeen, and so on was fond of debating societies, and had an active membership with them off and on in Brooklyn and one or two country towns on the island. A most omnivorous novel reader, these and later years, devoured everything I could get, fond of the theater also in New York, whenever I could, sometimes witnessing fine performances. Eighteen-thirty-six, thirty-seven worked as compositor in printing offices in New York City. Then, when little more than eighteen and for a while afterwards, went to teaching country schools down in Queens and Suffolk counties, Long Island, and boarded round. This latter I considered one of my best experiences and deepest lessons in human nature beyond the scenes and in the masses. In thirty-nine-forty I started and published a weekly paper in my native town Huntington. Then returned to New York City and Brooklyn, worked on as printer and writer, mostly prose, but an occasional shy at poetry. My Passion for Fairies Living in Brooklyn or New York City from this time forward, my life then and still more the following years was curiously identified with Fulton Ferry, already becoming the greatest of its sort in the world for general importance, volume, variety, rapidity, and picturesqueness. Almost daily later, eighteen-fifty to eighteen-sixty, I crossed on the boats, often up in the pilot houses where I could get a full sweep, absorbing shows, accompaniments, surroundings, what oceanic currents eddies underneath, the great tides of humanity also with ever-shifting movements. Indeed, I have always had a passion for fairies. To me they afford inimitable, streaming, never-failing, living poems, the river and base scenery all about New York Island any time of a fine day, the hurrying, splashing sea tides, the changing panorama of steamers, all sizes, often a string of big ones outward bound to distant ports, the myriads of white-sailed schooners, sloops, skiffs, and the marvelously beautiful yachts, the majestic soundboats as they rounded the battery and came along towards five afternoon eastward bound, the prospect off towards Staten Island or down the Narrows, or the other way up the Hudson, hot refreshment of spirit such sights and experiences gave me years ago, and many a time since. My old pilot friends, the Ball's Sears, Johnny Cole, Ira Smith, William White, and my young fairy friend Tom Geer, how well I remember them all. Broadway Sights Besides Fulton Ferry off and on for years, I knew and frequented Broadway, that noted avenue of New York's crowded and mixed humanity, and of so many notables. Here I saw during those times Andrew Jackson, Webster, Clay, Seward, Martin Van Buren, Philip Buster Walker, Koseth, Fitz Green Hallock, Bryant, the Prince of Wales, Charles Dickens, the first Japanese ambassadors and lots of other celebrities of the time, always something novel or inspiring, yet mostly to me the hurrying and vast amplitude of those never-ending human currents. I remember seeing James Fenimore Cooper in a courtroom in Chambers Street, back of the city hall where he was carrying on a law case, I think it was a charge of libel he had brought against someone. I also remember seeing Edgar A. Poe and having a short interview with him. It must have been in 1845 or 6, in his office second story of a corner building, Dwayne or Pearl Street. He was editor and owner or part owner of the Broadway Journal. The visit was about a piece of mine he had published. Poe was very cordial in a quiet way, appeared well in person, dressed, etc. I have a distinct and pleasing remembrance of his looks, voice, manner, and matter, very kindly and human, but subdued perhaps a little jaded. For another of my reminiscences here on the west side, just below Houston Street, I once saw, it must have been around 1832, of a sharp, bright January day. A bent, feeble, but stout-built, very old man, bearded, swad in rich furs, with a great ermine cap on his head, led and assisted, almost carried, down the steps of his high front stoop, a dozen friends and servants, emulous, carefully holding, guiding him, and then lifted and tucked in a gorgeous sleigh, enveloped in other furs, for a ride. The sleigh was drawn by as fine a team of horses as I ever saw. You didn't think all the best animals are brought up nowadays, never was such horse flesh as fifty years ago on Long Island, or South, or in New York City. Folks looked for spirit and metal in an egg, not tame speed merely. Well, I, a boy of perhaps thirteen or fourteen, stopped and gazed long at the spectacle of that furswad old man, surrounded by friends and servants, and the careful seating of him in the sleigh. I remember the spirited, champion horses, the driver with his whip, and a fellow driver by his side, for extra prudence. The old man, the subject of so much attention, I can almost see now. It was John Jacob Astor. The years eighteen forty-six, forty-seven, and there along, see me still in New York City, working as writer and printer, having my usual good health, and a good time generally. Omnibus, John's, and drivers. One phase of those days must by no means go unrecorded, namely the Broadway omnibuses with their drivers. The vehicles still, I write this paragraph in 1881, give a portion of the character of Broadway. The Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, and twenty-third street lines yet running, but the flush days of the old Broadway stages, characteristic and copious, are over. The yellow birds, the red birds, the original Broadway, the Fourth Avenue, the Knickerbocker, and a dozen others of twenty or thirty years ago are all gone. And the men, specially identified with them, and giving vitality and meaning to them, the drivers, a strange, natural, quick-eyed and wondrous race. Not only Rabley and Cervantes would have gloated upon them, but Homer and Shakespeare would. How well I remember them, and must here give a word about them. How many hours, four noons and afternoons, how many exhilarating nighttimes I have had, perhaps June or July, in cooler air riding the whole length of Broadway, listening to some yarn, and the most vivid yarns ever spun, and the rarest mimicry. Or perhaps I, declaiming some stormy passage from Julius Caesar or Richard, you could roar as loudly as you chose in that heavy, dense, uninterrupted street base. Yes, I knew all the drivers then, Broadway Jack, Dressmaker, Bulkie Bill, George Storms, Old Elephant, his brother Young Elephant, who came afterward, Tippi, Pop Brice, Big Frank, Yellow Joe, Pete Callahan, Patsy D., and dozens more, for there were hundreds. They had immense qualities, largely animal, eating, drinking, women, great personal pride in their way, perhaps a few slouches here and there, but I should have trusted the general run of them in their simple goodwill and honor under all circumstances. Not only for comradeship and sometimes affection, great studies I found them also. I suppose the critics will laugh heartily, but the influence of those Broadway omnibus Johnts and drivers, and declamations and escapades undoubtedly entered into the gestation of leaves of grass. Plays and Operas, too. And certain actors and singers had a good deal to do with the business. All through these years, off and on, I frequented the Old Park, the Bowery, Broadway, and Chatham Square theaters, and the Italian operas at Chambers Street, Astor Place, or the Battery. Many seasons was on the free list, writing for papers, even as quite a youth. The Old Park Theater, what names, reminiscences, the words bring back. Placid, Clark, Mrs. Vernon, Fisher, Clara F., Mrs. Wood, Mrs. Sequin, Ellen Tree, Hackett, the Younger Keen, McCready, Mrs. Richardson, Rice, Singers, Tragedians, Comedians, what perfect acting, Henry Placid in Napoleon's Old Guard, or grandfather Whitehead, or the provoked husband of Jibber, with Fanny Kemble as Lady Townley, or Sheridan Knowles in his own Virginias, or inimitable power in Born to Good Luck, these and many more the years of youth and onward. Fanny Kemble, named to conjure up great mimic scenes with all, perhaps the greatest, I remember well her rendering of Bianca in Fazio and Mariana in The Wife. When finer did ever stage exhibit, the veterans of all nations said so, and my boyish heart and head felt it in every minute cell. The Lady was just matured, strong, better than merely beautiful, born from the footlights, had had three years' practice in London and through the British towns, and then she came to give America that young maturity and rosy at power in all their noon, or rather forenoon, flush. It was my good luck to see her nearly every night she played at the old park. Certainly in all her principal characters, I heard these years well rendered all the Italian and other operas in vogue, Senambula, the Puritans, their Freishutes, Huguenots, Field du Regiment, Faust, Ettoile du Noir, Poliotu, and others, Verdi's Ernani, Rigoletto, Trovatore, Madonna Zetti's Lucia, or Favarita, or Lucrezia, and Obey's Masaniello, or Rossini's William Tell, and Gazelandre were among my special enjoyments. I heard Alboni every time she sang in New York, and vicinity, also greasy, the tenor Mario and the baritone bariale, the finest in the world. This musical passion followed my theatrical one. As a boy or young man, I had seen, reading them carefully the day beforehand, quite all Shakespeare's acting dramas. Played wonderfully well. Even yet I cannot conceive anything finer than the old booth in Richard III, or Lear, I don't know which was best, or Iago, or Pescara, or Sir Giles Overreach, to go outside of Shakespeare, or Tom Hamlin in Macbeth, or Old Clark, either as the Ghost in Hamlet, or as Prospero in The Tempest, with Mrs. Austin as Ariel, and Peter Richings as Caliban. Then other dramas and fine players in them, Forrest as Metamora, or Damon, or Brutus, John R. Scott as Tom Kringle, or Rola, or Charlotte Cushman's Lady Gay Spanker in London Assurance, then of some years later at Castle Garden Battery, I yet recall the splendid seasons of the Havana musical troupe under Mareczek, the fine band, the cool sea breezes, the unsurpassed vocalism, Stefanon, Bosseo, Truffy, Marini, and Marino Fagliero, Don Pascuale, or Favorita, no better playing or singing ever in New York. It was here, too, that I afterward heard Jenny Lynde. The battery, its past associations, what tales those old trees and walks and seawalls could tell. Through eight years. In 1848-49 I was occupied as editor of the Daily Eagle newspaper in Brooklyn. The latter year went off on a leisurely journey and working expedition, my brother Jeff with me, through all the middle states and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Lived a while in New Orleans and worked there on the editorial staff of Daily Crescent newspaper. After a time plotted back northward up the Mississippi and around, too, and by way of the Great Lakes, Michigan, Huron, and Erie, to Niagara Falls and Lower Canada, finally returning through central New York and down the Hudson, traveling altogether probably 8,000 miles this trip, to and fro, 1851-53 occupied in Housebuilding in Brooklyn, for a little of the first part of that time in printing a daily and weekly paper, The Freeman. 1855 lost my dear father this year by death, commenced putting leaves of grass to press for good at the job printing office of my friends the brothers Rome in Brooklyn. After many manuscript doings and undoings, I had great trouble in leaving out the stock poetical touches, but succeeded at last. I am now 1856-57 passing through my 37th year. Sources of character results 1860. To sum up the foregoing from the outset and, of course, far, far more unrecorded, I estimate three leading sources and formative stamps to my own character, now solidified for good or bad, and its subsequent literary and other outgrowth. The maternal nativity stock brought hither from far away Netherlands for one, doubtless the best, the subterranean tenacity and central bony structure, obstinacy, willfulness, which I get from my paternal English elements, and the combination of my Long Island birth spot, sea shores, childhood scenes, absorptions with teaming Brooklyn and New York, with, I suppose, my experiences afterward in the secession outbreak for the third. For, in 1862, startled by news that my brother George, an officer in the 51st New York Volunteers, had been seriously wounded, first Fredericksburg battle, December 13th, I hurriedly went down to the field of war in Virginia. But I must go back a little. End of Chapter 1. Recording by Sue Anderson. Chapter 2 of specimen days. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Anosimum. Specimen days by Walt Whitman. Opening of the secession war. News of the attack on Fort Sumter and the flag at Charleston Harbour in South Carolina was received in New York City late at night, 13th April 1861, and was immediately sent out in extras of the newspapers. I had been to the operand 14th Street that night, and after the performance was walking down Broadway toward 12 o'clock on my way to Brooklyn when I heard in the distance the loud cries of the news boys who came presently tearing and yelling up the street, rushing from side to side even more furiously than usual. I bought an extra, and crossed to the Metropolitan Hotel, Neblos, where the great lamps were still brightly blazing, and with a crowd of others, who gathered impromptu, read the news, which was evidently authentic. For the benefit of some who had no papers, one of us read the telegram aloud, while all listened silently and attentively. No remark was made by any of the crowd, which had increased to thirty or forty, but all stood a minute or two, I remember, before they dispersed. I can almost see them there now, under the lamps at midnight again. National Uprising and Volunteering I have said somewhere that the three Presidentsiots preceding 1861 showed how the weakness and wickedness of rulers are just as eligible here in America and the Republican as in Europe under dynastic influences. But what can I say of that prompt and splendid wrestling with secession slavery, the arch enemy personified, the instant he unmistakably showed his face? The volcanic upheaval of the nation, after that firing on the flag at Charleston, proved for certain something which had been previously in great doubt, and at once substantially settled the question of disunion. In my judgment it will remain as the grandest and most encouraging spectacle yet vouchsaved in any age, old or new, to political progress and democracy. It was not for what came to the surface merely, though that was important, but what had indicated below, which was of eternal importance. Down in the abysses of New World humanity, there had formed and hardened a primal heart-pan of national union will, determined and in the majority, refusing to be tempered with or argued against, confronting all emergencies, incapable at any time of bursting all surface bonds and breaking out like an earthquake. It is indeed the best lesson of the century, or of America, and it is a mighty privilege to have been part of it. Two great spectacles in mortal proofs of democracy, unequaled in all the history of the past, are furnished by the secession war, one at the beginning, the other at its close. Those are the general voluntary armed upheaval, and the peaceful and harmonious disbanding of the armies in the summer of 1865. Contempt is feeling. Even after the bombardment of Sumter, however, the gravity of the revolt, and the power and will of the slave states for a strong and continued military resistance to national authority, were not at all realized at the north, except by a few. Nine-tenths of the people of the free states looked upon the rebellion, as started in South Carolina, from a feeling one half of contempt and the other half composed of anger and incredulity. It was not thought it would be joined in by Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia. A great and cautious national official predicted that it would blow over in sixty days, and folks generally believed the prediction. I remember talking about it on a Fulton ferry boat with a Brooklyn mayor, who said he only, quote, hope the southern fire eaters would commit some overt act of resistance, as they would then be at once so effectually squelched, we would never hear of secession again, but he was afraid they never would have to pluck to really do anything. End quote. I remember, too, that a couple of companies of the thirteenth Brooklyn, who rendezvoused at the city armory, and started thence as thirty days men, were all provided with pieces of rope, conspicuously tied to their musket-barrels, with which to bring back each man a prisoner from the audacious south to be led in a noose on our men's early and triumphant return. Battle of Bull Run, July 1861. All this sort of feeling was destined to be arrested and reversed by a terrible shock. The Battle of First Bull Run. Certainly, as we now know it, one of the most singular fights on record. All battles and their results are far more matters of accident than is generally thought, but this was throughout a casualty, a chance. Each side supposed it had won till the last moment. One had, in point of fact, just the same right to be routed as the other. By a fiction or series of fictions, the national forces at the last moment exploded in a panic and fled from the field. The defeated troops commenced pouring into Washington over the Long Bridge at daylight on Monday, 22nd. Day drizzling all through with rain. The Saturday and Sunday of the battle, 20th and 21st, had been parched and hot to an extreme. The dust, the grime and smoke in layers, sweated in, followed by other layers against, sweated in, absorbed by those excited souls, their clothes all saturated with the clay powder filling the air, stirred up everywhere on the dry roads and trodden fields by the regiments, swarming wagons, artillery, etc. All the men with this coating of murk and sweat and rain now recoiling back, pouring over the Long Bridge, a horrible march of twenty miles, returning to Washington Beft, humiliated, panic struck. Where are the vans and the proud boasts with which you went forth? Where are your banners and your bands of music and your ropes to bring back your prisoners? Well, there isn't a band playing, and there isn't a flag, but clings ashamed and length to its staff. The sun rises, but shines not. The men appear at first sparsely and shame-faced enough, then thicker in the streets of Washington, appear in Pennsylvania Avenue, and on the steps and basement entrances. They come along in disorderly mobs, summon squads, stragglers, companies. Occasionally a rare regiment in perfect order with its officers, some gaps, dead, the true braves. Marching in silence, with lowering faces, stern, wary to sinking, all black and dirty, but every man with his musket and stepping alive. But these are the exceptions. Sidewalks of Pennsylvania Avenue, 14th Street, etc., crowded, jammed with citizens, darkies, clerks, everybody, lookers on. Women in the windows, curious expressions from faces, as those swarms of dirt-covered, returned soldiers there, will they never end, move by. But nothing said, no comments. Half our lookers on, secession of the most venomous kind, they say nothing, but the devil sniggers in their faces.  Good people, but not over many of them, either, hurry up something for their grub. They put wash-ketles on the fire, for soap, for coffee. They set tables on the sidewalks, wagon-loads of bread are purchased, swiftly cut in stout chunks. Here are two aged ladies, beautiful, the first in the city for culture and charm. They stand with store of eating and drinking at an improvised table of rough plank, and give food, and have the store replenished from their house every half hour all that day. And there in the rain they stand, active, silent, white-haired, and give food, though the tears stream down their cheeks, almost without intermission, the whole time. Amid the deep excitement, crowds and motion, and desperate eagerness, it seems strange to see many, very many of the soldiers, sleeping, in the midst of all, sleeping sound. They drop down anywhere, on the steps of houses, up close by the basements or fences, on the sidewalk, a side on some vacant lot, and deeply asleep. A poor seventeen or eighteen-year-old boy lies there, on the stoop of a grand house. He sleeps so calmly, so profoundly. Some clutch their muskets firmly even in sleep. Some in squats, comrades, brothers, close together, and on them, as they lay, silkly drips the rain. As afternoon passed and evening came, the streets, the barrooms, knots everywhere, listeners, questioners, terrible yarns, bugaboo, masked batteries, our regiment all cut up, etc., stories and storytellers, windy, bragging, vain centres of street crowds. Resolution, manliness, seemed to have abandoned Washington. The principal hotel, Willets, is full of shoulder straps, thick, crushed, creeping with shoulder straps. I see them, and must have a word with them. There you are, shoulder straps. But where are your companies? Where are your men? Incompetence. Never tell me of chances of battle, of getting strayed, and alike. I think this is your work, this retreat, after all. Sneak, blow, put on airs, there, in Willets, sumptuous parlours and barrooms, or anywhere. No explanation shall save you. Bull run is your work.  Meantime, in Washington, among the great persons in their entourage, a mixture of awful consternation, uncertainty, rage, shame, helplessness, and stupefying disappointment. The worst is not only imminent, but already here. In a few hours, perhaps before the next meal, the sesh generals, with their victorious hordes, will be upon us. The dream of humanity, the vaunted union we thought so strong, so impregnable. Hello, it seems already smashed like a china-plate. One bitter, bitter hour, perhaps proud America will never again know such an hour. She must pack and fly, no time to spare. Those white palaces, the dome-crowned capital there on the hill, so stately over the trees, shall they be left or destroyed first? For it is certain that a talk among certain of the magnates and officers and clerks and officials everywhere, for twenty-four hours in and around Washington after Bullrun, was loud and undisguised for yielding out and out, and substituting the Southern rule and Lincoln promptly abdicating and departing. If the sesh officers and forces had immediately followed and by a bold Napoleonic movement had entered Washington the first day, or even the second, they could have had things their own way and a powerful faction north to back them. One of our return and colonels, expressed in public that night, amid a swarm of officers and gentlemen in a crowded room, the opinion that it was useless to fight, that the Southerners had made their title clear, and that the best cause for the national government to pursue was to desist from any further attempt at stopping them, and admit them again to the lead on the best terms they were willing to grant. A lot of voice was raised against this judgment, amid that large crowd of officers and gentlemen. The fact is, the hour was one of the three or four of those crises we had then and afterwards, during the fluctuations of four years, when human eyes appeared at least just as likely to see the last breath of the Union as the seed continued. The stupor passes, something else begins. But the hour, the day, the night, passed, and whatever returns, an hour, a day, a night like that, can never again return. The President, recovering himself, begins that very night, sternly, rapidly sets about the task of reorganising his forces, and placing himself in positions for future and sureer work. If there were nothing else of Abraham Lincoln for history to stamp him with, it is enough to send him with his wreath to the memory of all future time that he endured that hour, that day, bitterer than gold, indeed a crucifixion day, that it did not conquer him, that he unflinchingly stemmed it, and resolved to lift himself and the Union out of it. Then the great New York papers at once appeared, commencing that evening, and following it up the next morning, and incessantly through many days afterwards, with leaders that rang out over the land with the loudest, most reverberating ring of clearest bugles, full of encouragement, hope, inspiration, unfiltering defiance. Those magnificent editorials, they never flagged for a fortnight. The Herald commenced them, I remember the articles well. The Tribune was equally cogent and inspiring, and the Times, Evening Post, and other principal papers were not a wit behind. They came in good time, for they were needed. For, in the humiliation of Bull Run, the popular feeling north from its extreme of superciliousness, recoiled to the deaths of gloom and apprehension. Of all the days of the war, there are two especially I could never forget. Those were the day following the news in New York and Brooklyn of that first Bull Run defeat, and the day of Abram Lincoln's death. I was home in Brooklyn on both occasions. The day of the murder, we heard the news very early in the morning. Mother prepared breakfast and other meals after it, as usual, but not a mouthful was eaten all day by either of us. We each drank half a cup of coffee, that was all. Little was said. We got every newspaper morning and evening, and the frequent extras of that period, and passed them silently to each other. Down at the front. Fullmouth, Virginia, opposite Fredericksburg, December 21st, 1862. Begin my visits among the camp hospitals in the Army of the Potomac. Spend a good part of the day in a large brick mansion on the banks of the Rapahonic, used as a hospital since the battle. Seems to have received only the worst cases. Outdoors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards at the front of the house, I noticed a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, etc., a full load for a one-horse cart. Several dead bodies lie near, each covered with its brown woolen blanket. In the dooryard, towards the river, are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their names on pieces of aerostaves or broken boards stuck in the dirt. Most of these bodies were subsequently taken up and transported north to their friends. The large mansion is quite crowded upstairs and down, everything impromptu, no system, all bad enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done. All the wounds pretty bad, some frightful, the man in their old clothes unclean and bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel soldiers and officers, prisoners.  He asked me for papers, which I gave him. I saw him three months afterwards, in Washington, with his leg amputated, doing well. I went through the rooms, downstairs and up. Some of the men were dying. I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks home, mothers, etc., also talked to three or four, who seemed most susceptible to it, and needing it. After first Fredericksburg, December 23rd to 31st, the results of the late battle are exhibited everywhere about here in thousands of cases.  In the camp, brigade, and division hospitals. These are merely tents, and sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground. Lucky if their blankets are spread on layers of pine, or hemlock twigs, or small leaves. No cuts, seldom even a mattress. It is pretty cold. The ground is frozen hard, and there is occasional snow. I go around from one case to another. I do not see that I do much good to these wounded and dying, but I cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me convulsively, and I do what I can for him. At any rate, stop with him, and sit near him for hours, if he wishes it. Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the camps, talking with the men, etc., sometimes at night among the groups around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. These are curious shows, full of characters and groups. I soon get acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well used. Sometimes I go down on picket with the regiments I know best. As to Russians, the army here at present seems to be tolerably well supplied, and the men have enough, such as it is, mainly salt-pork and hard-tech. Most of the regiments lodge in the flimsy little shelter tents. A few have built themselves huts of logs and mud, with fireplaces. Back to Washington. January 63. Left camp at Falmouth with some wounded, a few days since, and came here by a Cree Creek railroad, and so on government steamer up the Potomac. Many wounded were with us on the cars and boat. The cars were just common platform ones. The railroad journey of ten or twelve miles was made mostly before sunrise. The soldiers guarding the road came out from their tents or shebangs of bushes, with rumpled hair and half-awake look. Those on duty were walking their posts, some on banks over us, others down far below the level of the track. I saw large cavalry camps off the road. At a Cree Creek landing were numbers of wounded going north. While I waited some three hours, I went around among them. Several wanted words sent home to parents, brothers, wives, etc., which I did for them, by mail the next day from Washington. On the boat I had my hands full.  I am now remaining in and around Washington, daily visiting the hospitals, and much in Patent Office, 8th Street, H Street, Armory Square, and others. I am now able to do a little good, having money, as aminer of others' home, and getting experience. Today, Sunday afternoon, until nine in the evening, visited Campbell Hospital, attended specially to one case in Ward 1, very sick with pleurisy and typhoid fever. Young man, farmer's son, D. F. Russell, Company E, 60th New York, downhearted and feeble. A long time before he would take any interest, rode a little home to his mother, in Malone, Franklin County, New York, at his request, gave him some fruit and one or two other gifts, enveloped and directed his letter, etc. Then went thoroughly through Ward 6, observed every case in the ward, without, I think, missing one, gave perhaps from 20 to 30 persons each one some little gift, such as oranges, apples, sweet crackers, figs, etc. Thursday, January 21st, devoted the main part of the day to Armory Square Hospital, went pretty thoroughly through wards F, G, H, and I, some 50 cases in each ward. In Ward F, supplied the man throughout with writing paper and stamped envelope each, distributed in small portions to proper subjects, a large jar of first rate preserved berries, which had been donated to me by a lady, her own cooking. Found several cases I thought good subjects for small sums of money, which I furnished. The wounded men often come up broke, and it helps their spirits to have even the small sum I gave them. My paper and envelopes all gone, but distributed a good lot of amusing reading matter, also as I thought judicious, tobacco, oranges, apples, etc. Interesting cases in Ward I, Charles Miller, Bed 19, Company D, 53rd, Pennsylvania, is only 16 years of age, very bright, courageous boy, left leg amputated below the knee. Next bed to him, another young lad, very sick, gave each appropriate gifts. In the bed above, also, amputation of the left leg, gave him a little jar of raspberries. The bed J, this ward, gave a small sum, also to a soldier on crutches, sitting on his bed near. I am more and more surprised at the very great proportion of youngsters from 15 to 21 in the army. I afterwards found a still greater proportion among the Southerners. Evening, same day, went to see D. F. R., before alluded to, found him a remarkably changed for the better, up and dressed, quite a triumph. He afterwards got well and went back to his regiment. Distributed in the wards a quantity of note paper and forty or fifty stamped envelopes of which I had recruited my stock, and the men were much in need. Fifty hours left wounded on the field. Here is a case of a soldier I found among the crowded cots in a patent office. He likes to have someone to talk to, and we will listen to him. He got badly hit in his leg and side at Fredericksburg that eventful Saturday, thirteenth of December. He lay the succeeding two days and nights, helpless on the field, between the city and those grim terraces of batteries. His company and regiment had been compelled to leave him to his fate. To make matters worse it happened he lay with his head slightly downhill and could not help himself. At the end of some fifty hours he was brought off with other wounded under a flag of truce. I asked him how the rebels treated him as he laid during those two days and nights within reach of them, whether they came to him, whether they abused him. He answers that several of the rebels, soldiers and others, came to him at one time and another. A couple of them, who were together, spoke roughly and sarcastically, but nothing worse. One middle-aged man, however, who seemed to be moving around the field, among the dead and wounded, for benevolent purposes, came to him in a way he will never forget. Treated our soldier kindly, bound up his wounds, cheered him, gave him a couple of biscuits and a drink of whiskey and water, asked him if he could eat some beef. This good sasech, however, did not change our soldier's position, for it might have caused the blood to burst from the wounds, cluttered and stagnated. Our soldier is from Pennsylvania, has had a pretty severe time. The wounds prove to be bad ones, but he retains a good heart and is a present on the gain. It is not uncommon for the men to remain on the field this way, one, two, or even four or five days. Hospital scenes and persons. Letter writing. When eligible, I encouraged the men to write, and myself, when called upon, write all sorts of letters for them, including love letters, very tender ones. Almost as I reel off these memoranda, I write for a new patient to his wife, M the F, of the 17th Connecticut, Company H, has just come up, February 17th, from Windmill Point, and is received in Ward H, Army Square. He's an intelligent-looking man, has a foreign accent, black-eyed and haired, a hebraic appearance. Once a telegraphic message sent to his wife, New Canaan, Connecticut. I agree to send the message, but to make things sure, I also sit down and write the wife a letter, and dispatch it to the post office immediately, as he fears she will come on, and he does not wish her to, as he will surely get well. Saturday, January 30th. Afternoon, visited Campbell Hospital, seen of cleaning up the ward, and giving the men all clean clothes. Through the ward, six, the patients dressing or being dressed, the naked upper half of the bodies, the good humour and fun, the shirts, drawers, sheets of beds, etc., and the general fixing up for Sunday, gave JL fifty cents. Wednesday, February 4th. Visited Armory Square Hospital, went pretty thoroughly through wards E and D, supplied paper and envelopes to all who wished, as usual, found plenty of men who needed those articles, wrote letters, saw and talked with two or three members of the Brooklyn 14th Regiment. A poor fellow in ward D, with a fearful wound and a fearful condition, was having some loose splinters of bone taken from the neighbourhood of the wound. The operation was long and one of great pain, yet, after it was well commenced, the soldier bore it in silence. He sat up, propped, was much wasted, had lain a long time quiet in one position, not for days only, but weeks.  There was an unusual cluster of surgeons, medical cadets, nurses, etc., around his bed. I thought the whole thing was done with tenderness and unwell. In one case, the wife sat by the side of her husband, his sickness typhoid fever, pretty bad. In another, by the side of her son, a mother. She told me she had seven children, and this was the youngest. A fine, kind, healthy, gentle mother, good-looking, not very old, with a cap on her head, and dressed like home. What a charm it gave to the whole ward. I liked the woman nurse in ward E. I noticed how she sat a long time by a poor fellow who just had, that morning, in addition to his other sickness, the bad hemorrhage.  He was so weak he could only just turn his head over on the pillow. One young New York man, with a bright, handsome face, had been lying several months for a most disagreeable wound received at Bull Run. A bullet had shot him right through the bladder, hitting him in front, low in the belly, and coming out back. He had suffered much. The water came out of the wound by slow but steady quantities for many weeks, so that he lay almost constantly in a sort of puddle, and there were other disagreeable circumstances. He was of good heart, however. At present, comparatively comfortable, had a bad throat, was delighted with the stick of whorehound candy I gave him with one or two other trifles. A Patent Office Hospital February 23. I must not let the great hospital at the Patent Office pass away without some mention. A few weeks ago, the vast area of the second story of that noblest of Washington buildings was crowded close with rows of sick, badly wounded and dying soldiers. They were placed in three very large apartments. I went there many times. It was a strange, solemn, and, with all its features of suffering and death, a sort of fascinating sight. I go sometimes at night to soothe and relieve particular cases. Two of the immense apartments are filled with high and ponderous glass cases, crowded with models and miniature of every kind of utensil, machine, or invention it ever entered into the mind of man to conceive, and with curiosities and foreign presence. Between these cases are lateral openings, perhaps eight feet wide and quite deep, and in these were placed the sick, besides a great long double row of them up and down through the middle of the hall. Many of them were very bad cases, wounds and amputations. Then there was a gallery running above the hall, in which there were beds also. It was indeed a curious scene, especially at night when lit up. The glass cases, the beds, the forms lying there, the gallery above, and the marble pavement on the foot, the suffering, and the fortitude to bear it in various degrees. Occasionally, from some, the groan that could not be repressed, sometimes a poor fellow dying, with a maciated face and glassy eye, then nursed by his side, the doctor also there, but no friend, no relative, such were the sights, but lately in the patted office. The one that have since been removed from there, and that is now vacant again. End of Section 2. February 24th. A spell of fine, soft weather. I wonder about a good deal, sometimes at night, under the moon. Tonight took a long look at the President's house, the white portico, the palace-like, tall, round columns, spotless as snow, the walls also, the tender and soft moonlight, flooding the pale marble, and making the peculiar, faint languishing shades, not shadows, everywhere a soft, transparent, hazy, thin blue moon lace hanging in the air, the brilliant and extra plentiful clusters of gas on and around the façade, columns, portico, etc. Everything so white, so marbly, pure, and dazzling, yet soft, the white house of future poems, and of dreams and dramas, there in the soft and copious moon, the gorgeous front in the trees under the lustrous, flooding moon, full of reality, full of illusion, the forms of the trees, leafless, silent, in trunk and myriad angles of branches under the stars and sky, the white house of the land, and of beauty and night, centuries at the gates and by the portico, silent, pacing there in blue overcoats, stopping you not at all, but eyeing you with sharp eyes, whichever way you move, an army hospital ward. Let me specialise a visit that I made to the collection of barrack-like one-story edifices, Campbell Hospital, out on the flats, at the end of the then horse-railway route on Seventh Street. There is a long building appropriated to each ward. Let us go into Ward Six. It contains today I should judge eighty or a hundred patients, half sick, half wounded. The edifice is nothing but boards, well whitewashed inside, and the usual slender-framed iron bedsteads, narrow and plain.  There are fires in large stoves, and the prevailing white of the walls is relieved by some ornaments, stars, circles, etc., made of evergreens. The view of the whole edifice and occupants can be taken at once, for there is no partition. You may hear groans or other sounds of unendurable suffering from two or three of the cots, but in the main there is quiet, almost a painful absence of demonstration, but the pallid face, the dulled eye, and the moisture of the lip are demonstration enough. Most of these sick or hurt are evidently young fellows from the country, farmers' sons, and such like. Look at the fine large frames, the bright and broad countenances, and the many yet lingering proofs of strong constitution and physique. Look at the patient and mute manner of our American wounded as they lie in such a sad collection. Representatives from all New England and from New York and New Jersey and Pennsylvania, indeed from all the states and all the cities, largely from the West. Most of them are entirely without friends or acquaintances here, no familiar face, and hardly a word of judicious sympathy or cheer, through their sometimes long and tedious sickness, or the pangs of aggravated wounds. A Connecticut case. This young man in bed 25 is HDB of the 27th Connecticut Company B. His folks live at Northford, near New Haven. Though not more than 21 or thereabouts, he has knocked much around the world on sea and land and has seen some fighting on both. When I first saw him, he was very sick, with no appetite. He declined offers of money, said he did not need anything. As I was quite anxious to do something, he confessed that he had a hankering for a good homemade rice pudding, thought he could relish it better than anything. At this time his stomach was very weak. The doctor whom I consulted said nourishment would do him more good than anything, but things in the hospital, though better than usual, revolted him. I soon procured B. his rice pudding. A Washington lady, Mrs. O. C., hearing his wish, made the pudding herself, and I took it up to him the next day. He subsequently told me he lived upon it for three or four days. This B. is a good sample of the American Eastern young man, the typical Yankee. I took a fancy to him and gave him a nice pipe for a keepsake. He received afterwards a box of things from home, and nothing would do what I must take dinner with him, which I did, and a very good one it was. Two Brooklyn boys. Here in this same ward are two young men from Brooklyn, members of the 51st New York. I had known both the two as young lads at home, so they seemed near to me. One of them, J. L., lies there with an amputated arm, the stump healing pretty well.  He was very flimatic about it, munching away at a cracker in the remaining hand, made no fuss. He will recover, and thinks and talks yet of meeting Johnny Rebs. A seshesh brave. The grand soldiers are not comprised in those of one side any more than the other. Here is a sample of an unknown Southerner, a lad of seventeen. At the War Department a few days ago I witnessed a presentation of captured flags to the Secretary. Among others a soldier named Gant, of the 104th Ohio Volunteers, presented a rebel battle flag, which one of the officers stated to me, was born to the mouth of our cannon and planted there by a boy but seventeen years of age, who actually endeavored to stop the muzzle of the gun with fence rails. He was killed in the effort, and the flagstaff was severed by a shot from one of our men. The Wounded from Chancellorsville, May 63 As I write this, the wounded have begun to arrive from Hooker's Command in the bloody Chancellorsville. I was down among the first arrivals. The men in charge told me the bad cases were yet to come. If that is so, I pity them, for these are bad enough. You ought to see the scene of the wounded arriving at the landing here at the foot of Sixth Street at night. Two boatloads came about half-past seven last night. A little after eight it rained a long and violent shower. The pale, helpless soldiers had been debarked and lay around on the wharf and neighbourhood anywhere. The rain was probably grateful to them, at any rate they were exposed to it. The few torches led up the spectacle. All around on the wharf, on the ground, out on side places, the men are lying on blankets, old quilts, etc., with bloody rags bound round heads, arms and legs. The attendants are few, and at night few outsiders also. Only a few hard-worked transportation men and drivers. The wounded are getting to be common, and people grow callous.  Nearby, the ambulances are now arriving in clusters, and one after another is called to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on stretchers. The men generally make little or no ado whatever their sufferings. A few groans that cannot be suppressed, and occasionally a scream of pain as they lift a man into the ambulance. Today, as I write, hundreds more are expected, and tomorrow and the next day more, and so on for many days. Quite often they arrive at the rate of a thousand a day. A night battle over a week since. May 12th. There was part of the late battle at Chancellorsville, 2nd Fredericksburg, a little over a week ago. Saturday, Saturday night and Sunday, under General Joe Hooker, I would like to give just a glimpse of. A moment's look in a terrible storm at sea, of which a few suggestions are enough and full details impossible. The fighting had been very hot during the day, and after an intermission the latter part was resumed at night, and kept up with furious energy till three o'clock in the morning. That afternoon, Saturday, an attack sudden and strong by Stonewall Jackson had gained a great advantage to the Southern Army and broken our lines, entering us like a wedge, and leaving things in that position at dark. But Hooker at 11 at night made a desperate push, drove the such-as-forces back, restored his original lines, and resumed his plans. This night's scrimmage was very exciting, and afforded countless strange and fearful pictures. The fighting had been general both at Chancellorsville and northeast at Fredericksburg. We hear of some poor fighting episodes, skedaddling on our part. I think not of it. I think of the fierce bravery, the general rule. One core, the sixth Sedgwick's, fights four dashing and bloody battles in 36 hours, retreating in great jeopardy, losing largely but maintaining itself, fighting with the sternest desperation under all circumstances, getting over the Rappahannock only by the skin of its teeth, yet getting over. It lost many, many brave men. Yet it took vengeance, ample vengeance. But it was the tug of Saturday evening and through the night and Sunday morning I wanted to make a special note of. It was largely in the woods, and in quite a general engagement. The night was very pleasant, at times the moon shining out full and clear, all nature so calm in itself, the early summer grass so rich and foliage of the trees. Yet there the battle raging and many good fellows lying helpless, with new assessions to them and every minute amid the rattle of muskets and crash of cannon, for there was an artillery contest too. The red lifeblood oozing out from heads or trunks or limbs upon that green and dew-cool grass. Patches of the woods take fire, and several of the wounded, unable to move, are consumed.  Some of the men have their hair and beards singed, some burns on their faces and hands, others holes burnt in their clothing. The flashes of fire from the cannon, the quick flaring flames and smoke, and the immense roar, the musketry so general, the light nearly bright enough for each side to see the other, the crashing, tramping of men, the yelling, close quarters, we hear the seshes yells. Our men cheer loudly back, especially if Hooker is in sight. Hand to hand conflicts. Each side stands up to it, brave, determined as demons, they often charge upon us. A thousand deeds are done worth to write newer, greater poems on, and still the woods on fire. Still many are not only scorched, too many, unable to move, are burnished to death. Then the camps of the wounded. Oh heavens, what's seen is this? Is this indeed humanity, these butchers shambles? There are several of them. There they lie in the largest in an open space in the woods, from two hundred to three hundred poor fellows. The groans and screams, the odor of blood, mixed with the fresh scent of the night, the grass, the trees, that slaughterhouse. Oh, well it is that their mothers, their sisters, cannot see them, cannot conceive, and never conceived these things. One man is shot by a shell, both in the arm and leg. Both are amputated. There lie the rejected members.  Many rebels badly hurt. They take their regular turns with the rest just the same as any, the surgeons use them just the same. Such is the camp of the wounded.  Well all over the clear, large moon comes out at times, softly, quietly shining. Amid the woods, that scene of flitting soles, amid the crack and crash and yelling sounds, the impelpable perfume of the woods, and yet the pungent, stifling smoke, the radiance of the moon, looking from heaven at intervals so placid, the sky so heavenly, the clear obscure up there, those buoyant upper oceans, a few large placid stars beyond, coming silently and languidly out and then disappearing. The melancholy drapery night above, around, and there upon the roads, the fields, and in those woods, that contest, never one more desperate in any age or land, both parties now in force, masses, no fancy battle, no semi-play, but fierce and savage demons fighting there, courage and scorn of death the rule, exceptions almost none. What history I say can ever give, for who can know the mad determined tussle of the armies in all their separate large and little squads, as this, each steeped from crown to toe in desperate mortal purports? Who know the conflict hand to hand, the many conflicts in the dark, those shadowy tangled flashing moonbeamed woods, the writhing groups and squads, the cries, the din, the cracking guns and pistols, the distant cannon, the cheers and calls and threats and awful music of the oaths, the indescribable mix, the officers' orders, persuasions and couragements, the devils fully roused in human hearts, the strong shout, charge men, charge, the flash of the naked sword and rolling flame and smoke, and still the broken, clear and clouded heaven, and still again the moonlight pouring silvery soft its radiant patches over all? Who paint the scene, the sudden partial panic of the afternoon at dusk? Who paint the irrepressible advance of the second division of the third corps under Hooker himself, suddenly ordered up those rapid-filling phantoms through the woods? Who show what moves there in the shadows, fluid and firm, to save, and it did save the army's name, perhaps the nation, as there the veterans hold the field? Braveberry falls not yet, but death has marked him, soon he falls. Unnamed remains the bravest soldier. Of scenes like these I say who writes, who ere can write the story? Of many a score, I thousands north and south of unwritten heroes, unknown heroisms, incredible and prompt to first-class desperation. Who tells? No history ever, no poems sings, no music sounds, those bravest men of all, those deeds, no formal generals report, nor book in the library, nor column in the paper, and bombs the bravest north or south, east or west. Unnamed, unknown, remain, and still remain, the bravest soldiers. Our manliest, our boys, our hearty darlings, no picture gives them, likely the typical one of them, standing no doubt for hundreds, thousands, crawls aside to some bush-clump or ferny tuft, on receiving his death-shot, there sheltering a little while, soaking roots, grass and soil with red blood. The battle advances, retreats, flits from the scene, sweeps by, and there, happily with pain and suffering, yet less, far less than is supposed, the last lethargy winds like a serpent round him. The eyes glaze in death, none wrecks, perhaps the burial squads in truce a week afterwards, search not the secluded spot, and there at last the bravest soldier crumbles in mother earth, unburied and unknown. Some specimen cases. June 18th. In one of the hospitals I find Thomas Hayley, Company M, 4th New York Cavalry, a regular Irish boy, a fine specimen of youthful physical manliness, shot through the lungs, inevitably dying, came over to this country from Ireland to enlist, has not a single friend or acquaintance here, is sleeping soundly at this moment, but it is the sleep of death, has a bullet hole straight through the lung. I saw Tom when first brought here three days since, and didn't suppose he could live 12 hours, yet he looks well enough in the face to a casual observer. He lies there with his frame exposed above the waist, all naked for coolness, a fine-built man, the tan not yet bleached from his cheek and neck.  Much of the time he sleeps, or half sleeps. Sometimes I thought he knew more than he showed. I often come and sit by him in perfect silence. He will breathe for ten minutes as softly and evenly as a young babe asleep. Poor youth, so handsome, athletic, with profuse, beautiful shining hair. One time as I sat looking at him while he lay asleep, he suddenly, without the least start, awakened, opened his eyes, gave me a long, steady look, turning his face very slightly to gaze easier. One long, clear, silent look, a slight sigh, then turned back and went into his doze again. Little he knew, poor death-stricken boy, the heart of the stranger that hovered near. W. H. E. Company F. Second New York. His disease is pneumonia. He lay sick at the wretched hospital below Aquia Creek for seven or eight days before brought here. He was detailed from his regiment to go there and help as nurse, but was soon taken down himself. Is an elderly, sallow-faced, rather gaunt, gray-haired man, a widower, with children. He expressed a great desire for good, strong, green tea. An excellent lady, Mrs. W., of Washington, soon sent him a package. Also a small sum of money. The doctor said give him the tea at pleasure. It lay on the table by his side, and he used it every day. He slept a great deal, could not talk much as he grew deaf. Occupied Bed 15, ward I, Armory. The same lady above, Mrs. W., sent the man a large package of tobacco. J. G. lies in Bed 52, ward I, is of Company B, 7th Pennsylvania. I gave him a small sum of money, some tobacco, and envelopes. To a man adjoining also gave twenty-five cents. He flushed in the face when I offered it, refused it at first. But as I found he had not a scent, and was very fond of having the daily papers to read, I pressed it on him. He was evidently very grateful, but said little. J. T. L., of Company F., 9th New Hampshire, lies in Bed 37, ward I, is very fond of tobacco. I furnish him some, also with a little money. Has gangrene of the feet. A pretty bad case. Will surely have to lose three toes. Is a regular specimen of an old-fashioned, rude, hearty New England countryman, impressing me with his likeness to that celebrated, singed cat, who was better than she looked. Bed 3, ward E, Armory, has a great hankering for pickles, something pungent. After consulting the doctor, I gave him a small bottle of horseradish, also some apples, also a book. Some of the nurses are excellent. The women nurse in this ward I like very much. Mrs. Wright. A year afterwards I found her in Mansion House Hospital, Alexandria. She is a perfect nurse. In one bed a young man, Marcus Small, Company K., 7th Maine, sick with dysentery and typhoid fever. Pretty critical case. I talk with him often. He thinks he will die. Looks like an indeed. I write a letter for him home to East Liverpool, Maine. I let him talk to me a little, but not much. Advise him to keep very quiet. Do most of the talking myself. Stay quite a while with him as he holds on to my hand. Talk to him in a cheering, but slow, low and measured manner. Talk about his furlough, and going home as soon as he is able to travel. Thomas Lindley, 1st Pennsylvania Cavalry, shot very badly through the foot. Poor young man, he suffers horridly, has to be constantly dozed with morphine, his face ashy and glazed. Bright young eyes. I give him a large, handsome apple. Lay it in sight. Tell him to have it roasted in the morning, as he generally feels easier then, and can eat a little breakfast. I write two letters for him. Opposite, an old Quaker lady sits by the side of her son, Amor Moore, 2nd US artillery. Shot in the head two weeks since. Very low, quite rational. From hips down paralyzed. He will surely die. I speak a very few words to him every day and evening. He answers pleasantly, wants nothing. He told me soon after he came about his home affairs, his mother had been an invalid, and he feared to let her know his condition. He died soon after she came. My preparations for visits. In my visits to the hospital, I found it was in the simple matter of personal presence, and emanating ordinary cheer and magnetism that I succeeded, and helped more than by medical nursing or delicacies or gifts of money or anything else. During the war I possessed the perfection of physical health. My habit, when practicable, was to prepare for starting out on one of those daily or nightly tours of from a couple to four or five hours by fortifying myself with previous rest, the bath, clean clothes, a good meal, and as cheerful an appearance as possible. Ambulance processions. June 23rd, sundown. As I sit writing this paragraph, I see a train of about thirty huge four-horse wagons used as ambulances, filled with wounded, passing up 14th Street, on their way probably to Columbian Carver and Mount Pleasant Hospitals. This is the way the men come in now, seldom in small numbers, but almost always in these long, sad processions. Through the past winter, while our army lay opposite Fredericksburg, the like strings of ambulances were a frequent occurrence along 7th Street, passing slowly up from the steamboat wharf, with loads from Equia Creek. Bad Wounds. The Young. The soldiers are nearly all young men, and far more American than is generally supposed. I should say nine-tenths are native born. Among the arrivals from Chancellorsville, I find a large proportion of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men fearfully burnt from the explosions of artillery casings. One ward has a long row of officers, some with ugly herds. Yesterday was perhaps worse than usual. Amputations are going on. The attendants are dressing wounds. As you pass by, you must be on your guard where you look. I saw the other day a gentleman, a visitor apparently from Curiosity, in one of the wards, stopped by and turned a moment to look at an awful wound they were probing. He turned pale, and in a moment more he had fainted away and fallen to the floor. The most inspiring of all war's shows. June 29th. Just before sundown this evening, a very large cavalry force went by. A fine sight. The men evidently had seen service. First came a mounted band of sixteen bugles, drums and cymbals. Playing wild marshal tunes made my heart jump. Then the principal officers. Then company after company with their officers at their heads. Making, of course, the main part of the cavalcade. Then a long train of men with lead horses. Lots of mounted negroes with special horses, and a long string of baggage wagons, each drawn by four horses. And then a motley rearguard.  The sabers clanked. The men looked young and healthy and strong. The electric tramping of so many horses on the hard road, and the gallant bearing, fine seat and bright-faced appearance of a thousand and more young American men were so good to see. An hour later another troop went by, smaller in numbers, perhaps three hundred men. They too looked like serviceable men. Campaigners used to field and fight. July 3. This forenoon for more than an hour, again long strings of cavalry, several regiments, very fine men and horses, four or five abreast. I saw them in 14th Street, coming in town from North. Several hundred extra horses, some of the mares with colts, trotting along. Appeared to be a number of prisoners, too. How in spiriting always the cavalry regiments, our men are generally well-mounted, feel good, are young, gay on the saddle, their blankets and a roll behind them, their sabers clanking at their sides. This noise and movement and the tramp of many horses hooves has a curious effect upon one. The bugles play. Presently you hear them afar off, deadened, mixed with other noises. Then just as they had all passed, a string of ambulances commenced from the other way, moving up 14th Street North, slowly wending along, bearing a large lot of wounded to the hospitals.