372 LITERARY PAPERS 



is not merely having "a genteel young woman at a table in a 

 ward." 



He tells of "Girls, mothers, housekeepers in all their per- 

 formances. The group of laborers seated at noon-time with 

 their open dinner kettles, and their wives waiting;" of the 

 prison visitor leading her children by each hand, who brings, 

 with the rustling folds of her silken gown, balm to heal the 

 convict's woe. Whether as the woman containing all, nothing 

 lacking, in the one who "waits for me," or in those lines 

 relating to a city where all is forgotten but the woman who 

 detained him for love of him; or women old and young; or 

 the sleeping mother, Whitman studies them "each and all, 

 long and long." 



Thus in labors and charity, abroad or in the home, Whitman 

 sees "male and female everywhere." But Whitman de- 

 scribes woman, too, standing alone; she it is, the dusky wo- 

 man from Ethiopia who salutes the flag, who recognizes the 

 banner, the colors assuring freedom. The one-time slave, 

 who, knowing the lament of servitude, welcomes liberty "and 

 courtesies to the regiments," though through men's strife 

 freedom comes. Whitman also does not forget the "young 

 American woman," one of a large family of daughters, who 

 has gone out from her own home to gain her own support; 

 who, unstained, preserved her own independence, and by her 

 own efforts sustains herself and helps her parents and sisters. 

 Nor is he silent as to the woman who "from taste and neces- 

 sity conjoined, has gone into practical affairs, carries on a 

 mechanical business, partly works at it herself, dashes out 

 more and more into real hardy life, is not abash'd by the coarse- 

 ness of the contact and will compare any day, with supe- 

 rior carpenters, farmers, and even boatmen and drivers. For 

 all that, she has not lost the charm of the womanly nature." 

 Then there is the woman "physiologically sweet and sound, 

 loving work, practical. She yet knows that there are intervals, 

 however few, devoted to recreation, music, leisure, hospital- 

 ity and affords such intervals. Whatever she does, and 

 wherever she is, that charm, that indescribable perfume of 

 genuine womanhood, attends her, goes with her, exhales from 



