226 WALL STREET AND THE WILDS 



mostly of much informality, but with Sam Ward, 

 the famous bon vivant, in charge and the viands 

 always flavored with Attic salt. For there were 

 brilliant correspondents, essayists, poets, men of 

 letters, like Swinton, Townsend, Piatt, O'Con- 

 nor, Walt Whitman, and many others, always 

 ready to be drawn upon. Sometimes the charm 

 of a dinner to me was in what followed it, when a 

 little group of men like Walt Whitman, O'Con- 

 nor, and Swinton remained to continue some dis- 

 cussion that had been started at the table. 



I can never forget one night when the group 

 broke up because the house wanted to close and 

 Walt Whitman took my arm for a walk on Penn- 

 sylvania Avenue. We walked to the Capitol and 

 back to the Willard House, where Whitman sat 

 down on the curb with his feet in the gutter and 

 I took my place beside him. For an hour we 

 conversed, that is he talked and I listened in rapt 

 attention. The Spirit of Poetry dominated him 

 that night and the pathos of his great "My Cap- 

 tain" possessed him. Poetry, philosophy, his 



